Stabilization under mullans
1984Evan Siegel 1984-04Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 5 →
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February 10 marked the anniversary of the overthrow of the Shah by the Iranian masses. The February uprising was the culmination of the most sweeping mass mobilizations seen in the history of the region. The echoes of the bloody confrontations which punctuated these mobilizations have not yet been silenced by the imperialist powers or by the counterrevolutionary governments which came to power on the backs of the people.
From the time it was swept into power, Khomeini's Islamic Republic has been plagued by the contradiction between the need to stabilize its rule politically through a vigorous assertion of nationalist values, and the need to stablize its rule economically by reestablishing ties with the imperialist world.
One obstacle to this process of stabilization, however, has been the hostility of the Iranian masses to imperialism and to the old regime. Indeed, successive governments since 1979 have needed to legitimize themselves by publicly humiliating the imperialist countries. This is what led sectors of the ruling clerical caste to exploit the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in November 1979.
Different strategies for containing the mass upsurge were pursued within the provisional government selected by Khomeini, and later within the government of Abolhassen Bani Sadr. The "moderates" (liberals in Iranian political terms) favored a more straightforward capitalist normalization. The clerical fundamentalist current, on the other hand, was more attentive to riding the crest of nationalism unleashed by the revolution.
The division between these two wings was never pure. The "moderates" needed to borrow from the fundamentalist arsenal of political demagogy. For example, the "moderate" Bazargan proclaimed inflammatory statements about how the left, the Kurds, or the unemployed were U.S. or Israeli agents, while Bani Sadr incited street riots against the student left. For their part, the parasitic clergy needed qualified technocrats and administrators of the liberal wing in order to firm up its links with the West.
In June 1981 the Islamic Republican