Short Statement on Protests in Iran

This piece was written as a short response to an Iranian friend, who has sent an appeal addressed to the Indian Government, not to recognise the new government under Ahmedinejad, in Iran with request to circulate it further.
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Comrade,

Our viewpoint on Iran, is essentially the integral part of our general perspective i.e. the perspective of the international working class. We are hardly concerned with electoral victories or defeats of this or that bourgeois leader in this or that country. In relation to Iran, however, to our interest are the vistas that have opened and are opening due to the political divide among the ruling elite developing into a whole crisis. In this process, appeals to bourgeois governments and nation-states to recognise or not a particular leader or the government under him, is totally out of place. Instead of appealing to the bourgeois states, we appeal to the working class of Iran to lead its people against the present regime itself, towards a proletarian revolution, which can only ensure the fulfilment of democratic aspirations of people in Iran. We must take active part in the protest movement to divert the same not only against Ahmedinejad, but against the elite rulers, as a whole, Mousavi included. We must expose, simultaneously the bogus program and anti-people character of Mousavi also.

Notwithstanding the fact as to who is at their leadership at present,the huge mass protests are the political lever, having full potential to be used by the revolutionary forces, after seizing it from the hands of reformists. Instead of becoming party to the dispute between the bourgeois leaders, we must call upon the working class to develop this protest into a revolt for a social revolution, directed against the forces of the old society. It is immaterial for us and for the working people as well in Iran, whether the elections were actually rigged or not, important is that the elections have led to a crisis of an unprecedented magnitude after the 1979 overturn. The working class in Iran missed the opportunity of seizing the power for itself in 1979 and it fell to the hands of clerics, but this time we must draw lessons from history and advance the proletariat towards its own program and victory. Let the ruling classes engage in a dog-fight for power. The working class must advance to seize the power for itself.

'The new wave’