(The following is the first of a three-part series on the situation in Iran and developments in the Iranian revolution.
[This first article argues that there is a rightward shift on the part of the Iranian leadership and maintains that the events in Kurdistan over the last several months are confirmation of this turn.
(The second article will deal with the recent events on the universities and the continuing economic and social crises that are pushing forward the struggles of Iran's workers, peasants and oppressed nationalities.
(The third article will discuss the contradictions of the Iranian national bourgeoisie and take up how revolutionary Marxists should approach this leadership.]
The election of the Iranian majlis (parliament) and its May 28 opening session marks the first transitional phase in the process of establishing institutions in the Islamic Republic. This phase had begun even before the victorious insurrection of February 9-11, 1979 that overthrew the Pahlavi monarchy.
But this "institutionalization" in the Islamic Republic remains quite weak. This was shown by the struggle over freeing the hostages, which counterposed various factions of the regime, followed by the Islamic Republican Party's (IRP) overwhelming victory in the elections and the recurring crisis between the IRP and Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr over Bani- Sadr nominating his own candidate for prime minister without consulting the IRP. Each day we see more pronounced crises within this bourgeois-nationalist leadership, a leadership that has not yet succeeded in sufficiently stabilizing its system of domination as it must. It still has a long way to go in rebuilding its state apparatus-particularly its repressive institutions-and especially in creating the political and social conditions for such a stabilization.
It is obvious that the main obstacle in its path remains the very high degree of mobilization and combativity of the Iranian masses, both in the cities and in the countryside. Despite the gap that continues to exist between their combativity and their forms of political expression, the Iranian masses have not yet suffered any decisive defeats.
There is deepening anti-imperialist sentiment among the Iranian masses, developing peasant mobilizations, a new rise of the struggles of the nationalities, and the accumulation by the Iranian working class of a whole series of class-struggle and workers' control experiences. It is in this context that the regimes' last rightward turn takes place, a rightward turn that involves, in different forms, all the various components of the regime. The new military offensive against Kurdistan and the attacks against the universities are the two strongest indications of this turn.
This turn is seen in every aspect of social and political life, and has important repercussions, for example, in the confrontation with imperialism.
The unfolding of this new right turn and the necessary tactics that the revolutionary-Marxist vanguard in Iran and elsewhere must adopt as a result, in no way implies that we are predicting that this policy will succeed. It is not at all predetermined that this turn will result in a prolonged stabilization, or especially that there will be a qualitative reversal of the relationship of forces between the basic classes facing one another.
On the contrary, its probable failure can only strengthen the centrifugal forces and accentuate the class polarization. It could
NECOTIATION
SHAH
Anti-imperialist sentiment is deepening among Iranian masses.
state, maintaining private ownership of the means of production, and reactivating the capitalist economy-although the proposed solutions have varied according to the sectors and factions in the leadership and how the situation has evolved.
Thus from the beginning, by opposing the concrete mass movements, this leadership was also acting as a leadership opposed to the deepening of the revolution. "The prestige of that leadership," stated the April 1979 resolution of the Fourth International, "is the key card which the ruling class in Iran can play in order to restore a stable state apparatus and a new bourgeois political leadership in order to crush the revolutionary process...." (See IP/1, May 7, 1979, pp. 452-461.)
Rebuilding the Rightist State
Even before the February 9-11 final insurrection, the Shiite hierarchy, with Khomeini at its head, was working to preserve what it could of the monarchy's old state apparatus.'
Khomeini's nomination of the Islamic Revolutionary Council upon his return to Iran, and then his designation of a "Provisional Revolutionary Government" headed by Mehdi Bazargan, was intended to avoid any "power vacuum" during the transition between the old and new regimes at the time when the days of the Bakhtiar government-the shah's last prime ministerwere numbered.
The decisive test, confirming the class nature of this leadership, took place during the heat of the semispontaneous insurrection that could have definitively crushed the entire Pahlavi state. What we saw were negotiations that were initiated before and during the insurrection with sectors of the imperial general staff; the obstinate refusal by the Shiite leadership and Khomeini himself to call for the insurrection during the February 9-11 events, even though it had already begun; a desire to limit as much as possible the scope of combat and especially to limit the massive distribution of arms to the population; the order to turn in all arms at the end of the battles; and the refusal to dismantle what 'was left of the imperial army, despite demands from a section of the soldier's movement and the homafars (the skilled air force technicians).
