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Early after the fall of the Shah - a captured Savak agent. Now the secret police has been Labour Committee on A supporter sinnartar Iran. of the SAVAK (the Shah's secret police) has been re-built as SAVAMA and operates on a much worse level.

The Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) have now been given such powers that that any two of them can call themselves a court and carry out an on the spot execution after a 'trial'.

People are arrested at four o'clock, at five they are in Evin prison, and at six they are executed.

People can escape execution if they confess and recant, but they also have to execute someone, like their best friend if he/she is arrested with them, to prove their sincerity in recanting.

Strike

In the factories strikes have been banned, and workers who have gone on strike, for demanding a change of manager for example, have been shot.

The regime's supporters have set up cells in the factories and the factory committees, which identify the leading militants, who are then executed. This is much repression than during the time of the Shah.

In the lactories the main agents of the regime are the Islamic Societies, which are subsidised by the government and are used to spy on leftists and militants in general.

But it has not proved to be enough to cope with the level of opposition. So Khomeini has announced that people have a duty to inform on their relatives, even children, and neighbours if they are anti-regime. Parents have turned in their own sons and daughters who are then shot.

Women in particular are now a lot worse off than even under the Shah. The few reforms passed by the Shah, to benefit the system, not women, have all been scrapped. Women have been reduced to an instrument for cleaning and sexual reproduction. A man can have four wives, but that is no concern of any of the women.

Any female over nine years of age can be married off for a day, three days, a week, a month or whatever, provided that the man pays the appropriate amount to the priest and to the girl's parents.

Under the 'Law of Retribution' the woman is placed completely under the control of her husband, with no rights whatsoever, unless she is very rich. If a woman commits adultery or prostitution she can be stoned to death.

If a man kills a woman, then the woman's family must pay half the man's blood money, which can be as much as two bars of gold, before he can be executed. But if a woman kills a man, then the man's family don't need to do this.

What is the attitude to the war against Iraq especially since the fighting spread to Iraqi territory?

There is a lot of dissatisfaction. People were asked to make sacrifices lo support this reactionary war - they were asked to accept lower living standards, workers had rebuilt to work longer, despite three million unemployed, for the same pay, and people who protested were executed.

Though a lot of people supported the war at first, more and more people are now wanting an end to the wat, especiaily since it spread to Iraq, so that the internal problems can be sorted out. Opposition within the army to the war is building up, and those who are sent to the front don't want to go, but they are shot if they resist.

Mosques

The war has been used as an excuse to increase repression. The mosques have now become centres for regulating people's activities. They carry out surveys of how many people are in each household etc., and then decide on the food rations to be allocated. But those opposed to the regime and to the war have their food rations cut and their electricity and water cut off completely. In this way the war has been used to control the people.

Given sucil a level cf repression, to what extent is oppositional work still possible?

In the period immediately after the Revolution we were free to organise meetings, print papers, distribute leaflets and so on. In the initial period of repression, when the regime had not yet become stabilisied, people selling papers or distributing leaflets faced the threat of being beaten up. But as the repression escalated we were all forced underground, though it was still possible to publish material illegally.

People would sell it on the streets for a couple of minutes and then disappear before the Pasdaran arrived.

After 20 June this became virtually impossible. The publishing houses were discovered and burnt down, and the editorial boards of the papers arrested and shot.

At the moment the only paper still published is KAR, the Fedaiis' paper, but it is smaller than before and distribution is extremely dangerous - if your house is raided and a Marxist book or any leftist newspapers are discovered then you are immediately arrested and taken away for execution.

Ai one time the main arena of political activity was the universities, but these were closed by Bani Sadr. He called their closure the start of a Cultural Revolution, but they were closed to stop the penetration of left wing ideas to the people: the universities were used by all the people, not just the students, and all the leftwing organisations had student sections.

The different organised different labour forces: the Industrial University organised the workers in the West of Tehran, Tehran University organised the slum-dwellers in the South of Tehran, and the National University was responsible for workers in the North East of Tehran. The same thing was happening outside of Tehran well. Left ideas were beins taken to the people from the universities and a progressive force was being built up within the labour force, which is why the government had to shut down the universities.

What are the main organisations in the opposition to the regime?

Opposition was organised around three organisations bit different. There you have Kumaleh, the Peykar, Peshmerga Ready to Diel, (although I don't know if they still operate), the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP)

and now the Mojahedin Peshmerga as well. Their support varies according to their ideology. The KDP receive support from the petty bourgeoisie and work with the Mojahedin in the NCR, whilst Kumaleh is Marxist-Leninist and has been fighting the regime for 2½ years.

The Mojahedin are basically from our point of view, a petty bourgeois organisation with a religious ideology. Their support comes from the middie petty bourgeoisie, and their demands for democratic rights are a reflection of this: they want a democratic revolution but at the same time they want to maintain dia capitalist system.

Break up

They think that a national bourgeoisle • can develop within Iran, but it is impossible to maintain a capitalist system anywhere in the world without it being dependent on world imperialism.

For us, the main contradiction - and the Mojahedin don't see this - is between capital and labour. You need to change the whole system, by breaking up the machinery of government, setting up committees of workers and peasants, breaking up the army and replacing it with a people's army, which is formed in embryo by arming the workers and peasants committees.

How does the Mojahedin's politics tie up with their support for the National Council of Resistance?

Historically the NCR developed from when one side of the contradiction in the government, the commercial bourgeoisie, ousted the other side, the industrial bourgeoisie. When Bani Sadr, the spokesperson for this section of the bourgeoisie was ousted, the Mojahedin were under the illusion that he was very popular but they failed to see that any support given to him was due to the support he received from Khomeini.

Rajavi (leader of the Mojahedin) and Bani Sadr fled from Iran and set up the NCR as a coalition between conference supporters of the middle petty bourgeoisie and the liberal bourgeoisie; their aim was to replace the present government, but not the present system. The Mojahedin claimed lots of support for the NCR in the army and the people, and talked of change within a matter of months. But the change never came - this shows that the support was not there. In fact, the NCR is better known and has more support outside of Iran than inside Iran. It has now reached the point that the people's own demands surpass those of the NCR.

What is the goal of the International Solidarity Front and how does it differ from Iran Solidarity, the other Iranian solidarity campaign?

Our basic objective is to show that the problems faced by Iranian and British workers are not different, but, because of imperialism, are all chained together. We need to get the labour force in Britain to appreciate the scale of the problems in Iran and to recognise that their own exploitation is related to the three or four fold exploitation carried out in the Third World.

The ISF has two roles to play: bringing information about the situation in Iran to workers outside of Iran and raising their political awareness; and achieving immediate help for the struggle in Iran, for example by getting sending of goods and arms to Iran stopped.

If we can get the support of dockers for blacking, then weapons like the Chieftain tanks can no longer be used against Iranian workers.

The ISF now exists in Italy, France, America, Germany, India, the Phillipines and Britain and campaigns for support for the struggle for democratic rights in Iran and the defence of Iranian students studying abroad who face repression and deportation.

Iran Solidarity, although on paper fighting for similar demands, is run by one organisation, whereas the ISF is a sort of commitinvolving only the Mojahedin indirectly implements the Mojahedin's attitude and has indirectly collected support for the NCR. And once that. support is gained then the life of that campaign is at an end.

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