Here is the text of the speech by Lili Babayi, revolutionary communist, supporter of the Communist Party of Iran MLM, and follower of the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, at the webinar cohosted by IEC and Global Conversations of the Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco on August 25, 2024. To hear the speech with her slides and the other speakers, visit the Event.

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I want to start this by reminding that right now, 2 women political prisoners Sharifeh Mohammadi and Pakhshan Azizi are facing death sentence in Iran – the charge is Bagh (an Islamic judicial term which means: war against god). In the last year alone, this regime has executed more than 800 people – more than the US police kills blacks on streets.

Today here, I mainly want to give a factual sense of how IRI rules over nearly 90 million of my people— and your people in Iran. and I do not want to go into the world historic conditions that gave rise to forces of Islamic Fundamentalism in 20th century and in Iran led to formation of IRI. Bob Avakian has analyzed this and has put forward the crucially important concept of 2 outmoded which has proven to be correct many times and continues to do so. I encourage you to study his historical materialist analysis and concept of 2 outmoded very carefully but let me explain some of the evidence that proves this theory and proves there is nothing good or progressive about IRI.

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During Woman Life Freedom uprising more than 500 people were killed, many deliberately were blinded by bullets (made in Germany and other European countries), and few thousands were arrested. Young rebellious women as young as Nika Shahkarami who was 16 years old were targeted, raped and killed in streets. The suppression was more deadly in areas like Kurdistan and Baluchistan. In Zahedan, only on one day that is called now the bloody Friday, 90 people were killed brutally. The high school girls who had taken off their scarfs (including in the religious city of Qom which is considered Vatican or seat of Shia clergy) were gas bombed by fatwa (Fatwa is religious permission issued by religious authorities).

All of this brutality happened because people, especially women were rising up against one of the most important ideological pillars of IR: Mandatory hijab and thus against the whole regime. Mandatory hijab was the first step in imposing the standards of Islamic Sharia on women, in imposing the standards of traditional Islamic ethics and the Islamic patriarchal system on the relationship between men and women and all over society. And has been the symbol of Islamic rule over society and inferior position of women. Hijab was never a matter of a scarf or a personal choice, but a matter of oppressive relation concentrated in it. Whoever disobeyed this would face Gashte Ershad or morality police (Like Jina Amini, many other girls experienced this including me), We got arrested, sent to some centers to promise to not repeat this crime! Or if we repeat it, we would face fines or prison.

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The systematic oppression against women is woven to the laws of Islamic republic which is based on Sharia law. According to Article 1105 of the Civil Procedure Law in Iran, a woman is obliged to "submit" and obey her husband both in daily affairs and in sexual matters. Against this submission, the woman is considered entitled to receive living expenses. According to this principle, a woman should give in to any kind of sexual desire of a man in any condition and in any situation. Coercion in sexual relations or rape in Iran has a legal and religious basis. Buying and selling of girls over 9 years old by a "legal guardian" who is a father or paternal ancestor is legal and is not considered forced marriage because the father or paternal ancestor agrees to it. So basically, it means Paternal parents can give a girl over 9 years of age to any man for rape. While Same-sex relationship and marriage is illegal and gay people can even face death sentence for practicing homosexuality. Women who have sex outside marriage can be stoned to death based on Sharia. Women’s subjugation is symbolised by mandatory Islamic Hijab and the right of male members of family to kill their daughter, wife, sister if they committed sex outside religious boundaries—honour killing which had vanished in Iran, made a comeback during the rule of IRI. Women cannot divorce, cannot get abortion, cannot get custody of their children over 7 years old, cannot travel abroad or even work if their husbands do not permit. So yes, Handmaid’s Tale is based on reality under Islamic republic in Iran. And this has been the story since day one of IRI for over 45 years now.

Some facts from the day after and early days

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The day after this regime seized power, Ayatollah Khomeini sent his butcher-priest called Ayatollah Khalkhali with unlimited authorization on an execution trip around the country. He arbitrarily arrested and executed immediately intellectuals, teachers, students who were known to be communist. Shocking pictures of mass executions are on the internet.

Two weeks after coming to power Khomeini called for mandatory Islamic Hijab which was faced with a nationwide protest by women. A year later, tens of thousands of teachers were purged from the educational system for being un-Islamic. Music instruments and art performance of women were banned. The IRI forged its main military wing, the Revolutionary Guard of the Islamic Revolution (Sepah-e-Pasdaran-e-Enghelab Eslami) in war against the Kurdish and Turkman and Arab people between 1979 -1981.