Prior to the February 1980 elections for president of the Islamic Republic and this spring's legislative elections, the other main events marking the reestablishment of a rightist state were the March 30, 1979, referendum on creating an "Islamic Republic"; the August 3 fraudulent elections for a handpicked and powerless "Assembly of Experts"; and the drafting of the constitution and its ratification by the December 2-3, 1979, referendum.
The general orientation of reestablishing a rightist state is completely clear, whatever the vicissitudes in its application.
Thus the famous Velayat-e-Faguih? clause in the text of the constitutionestablishing theocratic control over the state and its laws by the Imam or a council of religious figures (ulamas)-was obviously nothing but a religious cover for an attempt to establish a strong state and stabilize a Bonapartist-type regime.
Khomeini's New Year Speech
The beginning of the Khomeini leadership's new turn can be easily datedstarting with Khomeini's speech for the Iranian New Year (Now Rouz), which fell on March 21 by our calendar. For the first time since his return to Iran, Imam Khomeini's "Message to the
Nation" denounced "international communism" as an equally dangerous threat to the country as "American imperialism."3
In his speech, not one word was said about the conflict with Washington regarding the extradition of the shah and the question of the hostages, while long passages were devoted to attacks on the Soviet Union.
Three days earlier, Khomeini had issued an amnesty decree for all collaborators of the former regime, except those who had been directly responsible for bloody crimes or corruption. Hundreds of royalists and thousands of former SAVAK agents were released from prison. If rehabilitated, they could even be reintegrated into the administration of the republic. In contrast, anyone who opposed this measure, or tried to take justice into their own hands, could henceforth be subject to the Islamic courts.
In a March 20 speech, Khomeini declared that the parliamentary election results—in which the IRP won a majority of seats—were valid. Not one word was said about the violations of democratic rights that had characterized these elections, as
Originating from this interpretation of tradition, it is projected that the class of theologians must exercise the highest level of political power. This is expressed in the Iranian constitution by the fact that the laws, and more generally all acts of executive, legislative, and judicial power, are subordinated in the final analysis to the Imam or to a council of Islamic jurists. (See, Yann Richard, Le Chisme en Iran, published by Jean Maisonneuve, Pp. 28-29.)
as the presidential electionswell restrictions on the right to radio and television time, and attacks against oppo sition organizations, in which several hundred Mujahedeen and Fedayeen members were injured during confrontations with thugs from the Islamic far-right. In addition, sporadic clashes were continuing in Kurdistan during this period.
Khomeini's March 21, 1980 "Message to the Nation" contained thirteen points that went even further when it identified the major lines governmental policy must follow in the coming year. Among the main points were:
1. Henceforth, strikes would be prohibited and those who went on strike could be brought before the Islamic courts as "counterrevolutionaries."4
2. Land seizures and the distribution of personal property and estates that belonged to the taghoutis ("idol worshipers"—a reference to those who prospered under the former regime) could only be carried out on orders from the Islamic prosecutor general or qualified judges.
3. Higher education should be "Islamized" and "professors who are in contact with the East or the West" should be removed. Describing this measure, the Le Monde correspondent added that "since most of the supporters of the former regime have already been thrown out of the high schools and universities, it is the leftist teachers, whether Marxist or not, who could bear the brunt of this new witchhunt" (Le Monde, March 23-24, 1980).
Always in the name of the struggle against "imported ideologies from the West and the East," Khomeini would attack certain press organs that were accused of excessively criticizing the clergy.
The Imam then took up a charge that has been harped on for a long time by officials in the regime, accusing the "Islamic-progressive" Mujahedeen of "mix- [ing] Islamic ideas with Marxist ideas and hav[ing] created a concoction which is in no way in accordance with the progressive teachings of Islam."
Explaining that the 1980-1981 Persian year would be one of restoring "order" and "security," Khomeini called on the Muslim population to fight against armed groups. This is directed primarily against the Fedayeen, but also the Kurdish organizations.
