The below is a press release of the Worker-communist Party of Iran dated January 26, 2012 on the threats of war and economic sanctions.
It says:
The real way to fight poverty, misery, threat of war, and the whole present hazardous situation is the expansion of the struggle against the Islamic regime in all arenas, as well as overthrowing the regime by the people’s revolution and overtaking the running of society by the workers and people themselvs. With all its might, the Worker-communist Party of Iran fights for realizing this. WPI will firmly stand against all attempts to support the Islamic regime on the pretext of economic sanctions and war, or to legitimize the Western governments’ scenarios of a change from above.
Read it in full here.
The conflict escalation between Western governments and the Islamic regime of Iran is unprecedented. With the decline of the power of political Islam, whose backbone is the Islamic regime, in the wake of the revolution of 2009 in Iran as well as the recent revolutions in the Middle East, the West is now attempting to impose to the Islamic regime a new balance of power. Sanctions against the Central Bank of Iran and oil purchase from the country, cutting off its access to the global market and the official economy along with diplomatic pressures, war of words, and war threats are meant to bring the Islamic regime to its knees and take it to the negotiation table from a weak position. The Islamic regime is resisting this policy of the West and considers that giving up its anti-western slogans and policies is tantamount to losing its regional position and is a crushing blow to its political-ideological coherence and to its ability to repress in its confrontation with the people in Iran.
Parallel to this conflict, the Iranian bourgeois opposition is more or less divided in two parts: one mainly supporting the western governments and their policies and the other partly, whether explicitly or implicitly, aligned with the Islamic regime.
The recent sanctions have intensified economic impasses of the Islamic regime to the degree of collapse of the whole economic system. It is obvious that the vast masses of workers and people are the main victims of this situation who are contending with skyrocketing inflation, severe decrease of purchasing power, dramatic fall of standard of living, non payment of their low wages, massive unemployment and social consequences of this situation such as drug abuse and prostitution. The conflict between Western governments and the Islamic regime and the sanctions that have endangered the social life in Iran are a reactionary act of inhumanity.
This situation has at the same time intensified the dead ends of and the conflicts within the Islamic regime in such a way that a fear of people’s rise and a repetition of the recent revolutions in the region against the regime is daily expressed by its head. On the other hand, the people of Iran, who drove the Islamic regime to the verge of downfall by their revolution in 2009 and who follow with enthusiasm the revolutions of the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria as well as the movement of Occupy, are not going to be just passive onlookers and victims of this scene.
The real way to fight poverty, misery, threat of war, and the whole present hazardous situation is the expansion of the struggle against the Islamic regime in all arenas, as well as overthrowing the regime by the people’s revolution and overtaking the running of society by the workers and people themselvs. With all its might, the Worker-communist Party of Iran fights for realizing this. WPI will firmly stand against all attempts to support the Islamic regime on the pretext of economic sanctions and war, or to legitimize the Western governments’ scenarios of a change from above.
The Party calls on workers, teachers, nurses, and students, all freedom-loving youth, women, and men to enter the scene against poverty and misery, against the Islamic regime, and for freedom, equality, and socialism.
I am sorry Maryam. I have to say in one point I disagree with you.
I actually support the sanctions. I am sorry that they hurt ordinary people. But they alsos staunche regime’s resources and hamper it’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. If the regime succeeds human suffering will be much worse.
Unfortunately, I must agree with you. It is obvious that the West will never support the left, hence the sanctions are the best socialists can hope for. At the very least, they could prevent an Islamist regime to acquire nuclear power, which woud truly be a mess and a threat to civilisation as a whole.
Always interesting to see who will be suffering and who is ‘sorry’ for that suffering whilst rationalising and justifying it, usually never the same two groups of people. The sanctions against Iraq lasted from 1990 to 2003, with up to 1.5 million people estimated to have died as a consequence. A lot of people to feel ‘sorry’ for, a lot of suffering that we just brushed off, Are you planning to do it again? For how long? Have you heard that food in Iran costs already more than in the Uk but that obviously the people earn a fraction of UK wage earners? And did you know that people in Iran want to get rid of the regime there and that the majority there don’t want nuclear weapons. How long shall the sanctions be in power? 100000 dead Iranians enough for you? Why should the average Iranian have to suffer because of a faillure of the international community to firstly support the Iranian people in their struggle/work with the Iranian regime & secondly effectively isolate the regime by for example shutting down their embassies & kicking them out of the UN. There are other things to be done that help bring down the regime, help to solve the nuclear issue & bring Iran forward.
and just feeling sorry when people suffer unnecessarily is just despicable