In January 2023, we conducted an interview with B, an Iranian libertarian comrade
living in Lyon. We completed it recently. Here we present the first part. Thesequel will appear in the summer issue. ---- Coming from a poor background, B.was able to enter the public university of Isfahan which was free at the time. Hewas active in a short-lived communist group "Liberty and Equality". After severalarrests he went into exile in Türkiye. In 2013, when he arrived in France, hejoined the Left Party, which became LFI, which he left in 2019 while frequentingthe Trotskyist group "l'Étincelle". He is a member of the collective of thelibertarian bookstore La Gryffe and has translated into Iranian "What isproperty? by Proudhon, and "Protests before the libertarians of the present andthe future on the capitulations of 1937".The beginnings of the revoltThe trigger was the death of Masha Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman visitingTehran, arrested on Tuesday, September 13 by the morality police and declareddead in hospital 3 days later. She had been beaten to death.There had been deaths in previous protests against the regime, such as the onearound the street vendors who were beaten and massacred in the streets in 2020,but there had never been a reaction like what happened. passed after Masha's death.It is as if the lid of 43 years of internalized Iranian anger against the regimehad just been lifted.This triggered an extremely determined new dynamic in Iranian society.Thus, on September 16, the very evening of the death, there was a firstconfrontation with the police in front of the hospital where Masha's body lay.The demonstration denounced the circumstances of his death (murder denied by thepolice) and the official lies on the health problems which would have caused hisdeath. From the 2nd week the students started a big strike. The regime has closeduniversities and hundreds of students have been arrested and are still imprisoned.For 3 months the movement occupied the streets throughout the country, but after30,000 imprisonments, numerous injuries (number unknown), 600 deaths in thestreets, a dozen death sentences and 5 capital executions, the demonstrationshave greatly diminished. or even disappeared. The strength to demonstrate in thestreets has been destroyed/repressed, people stay at home because we can'tdemonstrate every day, we suffer and we get exhausted, like in the Yellow Vestsmovement.But other forms of action exist: meetings, artistic actions such as poetry, musicvideos, slogans...And, for us who are in exile, when we helplessly listen to the news and learnthat so and so is dead, another arrested, it destroys your sanity. Apart fromcrying and going to protest, we feel in a position of inability to move the lines.Can we speak of revolution with this movement?The cycles of confrontation with the state are more and more regular. It's almostevery year. This is why we can say that we are in a revolutionary era. It is arevolution on the social aspect, the economic aspect, and on certain freedoms.There are 43 years of anger, on different subjects. Economically, Iran, althoughthe second largest gas reserve and oil producer, is in difficulty because thesystem is corrupt. On individual freedoms and fundamental rights, we are facedwith an Islamist regime that prohibits everything. Going for a beer on theterrace without ending up in prison is a dream for Iranian youth, we do notrealize how much.The current revolution is a profound social revolution: it will changerelationships between people, in society, relationships between women and men,freedoms for minorities, etc. This is why this revolution will be long.There is everything in this revolution, but we do not know who will manage totranslate all that and give a political program. I hope it will be the left, butfor it to get there a lot of things will have to change.The counter-revolution - the royalists - just want to change the rulers. Theright will accept individual freedoms, but we will have an economic problem withthem; this is why the links with the unions are so important, and many friendsare working with them. Trade unionism is banned in Iran. Any meeting of workersis considered a terrorist organization, so it's done in secret.It is a revolution that has begun, which will perhaps last. There, it has beengoing on for more than three months, and I have no doubt that the Iranians willwin one way or another, and bring down this regime.It is heroic what the Iranians have done. I am not a nationalist but thismovement made me proud to be Iranian. It is a people in revolt, a greatrebellious people who want to change society.In many families there is a death, a prisoner. In mid-May 3 more people wereexecuted and their protesting families imprisoned. Anger, hatred and revenge aredriving many people in Iran today. Given how Iranian society works, this willcause a lot of settling of scores when the regime falls.The taboo that there was on religion has been broken. Why is it important?The call of the muezzin at 5 am, for us it is something horrible. French touristfriends told me that they found it magnificent. But for us, it means that someoneis going to be executed, because that's when executions take place in prisons.According to Islamic rules, you can kill after prayer, not before. For us, therewas no better way to destroy Islam than this Islamist government, and I can thankit for this aspect.Islam took ten centuries to impose itself everywhere in Iran and become a statereligion. It was the Safavids who, in the 16th century, imposed Shiism as thestate religion to counter the threat of the Ottoman Empire.Before that, there were no strict rules: Islam had spread, but the population wasquite free and in practice Iranians never accepted Islam like in other Muslimcountries.In society there have always been resistance movements. In 1906 there was anattempt at a constitutional monarchy, which gave power to the assembly andestablished a separation of church and state. But it only lasted three months,under the attacks of the Shiite clergy.Before the revolution, Islam was respected, but the rise to power of theIslamists showed another side of religion.During the 2022-2023 revolt, a photo shows schoolgirls giving middle fingers to aportrait of an ayatollah; this photo shows that the regime has destroyed allrespect for religion. It shows that Iran can no longer be a religious country.It's finish. Marx said of a book by Hegel that everything considered sacred wouldevaporate into thin air; what you think you can never change will sooner or laterdisappear.Now we are taking down the mullahs' turbans. Mosques are attacked. The women goout without a veil and cut their hair. The Khomeini Museum was burned down.Everything that was once sacred has been destroyed.That's the message of this photo: young girls challenging religious authority andending it. One can be optimistic for the future and freedom in Iran.On this subject there are also generational problems, between parents andchildren. There is a video of a young man who burns a Koran at home and says tothe parents "see, I burn the Koran and nothing