The Imam instructed Iranian President Bani-Sadr to "vigorously punish" all those in government departments, the armed forces, the Revolutionary Guards, and the police and gendarmerie who engage in acts of indiscipline, insubordination, or negligence. Every disruption or act of disobe dience would be "firmly prosecuted" by the revolutionary courts which would implement "God's punishment."
All the foreign observers remarked that Khomeini's speech was directed less against the "great Satan-American imperialism" than against communism: "My dear friends," Khomeini stated, "you should know that the danger from the communist powers is not less than from America..:
Khomeini also stated: "We are fighting against international communism to the same degree that we are fighting against the Western world-the devourers led by America, Israel and Zionism."
And it was also in this speech that for the first time since the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, Khomeini vehemently denounced "the plunderers and occupiers of the aggressive East." He hoped that "the Muslim and noble people of Afghanistan will as soon as possible achieve true victory and independence and be released from the grip of these so-called supporters of the working classes."
Le Monde special correspondent Eric Rouleau, commented on Khomeini's New Year's speech and Bani-Sadr's statements: "It is undoubtedly premature to talk about a turn in Iran's domestic and foreign policy, especially since new sudden shifts cannot be excluded. Nevertheless, it can be pointed out that Imam Khomeini and especially President Bani-Sadr want to down-play the anti-American agitation that they judge to be unproductive and devote themselves to consolidating the Republic's new institutions, while keeping leftist forces from power."
The events that followed-beginning with Kurdistan and then the incidents at the universities-would show that indeed, a turn was taking place (a turn whose limits have already been mentioned previously). It is interesting to note that the viewpoint expressed by the major bourgeois newspaper in France has since then been adopted, with some slight differences, by most European foreign ministries. These diplomats, as we shall see, chose to adopt a policy of putting "pressure" on the Iranian regime regarding the problem of the hostages, pressure that did not jeopardize Bani-Sadr's efforts, rather than adopting a policy of complete destabilization like the Carter administration's policy. At the time of the Tabas raid, American officials openly explained that they felt the entire Iranian regime and government had become "unviable" and was headed for disaster.
The War in Kurdistan
For more than a month, a real civil war has been going on in the southern Kurdish towns of Sanandaj, Baneh, Sardasht, and pitting regular
Saqqez. This struggle is units of the peshmergas ("those who face death"-the Kurdish guerrillas) and militia units of the Kurdish National Resistance against battalions of the Iranian army, reinforced and controlled by Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) who have been mobilized to liquidate the Kurdish strongholds. The nature of the Khomeini leadership's orientation is clearly revealed here.
For the time being only the cities in southern Kurdistan are subjected to the 120-millimeter mortar barrages and are being fired upon by helicopter gunships and U.S.-made Phantom jets. But that limitation is simply based on tactical, political, and military considerations on the part of the Tehran government.
Perhaps at the beginning, Bani-Sadr and the Revolutionary Council undoubtedly made a political decision to attack those areas where the most radical organizations of the Kurdish resistance (such as the Komaleh) were particularly influential,* hoping to leave the door open for negotiations with the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) or at least counting on future divisions within the Kurdish resistance.
The battles that were suspended last October, following the defeat of the government's August military offensive, have now resumed. And for several weeks, all negotiations between Tehran officials and representatives of the Kurdish population have been suspended.
The autonomy proposal presented by the Kurds explicitly stated that Kurdistan would remain an integral part of the Islamic Republic. But this proposal was dismissed by Bani-Sadr and the Revolutionary Council. While negotiations were at an impasse, Kurdish representatives became nervous about the Iranian army and the Pasdaran's open military preparations, and in January these Kurdish leaders privately expressed to me their concern that battles would soon start up again. (See IP/1, March 24, 1980, p. 300.)
