Two years on, nothing has changed… Religious deception, consecration of the “free-market economy”, and brutal repression continues!

(Translated excerpts from the editorial of Nameh Mardom, issue no. 1188, published Monday 14 August 2023)

 Two years after Raisi’s appointment, nothing has changed…  Religious deception, consecration of the “free-market economy”, and brutal repression continues!

Despite the various propaganda and statements issued by [president] Ebrahim Raisi, along with the publication of all kinds of manipulated economic statistics – especially the repeated lies on the “downward trend” of prices, the rate of inflation, and the dollar exchange rate – the fact remains that the real inflation rate of food prices has not dipped any lower than 70 percent.  The skyrocketing price of bread throughout the country is undoubtedly yet another back-breaking problem in the lives of the working people and the needy, whose livelihoods [and basic living standards] are deteriorating day by day.

However, what has Raisi’s go-to response been to the current growing socio-economic disaster and the mounting wave of criticism it is provoking – even from within the [Islamist] regime?  Hiding behind the “necessity of [compulsory] Hijab”!  This, at a time when the whole theocratic regime faces one of its gravest challenges owing to the heroic resistance of our country’s women and girls against the reactionary impositions of “Political Islam”!

The reality remains that over the last few months a growing swathe of the country’s population have irreversibly crossed certain red lines [core/fundamental tenets] of the reactionary Islamist regime and its “Islamic Republic”.  All strata of the country’s working people continue to loudly demand decent living and working conditions, the likes of which the ruling regime has neither the capability nor desire to bring about.  However, the era in which the regime could rule through sheer force of bullying, or through its deception and manipulation of ordinary Iranians’ religious beliefs, has long expired.

Another key deception on the part of the ruling regime is within the realm of the country’s “elections”.  However, here too, the Islamic Republic has repeatedly witnessed its rejection by most of Iran’s population through the increasingly low participation of people in these sham exercises.  Over the past few years, particularly serious resistance to this area of deception has come from the country’s workers.  Indeed, the evidence from developments over just the last two weeks indicate that these sham elections [and their inevitable fallout] pose an increasingly serious threat to the “legitimacy” of the regime…

The dictator himself, [“supreme leader”] Ali Khamenei, does not even want to allow the existing authorised but useless parties [the legal entities operating within the framework of the Islamic Republic] – all of which are disposed towards the ultimate preservation of the regime – more than one week to prepare themselves for and take part in sham elections once they are called.

The theocratic dictatorship, as the famous saying goes, is afraid of its own shadow.  For this regime, as in the case of the previous monarchical dictatorship, everything must be carefully managed so that the show runs according to the script, in order to ensure that the result desired by the “leader” is the one that ultimately prevails.

On a different front, and in response to Khamenei’s “letters patent” or decree to move the regime out of its current dangerous situation, the regime’s leadership and senior officialdom are desperately trying to find an antidote from outside the country that might serve to ward off the threats arising from the crises posed by the continuing economic deadlock.

This tactical decision by the “supreme leader”, and the consequent move by the theocratic regime’s diplomatic apparatus towards western countries, is rooted in the material interests of Iran’s big parasitic bourgeoisie class and its intertwinement with the vital issue of “safeguarding the regime” along with the preservation of its unjust political economy.  This objective reality [the symbiotic relationship between the Islamic Republic and the parasitic bourgeoisie class in Iran] cannot be masked or obfuscated through certain subjective analyses, ultra-revolutionary slogans, or the juxtaposing of this reactionary and unpopular regime as anti-imperialist.

Thus, we have been witnessing important developments in the relations between the United States and the Islamic Republic in recent days – serving to underline Khamenei’s instructions that a solution to the regime’s growing crises be found by reaching a new accord with, and depending on, US imperialism [in stark contrast to the blustery anti-US/Western rhetoric outwardly employed by the regime].  Our Party has consistently and repeatedly emphasised that the Islamic Republic regime has, over the past few decades, and with Khamenei’s endorsement, been preparing the country and its economy for more extensive ties with the world capital, through its implementing of neoliberal capitalist designs in Iran’s economy [including through economic shock therapy] with the aim of harmonising with the “Washington Consensus” and globalisation of capitalism.  Therefore, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the US government, despite their seeming differences over key regional issues, are in fact eager to reach consensus, work together, and cooperate in order to connect Iran’s economy to the global capitalist economy in accordance with the formulas as defined in the framework of global imperialist institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

To safeguard the ruling capitalist theocratic dictatorship, Raisi’s government and the entire regime have set the country’s economy on the path to the harshest type of capitalism, based on the inhumane notions asserted by right-wing economic theorists such as Friedrich von Hayek in the consecration of the “free-market (read unregulated) economy”.  In the past few months, the Islamist regime’s leadership, including Khamenei at the top, right down to government officials, analysts, and thinktanks, have been regularly resorting to spurious nonsense in a calculated and coordinated effort to present a “free-market economy” as being a normal rational model for Iran, and justified through the principles of “Political Islam”, to the public.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Iran’s working class and other toilers bear the brunt of the disastrous and painful consequences of these policies in their daily lives, all supposedly in the name of religion.  And should they refuse to accept this state of affairs and protest, the reactionary Islamist regime is allowed to fiercely repress them on the orders of God’s representative on earth [“supreme leader”, Ali Khamenei]!

The Tudeh Party of Iran once more emphasises that the current conditions of the country, the continuing deadlock in the economic crisis, along with the regime’s inhumane and unpopular response, constitute the Achilles’ heel of the ruling dictatorship as it continues to stare down an unperturbed national protest movement seeking freedom and justice.  Therefore, amid the simultaneous campaign for freedom, social justice, and independence, it is by raising the level of the struggle that the balance of power can be changed against the absolutist and repressive rule of the “supreme leader” – forcing his autocratic and unpopular regime into major irreversible retreats and, ultimately, its removal from power.

___________________________________________________________________

For the statements of the Tudeh Party of Iran and its analysis of major developments in Iran Please visit:    www.tudehpartyiran.org