Combating Disinformation on Iran: Five Mistakes to Avoid When Analysing Current Events in Iran
Source: http://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-26/ww26-07/ww26-07-04.htm
Archived: 2026-04-23 17:12
Combating Disinformation on Iran: Five Mistakes to Avoid When Analysing Current
Events in Iran
Volume 56 Number 7, March 7,
2026
ARCHIVE
HOME
JBCENTRE
SUBSCRIBE
Combating Disinformation
on Iran
Five
Mistakes to Avoid When Analysing Current Events in Iran
Massimiliano Ay, General Secretary, Communist Party
(Switzerland)
The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a theocratic regime where power is
exercised by the clergy as a religious class indistinguishable from political
authority and where religious norms coincide with State laws. The political
regime that emerged from the 1979 Revolution is rather theocentric in nature:
power is in fact mediated by legal and political institutions and is not
automatically exercised by the clergy as a unified body. On the contrary, there
are elected bodies, a Constitution and a republican state apparatus, as well as
a complex set of institutional checks and balances.
The most widespread first mistake in the West is therefore to believe
superficially that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a kind of medieval and
obscurantist absolutism: alongside undeniable backward-looking legacies
contrary to a liberal-democratic conception of the State, forms of modernity
are emerging that must be recognised in order to understand the persistence of
this 40-year experience. Suffice it to say that it was the Islamic Revolution
that universalised the right to education for Iranian women, which, at the time
of the Shah, was granted only to a few representatives of the wealthy classes:
today, 60 per cent of university students in Iran are women, and over 40 per
cent of companies are run by female entrepreneurs. Even on the civil rights for
transgender people, it was Ayatollah Khomeini who signed a law in the 1980s
that not only authorises gender transition but also places the costs entirely
on the State.
The second mistake is to underestimate the enormous responsibility that
Atlantic imperialism has (in history and still today) due to its systematic
interference in Iranian political dynamics. It was only with the 1979
Revolution, where religious leaders and communists initially worked together,
that the Iranian people regained political, economic and cultural sovereignty,
freeing themselves from Western capitalist diktats and the bloody tyranny of
Shah Reza Pahlavi.
Since then, the country has been constantly demonised, if not directly
attacked militarily or through terrorism, by the US, the EU and Israel.
However, if Iran is now ruled by a theocentric regime, which was consolidated
by the subsequent tragic repression of the communists in the 1980s, it is also
because Atlantic imperialism overthrew the secular and socialist government of
Mosaddegh, imposing an absolute monarchy that allowed the West to plunder its
resources and against which popular anger erupted in 1979. Even today, there is
no shortage of external attempts at destabilisation: from the declaration of
readiness for a US military attack with the aim of turning Iran into a new
Syria and the infiltration of Zionist Mossad into popular and youth movements.
The violent degeneration of recent street demonstrations, initially peaceful
and based almost exclusively on the difficult economic conditions and not on
civil rights or the political-institutional system, is there to prove it.
The third mistake is that made by the Western left, which has given up on
anti-imperialism as the central axis of its identity, thereby lending support
to the narrative of the right and to structural racism towards all peoples who
do not obey our liberal and Atlanticist value system. After Russophobia and
Sinophobia, as we stated during the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of
Switzerland, we are now moving on to Islamophobia, which, more typically
confined to right-wing circles, has been fomented not only by Zionists but
also, unwittingly, by that part of the left which, after supporting movements
hostile to the Iranian Islamic Revolution, has agreed to repeat as an "act
of faith" the condemnation of the actions of the Palestinian or Lebanese
resistance in response to Israeli crimes.'
From this perspective, communists distance themselves from the Swiss left,
which took to the streets with nostalgic monarchists waving the tricolour flag
bearing the image of the lion of the former "Imperial State of Iran"
ruled by the tyrannical Pahlavi dynasty. A correct class-based and
anti-imperialist approach, instead, grasps another decisive political fact,
namely that the Iranian reality operates in a new global context, constituting
today a bulwark of primary importance in hindering Atlanticism and Zionism.
Without it, the Palestinian resistance could be compromised, but even the new
Silk Road promoted by China would be weakened.
