On the 2013 elections in Iran

The so-called Iranian presidential election farce is over. Hassan Rowhani, a long-time military and security figure of the regime, has come out of the polls. Khamanei called the elections “a political epic”; Rafsanjani called it “infallible democracy”; the BBC celebrated it as the “victory of rationalism over idealism”; the pro-regime “opposition” found it “hopeful” and saw it as the “narrowing of the gap between the regime and the people”. But if there was anything serious in this farce, it was above all another indication of the hatred of the people towards the Islamic Republic and their struggle against it.

The regime’s absurd claim that the election was a “political epic” should be understood as a last attempt towards “engineering the elections”. Regardless of the real number of those who voted, it is clear that the millions who did not take part in this farce, and wherever they could voiced their protest, and those who despite the regime’s clampdown turned it into an opportunity to raise their demands, and those who used their vote to deepen the rifts inside the regime, all showed the will of the whole people to get rid of the Islamic Republic, along with its factions.

The 2013 elections betrayed more than ever the fakeness of elections under the Islamic Republic. The whole world saw how these elections are just a show in which only the very few most obedient lackeys of the system pass through the filter of its Council of Guardians. Not only political parties and organisations of the opposition, atheists and those who don’t believe in their religion and their superstitions are not counted at all, not only women, simply because they are women, are excluded from running, but arch murderers and founders of the Islamic Republic, such as Rafsanjani, are also disqualified.

The 2013 elections highlighted not only the depth of the hatred of the people towards the Islamic regime, and the disgust felt towards it around the world, but it also revealed more clearly than before the depth of the internal conflicts and splits within the Islamic Republic. Given these factors, there is no doubt that the Islamic regime, faced with the contradictions and the impasse of foreign policy and the economy, has emerged from these elections weaker than before. After this farce, the contradictions within the regime will come to the surface and become more visible under the pressure of the people’s protest. The fundamental issues of Iranian society, from poverty, starvation and deprivation to repression, imprisonment and executions, will dissipate the propaganda of the regime and intensify the confrontation between the people and the regime.

The immediate and basic demand of the people in Iran is the overthrow of the Islamic regime, along with all its laws, traditions and institutions. Any manoeuvre by the regime will find itself confronted by the movement of the people that is all the stronger. The period before us is the period of the deepening and growing of the struggle of the people; a period in which the working class, the deprived people and the youth will come forward on a greater scale, and who in the fight for their demands have no choice but to enter a vast political struggle against the entirety of the Islamic regime.

The Worker-communist Party of Iran calls on workers, women, youth, and all the people to unite around the demands for freedom and equality, and around their revolutionary party, the Worker-communist Party, for revolution against the Islamic Republic and the inhumane capitalist system.

Worker-communist Party of Iran
16 June 2013