Bani-Sadr's bellicose statements right after his election confirmed these fears. In an interview with Middle East magazine, the president of the Islamic Republic's analysis of the contents of the Kurdish autonomy proposals showed how he was
/KDP General Secretary Abdul Rahman Qassemlou, the major political leader of Kurdistan. Despite big growth by Komaleh over the last several months as a result of its adoption of more radical positions, the KDP still has hegemony in Kurdistan, at least on the military and electoral level. In the last general elections, KDP candidates received 82.6% of the vote in Piranshahr-Sardasht; 57.7% in Saqqez-Baneh; 80% in Mahabad; and 96% in Naqadeh-Oshnaviyehrunning against the regime's candidates (Le Monde, April 22, 1980).
ready to adopt a firm stance:
"I have just received a letter from the KDP proposing an autonomy plan. There are several good points and I agree that this region should administer its own cultural and economic affairs," the Iranian president said.e But Bani-Sadr just as quickly explained where the real problem lay-the question of maintaining "Persian" police and gendarme units in Kurdistan and especially the "non-Islamic" (meaning not linked to the Khomeinj leadership) character of the political forces that have hegemony in Kurdistan.
"They also want to keep control over the police and the gendarmerie," Bani-Sadr continued in the interview. "Where else in the world does that kind of autonomy exist?"
"If they want autonomy within the framework of Iran then they must be part of the ideological framework of the Islamic Republic. They must be Muslims. How could we grant autonomy within the framework of an Islamic society to those, like them, who do not consider themselves tied to Islamic law....
We can be certain that Bani-Sadr's concern has less to do with worrying about whether the Kurds would accept and practice the five rules of faith for every good Muslim, than with whether they would accept the political yoke of the institutions and leaders of the Islamic Republic.
In a menacing tone, Bani-Sadr concluded the interview with this naked threat: "If they say 'Give us what we want or else we will fight,' then let's fight! Do you think that after having carried out our revolution we are afraid of such threats? In the name of the nation, I say that we will never accept the separation of a single centimeter of Iranian soil."
Several days after Khomeini's March 21 New Year's speech, the first military operations by the Iranian repressive forces began in Kurdistan. The most serious operation was in the Kurdish village of Qalatan where several inhabitants were massacred during a "police operation" by the Iranian gendarmes, supported by the Pasdaran.
On April 15 the military offensive against all south Kurdish cities began in earnest. One-half of the weakened units of the Iranian army, backed up by the best of the Pasdaran troops, were involved. But, they were unable to put an end to the fierce resistance they faced from the Kurdish peshmergas, who, while only possessing light arms, enjoyed the massive support of the Kurdish population.
These military difficulties encountered in southern Kurdistan undoubtedly explain why the Tehran government has still not launched a general offensive against all of Kurdistan.
The Economic Blockade of Kurdistan
But the economic blockade imposed against Kurdistan and the latest statements by the Iranian leaders demonstrate that their intention is indeed to try to militarily and politically defeat the entire Kurdish resistance.
During the last few weeks, units of the Iranian army and the Pasdaran, backed up by "djacht" Kurdish elements (supporters of the Tehran regime), have been intercepting all food and even medical supplies headed to Kurdistan. In cities where fighting is taking place, the health and food situation is extremely disturbing. On some occasions, the Pasdaran even refused to agree to cease-fires of several hours duration so that the injured and civilian victims could be evacuated. This created the threat of devastating epidemics. More than 100,000 Kurdish refugees have fled from their cities and taken refuge in makeshift shelters in the mountains.
But the Tehran leaders, faced with their military setbacks and especially the beginnings of disintegration of the Iranian army involved in Kurdistan, have adopted an even shriller tone.
On May 16, Bani-Sadr called on Iranian soldiers "to pursue the battle with all their strength until the final victory and cleansing of the region." Explaining that the government "never intended to spill Kurdish blood" he nevertheless reaffirmed that what was taking place in Kurdistan was "Islam's struggle against blasphemy."
Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, the former "Friday Imam" of Tehran and one of Khomeini's close associates, declared, "that there should be no more negotiations about Kurdistan, but rather the whole region should be cleansed by the army and the Revolutionary Guards."
So in the space of a few weeks, the Kurdish question again became one of the corner-stones on which the regime-in all its different components-chose to test its ability to rule all of Iran in its own way. And it acted in this way because of two central elements involved in the Kurdish question.
1. First, because of the deepening and radicalization of social movements in Kurdistan itself, which are expressed by agrarian mobilizations, the arming of the population, and the development of independent organization.
