To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
September 21, 2022
by Eric Gordon, Seattle Workers' Voice
Much of the world now knows the story of Mahsa (Jîna) Amini, a 22-year old Kurdish woman who was on vacation in Tehran with her family when she was arrested, taken into custody and beaten to death because her hijab did not conform to the oppressive standards of the Iranian “morality police”. In the month since this atrocity, inspiring and heroic protests continue to grow and spread to numerous cities, with women tearing off their hijabs, and even burning them. Videos show men protecting these protests against morality thugs trying to break them up. There have been expanding calls for “Death to the Dictator” and overthrow of the religious regime. And some oil refinery workers have joined the protests, shutting down oil production critical to the regime! (1) Regime police have been firing tear gas and live ammunition at the crowds, with over 220 people, including at least 28 children, killed by police, with the numbers rising every day. And protesters have been fighting back fiercely, perhaps killing 24 members of security police (2). Not only has this struggle been a fight against oppressive religious law, it has also exposed that Iran is a major oppressor of its internal national minorities, with regime forces coming down hardest on Kurds and Balochs (Amini's family is Kurdish).
But as democratic-minded people everywhere support this heroic fight as it unfolds, certain groups on the left are betraying these women and their supporters, even while claiming to support them. They do this out of their non-class anti-imperialist orientation. Non-class anti-imperialism takes different forms, but for one example, let's take a look at Code Pink (3). I'm focusing on them here not because they are particularly worse in their line than some other groups, but as a clear example of this non-class anti-imperialism. In general, their “opposition” to imperialism seeks to steer US imperialism into accommodation with the Iranian reactionaries, and sees no real role for the masses to fight for their own interests independent of these two powers.
While the most advanced of the Iranian protesters are calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government, Code Pink is silent on the question in their statements on the current protests. But in a 2017 book on Iran, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, asks “But is violent revolution an option?”, and she answers: “Even if the regime could be overthrown, what would follow? Another failed state like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria? The track record for regime change in the region is dismal.” (4) If this is your thinking, what's left? Only negotiations between the states, and trying to tweak conditions to be more or less advantageous for those negotiations.
The masses' struggle against the Iranian regime is inconvenient for Code Pink when it goes anywhere beyond pressuring the existing regime for more liberal laws. This is why their main focus regarding Iran is to oppose the US sanctions, and petitioning Biden to rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal, or JCPOA. In other words, they take a kind of paternalistic attitude toward the Iranian masses, who regularly protest and call for an end to the regime.
Code Pink's call for an end to sanctions and a return to the JCPOA predates the current protests, going back to 2018, when Trump left the treaty and imposed a new sanctions regime, after the JCPOA agreement resulted in the lifting of most US sanctions, sanctions which had been in place in one form or another since the Islamic takeover. And Code Pink continues to make this call in response to the Amini protests. In fact, after reading Code Pink's writings on Iran, one would come away with the impression that the only, or the main, problem the women of Iran face is the US sanctions, and the US failure to rejoin the JCPOA. For example, on their main page on Amini, Code Pink calls to “Support Iranian Women by Ending Sanctions” (5), which contains a very short statement, plus a petition to Biden to rejoin the JCPOA.
Certainly, the Trump-era sanctions hit the masses hard, so they're not completely off in this call, but their blanket approach fails to make important distinctions: the Trump era sanctions were broad, hitting the Iranian masses especially hard (6). Now, new US sanctions imposed by Biden in response to the brutal crackdown on the current protests, are targeted against specific Iranian officials, including the head of the “morality police” (7). And the EU is planning targeted sanctions against the Iranian leadership too (8). While it is hard for us to judge from here what the effect of these new sanctions will be, there may be some protesters who feel they are beneficial.
Of course, neither the Trump era sanctions, nor the Biden ones, were imposed with the intention of helping the Iranian masses, despite Biden's pretty words. Even when the current round of sanctions benefits the masses, we don't have to cheer the US or pretend it's become a champion of the people. No, we can forthrightly say that sanctions, whatever form they take, are a tool of US imperialism to press the Iranian regime to acquiesce to the will of the US ruling class, and also acknowledge that sanctions putting pressure on those most responsible for the murders and mass arrests of protesters also happen to benefit the Iranian masses fighting for their rights. But Code Pink likes their relationship with Iran, they like their regime-proctored trips, they like their interviews with Iranian officials (9), so it's convenient for them to gloss over real the differences between the the two sanctions policies.
Code Pink also narrowly focuses on the “suffering from a lack of basic human necessities: food and medicine” (10) as driving the current protests, and while they acknowledge the democratic demands of the protests, they only offer “hope” for a “restoration” of these rights (A “restoration” back to when during the Islamic regime? When did women have basic democratic rights? Or the rest of the masses of Iranians?). But for the question of basic necessities, again they have a simple answer: end the sanctions.
