Exchanging Puppets: Why the International Left Should Not Support the So-Called Iranian Reformist Leaders

While I have no doubt that those leftists who support the so
called reform movement in Iran have good intentions, I believe that they have
been misinformed, misguided, and are not aware of the whole truth
about what has been really going on in Iran.

The
dark fact is that those who lead the so-called Iran reform movement outside of the
country, with huge financial support from Rafsanjani's mafia, are mostly people
who have been part of the fundamentalist Islamic regime for years, including
Mr. Ganji and Sazgara. Their goal was, and remains, limited to removing the
Khamenei/Ahmdainejad band and installing the Rafsanjani mafia/reformist band in
their stead. This sham reform has everything to do with power and nothing
to do with the people's fight for freedom. Rafsanjani and his front man in the
recent [s]election, Mousavi, have been willing participants in the regime's
system of control, massacre and economic corruption for the past 30 years.

This,
incidentally, was the strategy of the hardliners when they came to power in
1979. The Iranian people supported the revolution because they believed
that the new regime would deliver basic social, political and economic rights
and freedoms and independence from foreign influence. However, under
Ayatollah Khomeini they did not even receive the minimum of what they had asked
-- in fact, they lost whatever basic rights they already had.

This
deception triggered the 1981 uprising, only three years after the revolution,
in which thousands of freedom loving students, leftists, political
activists and ordinary Iranians took to the streets, declared the revolution
stolen and chanted "Down with Khomeini".

The
Revolutionary Guards and Islamic Regime Militia responded in ways that are now
all-too-familiar. There was a massacre: many protesters were killed and many
more put in jail where they were tortured in the most brutal possible
ways. Seven years later, in 1998, as many of these political prisoners
neared their release dates, thousands of these daughters and sons of Iran, were
executed on the direct orders of Ayatollah Khomeini and tossed aside into group
or unknown graves.

Today's
"Reformists,"Mr. Ganji, and Hajarian, were at the top of the secret police in Iran. They
worked hard to maintain the new Islamic dictatorship that gave them so much
power, and their hard work, massacring and torturing their own people,
succeeded in securing for them the power they wanted. After the regime killed
most of the opposition inside and outside the country, they needed a new
illusion to maintain their legitimacy: an opposition. After crushing the
real opposition, which was committed to the fight for human rights, the regime
created a sham opposition from within the regime.

Mohamad
Khatami epitomized the reformers' duplicity. He came to power espousing freedom
of speech, civil rights and dialogue between cultures, but after he became
president there was a crackdown on the students uprising in 1999. Again, many
were killed, many disappeared and many were jailed for years and tortured even
though many of them were the same young student who voted for Khatami and his
promises for change in a first place. During his presidency many artists, authors
and intellectuals disappeared and were found "mysteriously" murdered.
Khatami never tried to stop the violence and never showed sympathy to his
supporters. Instead, he openly avowed that his responsibility was to respect
the wishes of the supreme Islamic leader, Ayotollah Khamenehi, and to protect
the security of the Islamic regime!

In
fact, real change never came under the eight years of reformist Khatami's rule,
because real change was never the actual goal. Khatami was essentially
installed by the Islamic Regime to absorb and delay the demands for real change
and in that he was successful.

The
power struggle following the recent presidential [s]election also has the same
goal; to prevent and control a real grass-roots democratic movement by not
letting it develop and by dissipating its energy in the illusion of reform. The
current reformist movement is a conspiracy in service of continued oppression;
a tool of the Islamist regime designed to protect itself from a hungry and
oppressed Iranian people, who might otherwise be able to develop a real reform
movement that would replace the current corrupt regime.

Over
the last few years, the reformists' agenda was supported by western governments
and media, who deliberately or through ignorance, misrepresented the reformists
as supporters of an uprising toward real democracy and real change. However,
Rafsanjani/Mousavi and their so called Reformist movement have no credibility
as democrats and defenders of the Iranian people. The fact is that both Western
governments and the Iranian regime do not want real change, because it would
jeopardize their cozy economic arrangements that serve their common interests
at the expense of the Iranian people.

In
1954, Americans supported a coup to prevent real democracy in Iran from
taking root. What is different now? A puppet, Islamic regime that guarantees
access to Iranian resources is what Western governments wanted. It is what they
continue to want. Therefore, no Western government has ever supported a true
democratic uprising in Iran.
They simply closed their eyes to human rights concerns, purchased the oil, sold
the weapons and enjoyed the ride. Western leftists and intellectuals, partly,
have been equally blind and complicit in human rights violations in Iran. They
supported Khomeini's regime simplistically, because they had the illusion it
was anti-Imperialist!

Despite
all propaganda, most Iranian people who are fed up with the dictatorship of the
Islamic Regime know that the so-called reform movement is part of the regime.
As a result, even though Mousavi is urging people not to use anti-Islamic
Regime slogans and trying to limit people's demands within the framework of the
"Islamic Republic", he has largely been ignored by the citizens who shout
him down with slogans such as "Down with the Islamic
Republic!" or "Independence, Liberty, Iranian Democracy!" during
recent protests in Tehran. Finally, the people do not even want corrupt
reformists in power and are only using the current situation as an opportunity
to express what they really want when they shout: "Supporting Mousavi
is an excuse -- the whole regime is our target!"

Based on these facts, I argue that Western Leftists should not
be mesmerised by the corrupt reformers' seductive propaganda in western countries,
and need to do more research on the backgrounds, and also recent agenda, of Mr.
Mousavi and his followers before supporting them. Yes, I also believe
that people do change, but the reformers have changed only their tactics.
They continue to support a profoundly repressive Islamic regime while paying
lip service to human rights. For instance, one of the top so-called
reformist theorists, Ganji calls dictator Ayatollah Khomeini, "his Imam" (Leader)
in his manifesto. Mousavi himself has also claimed to be a Basiji and
Khomeini's true follower many times!

I
urge you to look clearly at the Iranian situation so that you will see that the
reformers who claim to care about democracy and human rights are using these
sentiments, and the frustration of the people, merely as pawns in an internal
power struggle. Look carefully at their dark and bloody history before
throwing your influential support behind them.

I
would hope that leftists of all people would have a healthy skepticism about
any sham reform movement inside Islamic Republic of Iran. I hope they would
support the people's Revolution against the whole corrupt Islamic regime, not
their killer's sham reform whose plans are limited to saving the murderous
regime. Please support our people's fight for a free, independent and secular Iran which
certainly won't be possible while the fascist anti-human Islamic regime stays
in power.

Long
live freedom for Iran.