2. in addition, there are decisive stakes involved in Kurdistan in relation to the
Khomeini/Bani-Sadr leadership's plans to rebuild the bourgeois state. This involves the political and military weakness of the Iranian army and Pasdaran, as well as the maintenance of "territorial integrity" in the face of demands by Iran's oppressed nationalities.
As to the first point, today there is an obvious difference from what existed during the first military offensive in Kurdistan in August 1979. In August, there were only localized peasant movements, and localized land occupations and distribu-
Gerry Foley/IP-l
Mahabad, one of main Kurdish cities.
tions. This was primarily because in the name of "national unity" the KDP-the important political formationmost opposed a radical and immediate agrarian reform. What they meant by "national unity" included unity between the big landowners and Kurdish tribal chiefs on the one hand and the poor peasants on the other, in face of the Tehran regime. The peasant shoras (committees) that had developed were rapidly undermined once the first military operations began.
Today, the movement to occupy and redistribute the land is much more widespread and even encompasses areas controlled by the KDP.
As a result of the August-October war and the Kurdish population's widespread defiance, if not hatred, towards the central government in Tehran, the Kurdish political organizations (the KDP, Komaleh, the Fedayeen, and Sheikh Ezzedin Hosseini's political bureau) today enjoy much greater and more active support from the population.
This is seen on two levels:
First, in the increased arming of the population. There are 5,000 to 7,000 peshmergas-organized into regular, permanent units (each peshmerga receives between 150 and 350 tomans [$14 to $30] per month depending on each family situation). Alongside the peshmergas a real militia has been formed, composed of some 50,000 fighters of the Kurdish National Resistance.
Second, it is seen in the development of independent organization. This is especially the case in the southern Kurdish cities where the bulk of the Kurdish "proletariat" is concentrated. These Kurds do not work in Kurdistan, where there is no industry, but they comprise the immigrant laborers who are concentrated in the big industrial concentrations-in Tehran and in the oil regions.
It is in these southern Kurdish cities, besieged by the army, where the combination of the far left's hegemony and the needs arising out of the military resistance led to the development of real neighborhood committees-the baqehs-similar to the Nicaraguan civil defense committees during the civil war there. These committees are charged with the tasks of food distribution, carrying out limited health measures, as well as basic neighborhood administration and self-defense.
For the Tehran government there are two things at stake. First, it must prevent the Kurdish example from spreading to other non-Persian nationalities in Iran, who, along with the Kurds, comprise more than 60 percent of the country's population.
The specific characteristics of the Kurdish nationalist movement-its agrarian movement, its armed population, its specific political structure, and its capacity to militarily resist a long-term offensive place it in the vanguard of the movements mobilizing various oppressed nationalities in Iran.
This explains why the conflict with the Kurdish movement developed so soon after the Bazargan government was established following the fall of the monarchy.
Even before the August military offensive, confrontations between the Kurds and the Pasdaran and army took place as early as March 1979, only five weeks after the Bazargan government began functioning. These confrontations in Kurdistan were followed by others in Turkmenistan and then in Khuzestan, where the Pasdaran and army repressed the movement of the Turkomen and Arab nationalities. The Crisis in the Iranian Army
The second thing at stake for the regime in these confrontations is, of course, the army, and in a more general sense the regime's entire repressive apparatus-the Pasdaran, gendarmerie, and the police. There are 150,000 Pasdaran alone, with heavy military equipment. But their mil itary prowess has not lived up to the hopes placed in them by the regime.
From the day of his election as president, Bani-Sadr explained that putting the army back into order was his first priority. He quickly got Khomeini to appoint him as head of the Iranian armed forces.
In the previously cited interview in Middle East, Bani-Sadr stated: *The armed forces of the Islamic Republic must be different than the imperial armed forces, both in form and essence. A fundamental reorganization of these forces is therefore necessary and is the first priority; this will involve a partial purge, but a purge that must be carried out in a fair way so it won't be detrimental.
"We know that numerous members of the armed forces are raising just demands, but they must be expressed in an orderly fashion. The republic's armed forces must be based on order and an iron discipline; the question of supplies of military materiel is a secondary problem. The priority is reorganization. We must be ready to defend our country and I have asked the armed forces to develop and improve order, discipline, and efficiency within its ranks."