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In 1980 Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the Islamization of the universities. They killed many students during implementation of this religious order. According to regime’s statistics, in a matter of two years the number of the university teachers halved—from 16877 to 7835. This counter-revolution was called: “cultural revolution”. Here I want you to take a moment to think how IR has been misusing very important words and filling them with completely different meanings that made people confused. such as calling a regime change from Shah reactionary regime to Mullahs’ reactionary regime with help of western countries as a revolution. Calling an anti-enlightenment and backward religious ideology, as anti-imperialism! And calling oppression and subordination of women in patriarchal family and society as dignity for women! So, we really have to take back these words and redefine them. I will come back to some of these later.

In 1981 all workers, students, teachers, nurses’ “councils” were banned and many arrested and later executed. Every kind of party was outlawed and thousands of left activists as well as activists of an Islamic organization called Mujahedin were arrested in 1982 and many were executed in matter of days. Many of the executed who were from Left and Communist organizations were mass buried in Khavaran cemetery without any names on their graves. This is a cemetery in Tehran vicinity which belongs to Baha’i faith. And since the communists are considered “unclean” they were buried in Bahai cemetery who are equally considered out of Islamic faith and therefore “unclean”.

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The war with Iraq started in 1980 and lasted 8 years and the guiding slogan was to capture the “holly land” in Iraq such as Najaf and Karbala. They got hundreds of thousands of young men massacred by deliberately sending them on the mine  fields in order to clear the way for advance of the  revolutionary guard. After IRI accepted seize fire with Iraq in 1988, there were nearly ten thousand political prisoners in Iran – in summer of 1988 more than half were given death sentence in 2-minute re-trials and were executed in matter of 2 weeks. Their bodies were carried out of Evin and other prisons to cemeteries by meat vans. All of the above are documented by human rights groups inside the country as well as Amnesty International and other agencies.

I can go on for another several hours to enumerate just facts of crimes of this regime. And yet I still have not covered IRI’s crimes against Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghani and Syrian people. Just to mention 3 facts: in Beirut the IRI forged the Hezbollah by opening the way for massacre of the Palestinian refugees in Beirut to operations of Israeli butcher Sharon. Our party have investigated this through Palestinian comrades who were in the field helping and supporting the Palestinian refugees. IRI worked with the US army in Iraq in 2004 to brutally put down the Fallujah uprising and other crimes of Ghods force of IRI under Ghasem Suleimani have leaked out through Wikileaks and covered by the Intercept. Go search for yourself. In Syria Ghasem Suleimani is called butcher Suleimani, butcher of the kids.

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Yet, this regime is often considered “anti-Imperialist” by some assorted Left forces (not just in Iran but also Germany, UK, USA, etc.) With this kind of anti-imperialist who really needs imperialists!

And recently you can see growth of that kind of a trend among pro-Palestinian people in the universities. Generally, this is due to lack of understanding of the real nature of the IRI as well as what really “imperialism” is. But those who theorize IRI’s so called anti-imperialism and glorify a filthy alliance called “axis of resistance” are into instrumentalist reactionary position. They are exact mirror image of those who defend Gaza genocide by all kinds of equally reactionary bullshit about Jews having a Holocaust pass to carry out their own holocaust. Among these people, especially those who outrageously call themselves “communist” and “revolutionary” are not to be trusted for anything positive for Palestinian people or for any other people at all. They are opportunists who are siding with not only a criminal fascist theocracy such as IRI but also with Russian imperialists and Chinese imperialists who are trying to replace and take over Middle East from the US and  Western imperialist powers. You should check out crimes of Russian Wagner mercenary army in Africa and economic plunder of that continent by China.  The specific “axis of resistance” people that we know of are political wing of Russian imperialist war mercenaries. They are mentored by the pro-Putin Communist Party of Russia who still wields the old red banner with hammer and sickle of USSR time. We have these kinds of “communists” in Iran—the Tudeh party and Fedayeen Majority who united with the IRI to suppress revolutionary communists – including in Amol insurrection as well as aiding the interrogators of the IRI in prison against the revolutionary communists. This story is amply documented and evidenced.

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This phony thesis of “anti-imperialism” and “axis of resistance to imperialism” propaganda is supposed to match up the Western imperialists’ ideological war” against Russian and Chinese imperialists “democracy” versus “autocracy” etc. Those who have rallied around each of these poles are just foot soldiers and duped for one or another imperialist power. And each side has their own dark ages religious fundamentalists who raise the bar of reactionary-ness.

Don’t be chumps for the reactionaries and imperialists. We the people of the Middle East need to forge our own movement for revolution with real revolutionary communist leadership based on New Communism and leadership of Bob Avakian.