happens".With friends we did a work of analysis of the Koran verse by verse. But I willnever translate that into French, it's too dangerous. Here in France it'scomplicated to talk about Islam. For us Iranians it's easy, as we come from acountry with a Muslim culture: we know that we are against it.An article in "Courrier international" written by an Iranian said that thedemonstrators should join the banner of women. Do you think that's a perspectivefor this movement, or does it need to be much larger and more global?Twenty years ago, a left-wing politician declared that the Iranian revolutionwill be feminist because women are the first victims of this regime.The movement is indeed more global, but women are in the front line because thefirst function of Islam is to be against women. Iranian women know this. They arethe most revolted.Recently there was a criminal case: in Ahvaz, Mona Heydari, a 17-year-old youngwoman fled her home and her husband after a forced marriage and took refuge inTurkey. The Turkish authorities sent her back to Iran. Her husband slit herthroat, decapitated her and showed her head in the street and posted it all onYoutube. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, while revolutionaries wereexecuted in prison and sometimes in public, for burning a garbage can. Soobviously it's a feminist revolution: women are on the front line as if theyweren't afraid of anything and are showing extraordinary courage.To justify the regime, the Western left, sympathizing with Islamism, explainsthat in Iran women have traditionally male occupations. Is it following theIran-Iraq war and its terrible human losses?I don't think that the war is the reason for this presence of women in theseprofessions, because even before the Islamist revolution there were many womenwho were looking for freedom and their place in society.Currently, some religious believe that women have taken up too much space insociety. The regime also says that we must have children because the birth rateis falling because many Iranians prefer freedom to marriage.So the monks ask that they stop working and go home to have kids.The Princess of the Shah: (the royalists in exile) said exactly the same thing:questioned on "Woman, life, freedom", she replied that life is to have a child,and freedom is to have a child. You see how these people come together.The women were ignored, insulted, it's normal for them to revolt.Minorities: manufacturing an internal enemy to divide the movement From the beginning, the regime tried to play the division between Iranians andminorities (Kurds, Baluchis).Iranian Kurdistan and Balochistan are two border areas with Iraq and Pakistan.The population is Sunni. The regime deployed the army there. The regime firedlive ammunition at Kurds and Baluchis who fought with their bare hands.The strategy of the mullahs was to make Iranians in the center of the countrybelieve that it was a separatist conflict that risked splitting Iran, whereasthere are no separatist movements in these regions.This strategy was the same as that of the Shah's (Reza Pahlavi) regime which, inthe past, successfully played on inter-ethnic divisions.But, the demonstrators and peoples of Iran, using the slogan "Women, life,freedom", which is a slogan of the Syrian Kurdish movement, showed theirfraternity and their unity against the regime. This attempt to divide people,which was as much due to the regime as to certain opponents of the regime(nationalists, fascists, monarchists, etc.) was therefore a failure.Kurds in IranIran is a multicultural country due to its history and its position as thecrossroads of the Middle East. There are Arab, Kurdish, Turkish, Turkmen, Baloch,Armenian, Assyrian and Jewish minorities. It is also a trading hub in Asia.The history of Iranian Kurds is different from other countries; they are the oneswho created the empire of Iran, who governed for a very long time, so they feelIranian, even more Iranian than the others. To my knowledge, there is no IranianKurdish movement that wants independence. They say they want a federalist model,which is now shared by many leftists and other peoples of Iran.The Iranian Kurds are in close relations with those of Iraq and are quiteattracted by the Iraqi federalist model. With friends from exile, we have workeda lot on the federalist question by defending a more libertarian confederalisminspired by Rojava, but we don't know if it can be applied in Iran... And wewould like the Iranian Kurds to break away from the model Iraqi Kurds, who aresubject to reactionary and corrupt clan parties, and are getting closer to theSyrian Kurds.The oppositions of exileThe monarchistsThis lack of political parties and political vision creates a vacuum, and inexile, this vacuum allows the royalists - supporters of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi,Iranian ruler and dictator from 1941 to 1979 - to reappear.Two countries support the Iranian royalists, who can also be described asneo-fascists:Morocco, whose king finances the son of the Shah to the tune of $1 million per year.And above all, Saudi Arabia, which for the past 5 years has invested heavily inthe monarchists.It has created two television channels which broadcast in the direction of Iranand financed international public relations operations for them.Because Iran with the Islamic revolution and its international and militarypolicy (direct and indirect interventions in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq which itpartially colonized...) politically and religiously disturbs Arabia. As it wantsto remain the only legitimate country to guide the entire Muslim world, a secularIranian monarchy would suit it well.In exile, the royalists have enormous means by creating bogus associations andresearch centers that produce nothing and provide jobs to exiles who aretherefore bought off. It may sound conspiratorial but it is the reality.This is how the royalist flag (a lion with a sword and a crown) reappeared in allthe Iranian demonstrations abroad. It was unthinkable two years ago.In Belgium, they created a neo-fascist party, "The October 7 Front", whose logofeatures the flame of the MSI/FN and the lion of Iran. This party works with theFlemish extreme right (Vlaams Belang) and they have a very racist Iranian MP.Right-wing French senators with Bruno Retailleau organized a meeting with theroyalists. In the past, the French right had excellent relations with the Shah'sregime, and the Iranians owned 20% of the uranium enrichment plant in La Hague(Eurodif). From the outside, they give the impression that they are important. But recentlytheir brutality and their sexism in the demonstrations made them lose a lot ofsupport.And with the surprise rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, official sinceMarch 2023, the latter risks letting them go - it has already stopped fundingtheir television channels.Following the next number...Interview byOlive Oyl and Eugene the Jeephttp://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article3823_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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