The problem of the army is a real headache for the rulers of the Islamic Republic.
How can they control, and even more importantly, fully utilize this body whenaccording to well-informed sources-80 to 90 percent of the officer corps can barely hide its hostility to the new regime and looks toward the "great Satan," the United States, where many of them received their training.
lated to "pre-wodecade on history ty the
"pro-Americanism" is directly re
This "
Iranian army's dependence on Washing-
First of all, there was a material dependence. The Iranian army heavily depended on America for its material supplies and its system of sophisticated arms. The only exceptions were its Soviet transport vehicles, its British Chieftain armored tanks, and the light ammunition manufactured under license in Iran.
In 1976 and 1977, Iran accounted for more than half the total American arms sales abroad; and after 1974 the shah alone acquired more than 35 percent of the total American military industry's exports. 1°
In order to maintain and use these arms systems they needed the assistance of large numbers of American military "advisers"-either members of regular American military assistance missions or, more often, under "civilian" contract.
The number of U.S. military advisers rose from 16,000 in 1972 to 40,000 in 1978. And their number was scheduled to reach 60,000 in 1980!
In 1978 there was nearly one American adviser or technician for every ten Iranian noncommissioned and junior officers, a situation analogous to the network of "U.S. advisers" in the South Vietnamese army before the massive intervention in 1965!
Today, as a result of the U.S. blockade against spare parts and the departure of U.S. military advisers more than eighteen months ago, the Iranian military potential has been very substantially weakened.
Aside from armored tanks, and to a certain degree air force equipment, other branches of the armed services, beginning with the navy, suffer from a lot of unreliable equipment.
In addition, Iranian officials have a real problem "reconverting" Iran's military apparatus, reorienting it towards defense tasks and maintaining order, although a segment of the army units whose mission was counterinsurgency broke up after the insurrection. This was the case with the Javidan (the Imperial Guards) and most of the Ranger units. Only the paratroop units and the gendarmerie were less affected."
But the principal obstacle facing the Khomeini/Bani-Sadr team is political. "Their heart is no longer in it," especially in the officer corps. In the course of several months, these cherished and coddled children of the Pahlavi regime lived through the experience of seeing how repression was unable to contain the mass movement. Then, even before the shah's departure, the fall of General Azhari's military government-appointed November 6, 1978- signaled the end of the regime.
Organized in an extremely centralized and vertical fashion around the shah, the Iranian army saw itself "abandoned" by the Iranian monarch at the decisive moment. And the emissaries sent by Washington pleaded with the army to seek a compromise with Bazargan's representatives. 12
When you also add the trauma of the February 9-11, 1979, insurrection, followed by the trial and execution of dozens of particularly bloody generals and officers, you can understand the "malaise" of the Iranian officers.
While the present government is trying to use all forms of nationalist rhetoric about the need to defend the integrity of its territory against foreign or domestic ene mies to rally what remains of the army, neither side has any real confidence in the other.
We saw an example of this around the operation in Tabas. The first reaction of the Iranian population was to wonder why the army and its radar detection network were not able to detect an 800-kilometer incursion into Iranian territory by the airplanes and helicopters of the "Blue Light Force."
The questions were so widespread that Ayatollah Khalkhali-who is quite reknowned for his rapid methods of dispensing "justice"-publicly demanded a new purge of the general staff members involved. And a commission of inquiry, presided over by former Minister of the Interior Ayatollah Rafsanjani, was officially set up.
Moreover, the successive crises within the leadership and the weaknesses shown by the Khomeini/Bani-Sadr team in trying to bring a semblance of lasting calm to the country feeds the crisis within the Iranian army.
Desertions and Refusals of Orders
This was seen last year in connection with the confrontations in Khuzestan and Kurdistan and is developing again on a new scale in this second Kurdish war. Many officers are refusing to carry out orders or are only going through the motions. They argue that there is a worrisome precedent, and they are asking the authorities in Tehran what guarantees they have that tomorrow the government will still be intact and that they won't run the risk of being tried and executed for having obeyed orders, as happened to their counterparts who were executed after the fall of the monarchy.