Iranian protesters frequently make economic demands. But sanctions are not the only cause for shortages of food and other essentials. Sanctions have certainly caused problems for the ordinary people of Iran accessing the basics of life. But so have corruption and inflation – overall corruption in Iran is extremely high, and inflation is estimated around 52%, with some sources estimating inflation for basic necessities much higher (11). But there is scant mention by Code Pink of corruption or inflation in Iran at all. In 2019 they wrote: “The protests in Iran are occurring within the broader context of protests taking place right now throughout the Middle East, including in Lebanon and Iraq, in response to government corruption and mismanagement resulting in price hikes on fuel, food, and other necessary commodities.” (12).
In reality, sanctions, corruption, and inflation in Iran are all intertwined – for example, in response to the Trump era sanctions the regime created a program of subsidies for basic necessities, but much of that subsidy money ended up lining the pockets of the Iranian elites. And the government's solution to this in March this year was to simply drop the subsidies (13), at a time when extreme inflation is crushing Iranian workers and poor. Code Pink has nothing to say about all these factors, and when the people of Iran rise up to protest these issues, they don't call for solidarity with them, but rather they reduce it all to a need for an end to sanctions.
Code Pink claims that “Our [Us, who? The US government? The US
masses?] worst enemy is not the Iranian government but our own. Iran’s
worst enemy ... is not the Iranian government but ours.” (14). But the
heroic women fighting for their rights, being arrested and murdered for
protesting don't see it that way. Amini's family even says they have
been receiving death threats from regime officials (15).
Code Pink claims to “support Iranian women”, but it is a very backward
“support”, to ignore and even directly deny that their main oppressor,
the main oppressor of the Iranian masses, is the Iranian theocratic
regime. Their “support” clearly doesn't extend to support for “Death to
the Dictator”, a call many protesters are making. No, like the US
government, Code Pink doesn't want to upset the status quo, they want
to keep the Islamic regime in power as the negotiating partner with the
US.
One doesn't have to love or endorse any aspect of US policy to accept
that these women are fighting their main enemy at home. Code Pink can't
stomach the messiness of revolution by the masses, and they write off
anything in the current protests but calls for certain small reforms of
the Iranian religious regime. Code Pink cannot consider that it is only
a movement like this one – whether it is this uprising or the next one,
as Iranians continue to rise up – which will force the lifting of the
oppressive measures Iranian women face, and which will bring down the
fundamentalist oppressors of working women and all workers in Iran one
day.
The fight of Iranian women and their supporters goes way beyond which set of theocratic leaders are in charge in Iran, or whether the US rejoins the JCPOA and ends sanctions. The most advanced of them want an end to theocratic rule, the overthrow of the ayatollahs altogether. Maybe the moderate leaders in Iran which Code Pink are so fond of wouldn't be quite so aggressive in arresting and beating to death women who violate hijab laws. But they are far far from being the answer to the cry for full and equal democratic rights for women. This is what Iranian women are fighting for, and this is what we need to support. Iranian women are sick of the whole regime and their murdering morality police.
(1) “Oil workers join protests in Iran over Mahsa Amini’s death”, October 10, 1022, CBS News.
(2) Re protesters killed: Danya Issawi, “Over 200 Protesters Have Been Killed in Iran”, October 14, 2022, MSN .
And re police killed: Nigar Bayrami, “Iran Says 24 Members of Security Forces Killed in Widespread Protests", October 12, 2022, Caspian News.
(4) Medea Benjamin, “Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, Chapter 10 “The Way Forward”, Section “Where Will Change Come From?”, p 157.
(5) https://www.codepink.org/mahsa.
(6) “‘Maximum Pressure’ US Economic Sanctions Harm Iranians’ Right to Health”, October 29, 2019, Human Rights Watch.
(7) Jennifer Hansler, “Biden administration imposes new sanctions on those involved in evading Iran sanctions”, September 29, 2022, CNN.
(8) Jorge Valero and Alberto Nardelli, “EU Agrees to Add New Sanctions on Iran Over Human Rights Issues”, October 12, 2022, Bloomberg.
(9) E.g. https://www.codepink.org/overflowing.
(10) https://www.codepink.org/mahsa_amini.
(11) Figures given differ, but the range is from 40% to over 50%, e.g. https://take-profit.org/en/statistics/inflation-rate/iran/ and https://castle-finance.com/what-is-the-inflation-rate-in-iran-in-2022/.
(12) https://www.codepink.org/codepink_statement_on_the_protests_occurring_in_iran.
(13) “Iran Eliminates Subsidy For Food And Medicine Amid High Inflation”, Iran International .
(14) https://www.codepink.org/being_history_with_iran.
(15) Anna Foster, “Iran protests: Mahsa Amini’s family receiving death threats, cousin says”, October 10, 2022. <>
Back to main
page,
how to order CV,
write us!