In recent weeks, a new wave of protests and demonstrations in the streets, civil disobedience and strikes in factories has been sweeping all over the cities and towns of Iran, writes Reza Akbari.
This follows the protest wave in mid-January, when the people, infuriated by the high cost of living, corruption, nepotism, inequality and injustice flooded into the streets, crying out their discontent and anger.
This fury has been gradually building up since the first days of the Islamic revolution in 1979. However, the government has been able to control and divert this anger in other directions. This includes engaging in a futile eight year war with Iraq that claimed more than 1 million lives on both sides, creating an atmosphere of terror and fear by imprisonment, torture and firing squads.
From the first day of the Islamic Republic’s hijacking of the people’s revolution against the Shah’s dictatorship in 1979, illegitimate child of the marriage between the capitalism and theocratic rule has used any means needed to confront and destroy all left or liberal movements.
George Ball, a US diplomat during the Jimmy Carter presidency in 1979, recommended pulling back US support from the Shah’s regime and back a government of Ayatollah Khomeini. The aim was to best suppress the growth and development of a leftist movement in Iran and prevent a possible intervention of Russia in the internal affairs of Iran during the Cold War.
This was also in accordance with the policy of a “Green Belt” (Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran) around Russia as part of the Cold War.
In power, the Islamic regime of the Ayatollahs arrested, tortured and raped whoever dared to say anything against their authority. They murdered their opponents to shut down any opposition.
Read the article in Green Left Weekly.