This second civil war in Kurdistan is beginning to have some devastating effects. "Even if it was based on the most elementary logic," wrote Le Monde's spe cial correspondent from Tehran,
"Mr.
Bani-Sadr's decision to call on the military to reestablish order in a province that has already shown its determination, was risky in that he was asking a disillusioned and ravaged army to reenter the Iranian scene by participating in what can only be called a civil war."13 *We knohe now had e gangled and adet,
And, the Le Monde correspondent adds, and lost badly."
This judgment may be a bit too strong and with ico many of those who are still in the armed services remain in touch with those in exile and with the shah's associates who are ferociously hostile to and, above all, premature. But it is true that the growing number of reports of cases of desertion and executions of officers for refusing to obey orders tends to highlight this opinion.
Kurds have witnessed the spectacle of helicopter pilots firing their rockets and ammunition at deserted mountain tops before returning to their base, claiming "mission accomplished." Ninety-two offic ers and soldiers who refused to fight were put before firing squads in Ahwaz."
Several dozen soldiers of all ranks, including officers and even a colonel, went over to the peshmergas with their arms and equipment during the siege of Sanandaj. In that same city, thirty-seven other soldiers were arrested for collaborating with the enemy. Among them were a major and two captains who were accused of having destroyed two helicopters and killing several of their comrades.!5
Several officers in Isfahan were arrested and sentenced to prison for collaborating "with counterrevolutionary forces. 16 The disintegration of the Iranian army is not yet at a very advanced stage, but these events led the regime to take some severe and above all public measures. First of all, the Pasdaran were given more and more responsibility for controlling units of the Iranian army (which led to new clashes and conflicts) and the high command was strengthened. And from now on Khomeini himself would follow the military more closely.
On May 11 the Supreme Council for National Defense was formed' and Khomeini appointed the new "Friday Imam" of Tehran, Hojate'eslam Sayed Ali Khameini (linked to the students occupying the embassy) and Defense Minister Mostafa Shamran (who was for pursuing the battles in Kurdistan last October) as his personal advisers on this council. They were to give him weekly reports on the work of the council and especially "on the internal situation in the various military garrisons in the country. 18
Several days later, on May 19, the pro-
Khomeini-and they do not want to get killed for him. Others in the armed services are patriots who believe that the army's role is to defend the borders. Among the junior officers and noncommissioned officers, in contrast, a fairly strong 'democratic' current is developing-not strong enough to attempt a coup against Khomeini, but sufficiently widespread to sabotage the war against the Kurds. And at the rank-and-file level, discipline is incredibly slack." (Interview obtained by C. Kutschera, in "24 heures" on May 1, 1980)
16. Libération, May 19, 1980
17. According to the constitution, Khomeini is the supreme commander of the armed forces and has the power to declare war.
secutor general of the revolution issued a public call to the military authorities to deliver to him "any counterrevolutionary agent" guilty of agitation, plots, spying, or inciting rebellions.
President Bani-Sadr echoed these concerns, asking the commanders-in-chief of the three branches of the armed forces to take "all necessary measures in order to maintain strict discipline and prevent any possibility of disobedience or negligence."
Bani-Sadr and the chief of staff, General Hadi Shadmehr, organized a series of speeches calling for strengthening discipline. This was directed particularly at the civilian forces that might attempt to weaken the troops' morale.
At the same time, a revolutionary military tribunal was set up to deal with cases of refusals to obey orders.
But the military impasse in Kurdistan and the crisis inside the Iranian army renewed the crisis and opposition within the ruling circles of the Islamic Republic. The crisis inside the army was highlighted by a new defection by an elite paratroop brigade. It returned from the small village of Nowsud, west of Sanandaj near the Iraqi border, without engaging in combat with the Kurds.
Back in mid-May, it appeared that Bani- Sadr and his circle of collaborators had accepted a six-point peace plan offered by the KDP. Darius Faruhar, the former labor minister who had conducted some of the previous negotiations with the Kurds, had even been dispatched to Kurdistan to open talks with Sheikh Ezzedin Hosseini, representing the Kurdish resistance.