Among the Iranian diaspora there are numerous organisations that
historically looked to Marxism, but which today openly operate as fifth columns
of imperialism and Zionism, even though they still declare their ideal
adherence to socialism. It is important, as serious Marxists, not to make a
fourth mistake, namely, to analyse not the material reality of today but to be
under the illusion that everything has remained unchanged since 1953 (the coup
against Mosaddegh) or 1979 (Khomeini revolution) and thus limiting ourselves to
taking for granted the sometimes even rambling public statements of this or
that organisation of the left-wing diaspora, which is completely irrelevant in
the Iranian national reality. Entrusting, for example, the communists of
"Tudeh" or "Toufan" (who have less support in their
homeland than the monarchists) with a utopian messianic task of -- as we read
in some public statements of left-wing comrades -- "building an
alternative hegemony starting from the bottom, from the bazaar and the
universities, to prevent the fall of the mullahs from leading to a new colonial
subjugation" is not Marxism, but pure fantasy that does not help to
develop a credible movement for peace and against imperialism. The
"Tudeh" itself, moreover, admits to "the absence of a coherent
progressive national leadership".
In Iran today, the unrest is primarily economic, due to Western sanctions
that affect wages, fuel inflation and worsen the quality of life. However, it
seems rather unrealistic to believe that popular support for political and
religious institutions has waned, as Atlanticist war propaganda would have us
believe, and that the definitive disintegration of the "historic
clerical-conservative bloc" is underway and that "the regime no
longer has hegemony (moral and intellectual consensus) but only domination
(repressive apparatus)". Even more illusory is the belief that the Zionist
and American puppet of the Pahlavi dynasty, which sold out the country, can
enjoy mass support. He will be able to return to the throne not through a
popular uprising, but solely and exclusively through military force and foreign
military action, following the model of what recently happened in Venezuela.
At the same time, and this is the fifth mistake we must avoid making, it is
important not to believe the information provided by the Western media, which
is almost entirely biased, without any real pluralism, by American and Israeli
press agencies that are building mass consensus for the next war! The
demonstrations staged by the opposition are numerous, but they are much less
well-attended than those of the patriotic masses who express hostility to US
interference and defend the institutional structure of the Islamic Republic.
Furthermore, the opposition is able to mobilise almost exclusively in large
urban centres among the upper-middle class, who demand liberal, Western
lifestyles and consumption models, but who clash with the feeling of loyalty to
the government in the suburbs.
Link to Full Issue of Workers'
Weekly
RCPB(ML) Home Page
Workers' Weekly Online
Archive
Events in Iran
Volume 56 Number 7, March 7,
2026
ARCHIVE
HOME
JBCENTRE
SUBSCRIBE
Combating Disinformation
on Iran
Five
Mistakes to Avoid When Analysing Current Events in Iran
Massimiliano Ay, General Secretary, Communist Party
(Switzerland)
The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a theocratic regime where power is
exercised by the clergy as a religious class indistinguishable from political
authority and where religious norms coincide with State laws. The political
regime that emerged from the 1979 Revolution is rather theocentric in nature:
power is in fact mediated by legal and political institutions and is not
automatically exercised by the clergy as a unified body. On the contrary, there
are elected bodies, a Constitution and a republican state apparatus, as well as
a complex set of institutional checks and balances.
The most widespread first mistake in the West is therefore to believe
superficially that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a kind of medieval and
obscurantist absolutism: alongside undeniable backward-looking legacies
contrary to a liberal-democratic conception of the State, forms of modernity
are emerging that must be recognised in order to understand the persistence of
this 40-year experience. Suffice it to say that it was the Islamic Revolution
that universalised the right to education for Iranian women, which, at the time
of the Shah, was granted only to a few representatives of the wealthy classes:
today, 60 per cent of university students in Iran are women, and over 40 per
cent of companies are run by female entrepreneurs. Even on the civil rights for
transgender people, it was Ayatollah Khomeini who signed a law in the 1980s
that not only authorises gender transition but also places the costs entirely
on the State.
The second mistake is to underestimate the enormous responsibility that
Atlantic imperialism has (in history and still today) due to its systematic
interference in Iranian political dynamics. It was only with the 1979
Revolution, where religious leaders and communists initially worked together,
that the Iranian people regained political, economic and cultural sovereignty,
freeing themselves from Western capitalist diktats and the bloody tyranny of
Shah Reza Pahlavi.
Since then, the country has been constantly demonised, if not directly
attacked militarily or through terrorism, by the US, the EU and Israel.
