Iran: Sealed trains and class traitors

Yassamine Mather examines the excuses used by ‘leftwing’ supporters of the Iran Tribunal and finds them wanting. In particular she finds their comparison the Lenin and the Bolsheviks agreeing to board a German sealed train for Petrograd in 1917 to be risible. Lenin got on that train to Finland station in order to help lead a working class revolution, not to further German war aims. Full text at link.

Debates about the Iran Tribunal - convened to put the Islamic regime in the dock for its massacre of 5,000-10,000 political prisoners in 1988 - continues to occupy a prominent place in the publications and websites of the Iranian left, both in exile and to a lesser extent inside Iran itself.

In a sense it is true that, given the current situation in Iran - not least the disastrous consequences of what the US calls “comprehensive sanctions” - this is a small, irrelevant issue. After all, this week alone another 400 workers lost their jobs in Iran’s main car manufacturer, Iran Khodro, as a direct consequence of sanctions: Malaysia, under pressure from the US, pulled out of a contract. It is also true that sanctions are not the same as cluster bombs, but their effect on the Iranian working class can be devastating nevertheless.

The first round of the tribunal, which took place last month in London, attracted very little publicity and was indeed an insignificant event. So why is Hands Off the People of Iran devoting so much attention to it? We exposed the fact that it was organised and paid for by the CIA-sponsored National Endowment for Democracy as another way of building up the momentum for a military attack on Iran. Yet some conspiracy theorists are saying that Hopi chose to do so because we are “supporters of the Islamic regime” - or alternatively we are part of a sectarian plot to discredit sections of the Iranian left. Well, to deal with the second accusation first, the leftwing cheerleaders of this tribunal have made a pretty good job of discrediting themselves. ...