But the intransigent opposition of the Islamic Republican Party, and of the majority of the Shiite hierarchy, who are for
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• Enclosed is $35 for a one-year war to the death, scuttled this attempt to regulate the conflict. Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, leader of the IRP and also secretary of the Islamic Revolutionary Council, explained that it wasn't a ques. tion of peace negotiations with the Kurds but rather of cleansing the entire western region of Iran. The opponents of negotiations argue that the previous truces and cease-fires were used by the Kurds to consolidate their political work and improve their military potential.
The conflict between those favoring and those opposing negotiations reached a point that the May 22 London Financial Times reprinted the remarks made by the Pasdaran in Sanandaj, which had been quoted in the IRP's daily newspaper Islamic Republic: "If a new special mission is sent to hold discussions with the antipopular groups" [i.e. the Kurdish organizations], the Pasdaran said, "we will open fire on them with machine guns...:
Right after this, unanimity was reached among the ruling circles to use what ever means necessary to rapidly and definisirene, put an end to the "Kurdish gan put an end to the "Kurdish gan-
On May 23 a full and very large-scale military offensive was launched from Sanandaj, which had been retaken several days earlier by the Tehran forces. Several military columns equipped with heavy and sophisticated armaments headed towards the region "in order to win the total surrender of that rebellious province."
The night before this operation was launched, President Bani-Sadr met with Imam Khomeini to inform him of the situation in Kurdistan and the plans in preparation for the offensive.
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Notes
1. From late September 1978 to the February 1979 insurrection, neither Khomeini nor the leaders of the Shiite hierarchy ever called for a general strike, although in many places they gave support-above all financially-to people on strike. On the contrary, during his exile at Neauphle-Le-Chateau, near Paris, while continuing to call for the overthrow of the monarchy, Khomeini warned against "communist maneuvers."
2. The Velayet-e-Faguih-literally government of religious guides-is the title of Khomeini's book on "Islamic government," which describes a political system where power belongs exclusively to God and where law is the order decreed by God.
3. Le Monde, March 23-24, 1980.
4. "The people of each city, as soon as they learn of a strike at a factory, should go to that factory, should go to that place and see what they want. You should identify the counterrevolutionaries and make them known to the people"-from Section 5 of Khomeini's March 21, 1980, speech. The entire text of that speech was printed in English in the June 1980 Merip Reports.-IP/1
5. The main Kurdish resistance forces are: the Iranian Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), a nationalist party whose leadership has ties with the international Communist movement; the Komaleh, which was founded by former Maoistpopulist activists, but since then has broken all ties with China; the Fedayeen; and Sheikh Ezzedin Hosseini's network of committees. Hosseini, the main Kurdish religious figure, is, along with
6. Middle East, April 1980. Retranslated from French.
7. Ibid.
8. The five rules are: professing faith (I hold there is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet); prayer (nawaz); the pilgrimage to Mecca (haji); the yearly fast (ramadan); and the Koranic tithe (zakat).
9. The "Friday Imam" (Imam Jomeh) is the mullah who leads the large Friday prayer meeting and gives the sermon.
10. Ahmad Faroughy and Jean Loup Reveriez, L'Iran contre le chah, published by Jean Claude Simoën, pp. 103 and passim.
11. The imperial army of 435,000 troops had a distinctly dual character. Alongside the three conventional branches of the armed forces (the navy, air force, and army) there were several elite corps (the Rangers, paratroops, and Javidan) who specialized in counterinsurgency tasks. These latter forces totalled some 70,000 men, all volunteers.
12. General Robert Huyser, commander-in-chief of the joint NATO forces, went to Tehran in January 1979 to convince the Iranian generals not to make a useless last stand. The shah's memoirs and the revelations of the students occupying the U.S. embassy show that Huyser made contact with Bazargan and served as an intermediary between the religious opposition and certain Iranian generals in order to prepare the transition in power.
13. Le Monde, May 21, 1980. This judgment is also shared by the Kurdish leadership: "The army doesn't fight because it is totally demoral. ized and it spurns this regime. Although many superior officers have been killed or were retired,
14. Le Monde, May 21, 1980.
15. Le Monde, May 21, 1980.
18. Tehran Times, May 12, 1980.