However, if Iran is now ruled by a theocentric regime, which was consolidated
by the subsequent tragic repression of the communists in the 1980s, it is also
because Atlantic imperialism overthrew the secular and socialist government of
Mosaddegh, imposing an absolute monarchy that allowed the West to plunder its
resources and against which popular anger erupted in 1979. Even today, there is
no shortage of external attempts at destabilisation: from the declaration of
readiness for a US military attack with the aim of turning Iran into a new
Syria and the infiltration of Zionist Mossad into popular and youth movements.
The violent degeneration of recent street demonstrations, initially peaceful
and based almost exclusively on the difficult economic conditions and not on
civil rights or the political-institutional system, is there to prove it.
The third mistake is that made by the Western left, which has given up on
anti-imperialism as the central axis of its identity, thereby lending support
to the narrative of the right and to structural racism towards all peoples who
do not obey our liberal and Atlanticist value system. After Russophobia and
Sinophobia, as we stated during the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of
Switzerland, we are now moving on to Islamophobia, which, more typically
confined to right-wing circles, has been fomented not only by Zionists but
also, unwittingly, by that part of the left which, after supporting movements
hostile to the Iranian Islamic Revolution, has agreed to repeat as an "act
of faith" the condemnation of the actions of the Palestinian or Lebanese
resistance in response to Israeli crimes.'
From this perspective, communists distance themselves from the Swiss left,
which took to the streets with nostalgic monarchists waving the tricolour flag
bearing the image of the lion of the former "Imperial State of Iran"
ruled by the tyrannical Pahlavi dynasty. A correct class-based and
anti-imperialist approach, instead, grasps another decisive political fact,
namely that the Iranian reality operates in a new global context, constituting
today a bulwark of primary importance in hindering Atlanticism and Zionism.
Without it, the Palestinian resistance could be compromised, but even the new
Silk Road promoted by China would be weakened.
Among the Iranian diaspora there are numerous organisations that
historically looked to Marxism, but which today openly operate as fifth columns
of imperialism and Zionism, even though they still declare their ideal
adherence to socialism. It is important, as serious Marxists, not to make a
fourth mistake, namely, to analyse not the material reality of today but to be
under the illusion that everything has remained unchanged since 1953 (the coup
against Mosaddegh) or 1979 (Khomeini revolution) and thus limiting ourselves to
taking for granted the sometimes even rambling public statements of this or
that organisation of the left-wing diaspora, which is completely irrelevant in
the Iranian national reality. Entrusting, for example, the communists of
"Tudeh" or "Toufan" (who have less support in their
homeland than the monarchists) with a utopian messianic task of -- as we read
in some public statements of left-wing comrades -- "building an
alternative hegemony starting from the bottom, from the bazaar and the
universities, to prevent the fall of the mullahs from leading to a new colonial
subjugation" is not Marxism, but pure fantasy that does not help to
develop a credible movement for peace and against imperialism. The
"Tudeh" itself, moreover, admits to "the absence of a coherent
progressive national leadership".
In Iran today, the unrest is primarily economic, due to Western sanctions
that affect wages, fuel inflation and worsen the quality of life. However, it
seems rather unrealistic to believe that popular support for political and
religious institutions has waned, as Atlanticist war propaganda would have us
believe, and that the definitive disintegration of the "historic
clerical-conservative bloc" is underway and that "the regime no
longer has hegemony (moral and intellectual consensus) but only domination
(repressive apparatus)". Even more illusory is the belief that the Zionist
and American puppet of the Pahlavi dynasty, which sold out the country, can
enjoy mass support. He will be able to return to the throne not through a
popular uprising, but solely and exclusively through military force and foreign
military action, following the model of what recently happened in Venezuela.
At the same time, and this is the fifth mistake we must avoid making, it is
important not to believe the information provided by the Western media, which
is almost entirely biased, without any real pluralism, by American and Israeli
press agencies that are building mass consensus for the next war! The
demonstrations staged by the opposition are numerous, but they are much less
well-attended than those of the patriotic masses who express hostility to US
interference and defend the institutional structure of the Islamic Republic.
Furthermore, the opposition is able to mobilise almost exclusively in large
urban centres among the upper-middle class, who demand liberal, Western
lifestyles and consumption models, but who clash with the feeling of loyalty to
the government in the suburbs.
Link to Full Issue of Workers'
Weekly
RCPB(ML) Home Page
Workers' Weekly Online
Archive