Workers World, Vol. 22, No. 11
March 12 – Both the White House and the State Department must have been stunned when they received Khomeini’s statement on the hostages.
“Struggling people of Iran,” the statement read, “the crimes of the shah and America need no proof. Therefore,” the statement goes on, “we fight against America until death. We shall not stop fighting until we defeat it and cut its hand in the area and lead weak people to victory.”
There is all of Khomeini in this message. It reads like a proclamation of anathema on U.S. imperialism. After weeks of hesitation and maneuvering between the Bazargan-Bani-Sadr-Ghotbzadeh faction of the bourgeois leadership and the Ayatollah, his statement on the hostages was just one more manifestation of the irreconcilability of the Ayatollah in relation to American finance capital.
The statement is plain and unambiguous and rejects the efforts at conciliation which Washington and its imperialist allies have been seeking as a means of restoring, at least in part, the nexus of imperialist finance capital with the Iranian government and, most importantly, its economy.
The statement goes beyond the significance of the hostage matter. It seeks a complete break with the past. The Ayatollah favors normalization of relations with the West, but not on the terms which the imperialists are really seeking. Even in that part of the Ayatollah’s statement that falsely equates imperialism with the socialist countries, primarily the USSR, there is small consolation for Washington.
“We do not differentiate between the aggressor East and the criminal West.” What is not apparent at first in this statement is that it is an unqualified rejection of the gigantic propaganda effort made by the U.S. and its imperialist allies since the Afghanistan events to divert the Iranian government from the struggle against U.S. imperialism and to direct it into anti-Soviet channels.
What the Washington strategists, and in particular the Brzezinski-Vance grouping, wanted most of all was for the Iranian government to project so-called Soviet aggression as the main danger, thereby ideologically disarming the masses in the face of continued open threats and covert aggression by the U.S.
By rejecting this political ploy, the Ayatollah was also rebuffing the diplomacy of Beijing which has been pursuing this line even more vigorously, if that is possible, than the U.S. itself. As the statement stands, it is also a reprimand to Bani-Sadr and Ghotbzadeh, who had begun to speak more and more openly of the so-called danger of Soviet aggression.
For the Ayatollah to falsely equate imperialism with the USSR is inadequate for the predatory interests of American finance capital at this moment. It was hoped by Washington’s planners that by shifting the emphasis of attack to the USSR, the Carter administration would create a new axis of the struggle.
It has thus far failed as far as the Ayatollah goes. It is altogether different with Bani-Sadr, who openly resorted to the crudest red baiting against the students guarding the U.S. Embassy and by implication against the Ayatollah.
The militants, Bani-Sadr told Le Monde, “unfortunately sometimes let themselves be influenced by certain political groups favorable to the Soviet Union such as the communist Tudeh Party which wants to isolate Iran on the international scene.”
With all that has happened since the embassy was seized, it has become plain that the struggle in Iran, at least on one level, is clearly between the Bazargan-Bani-Sadar-Ghotbzadeh grouping, which represents the bourgeoisie, and the Ayatollah and his grouping, which mainly centers around the petty-bourgeois clergy as his one certain base of operations.
Of all the contemporary leaders from oppressed countries in the bourgeois-nationalist camp, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is by far the most extraordinary. He is at one and the same time in the vanguard of the anti-imperialist struggle and a political anachronism.
He has sought to carry out a resolute and intransigent struggle for the destruction of the shah’s monarchy and, by unavoidable extension, against imperialism. At the same time, however, by his ideological and world political outlook, he is a reactionary obstruction to the further truly socialist development of the Iranian Revolution.
By his strong insistence on reviving his version of Koranic religious principles, he is attempting to put all Iranian society in a procrustean bed of pre-capitalist ideology. The Iranian bourgeoisie can adapt themselves to such principles, particularly if they have at their behest an accommodating clergy to suit their class needs. The proletariat, on the other hand, needs more than anything else a revolutionary socialist ideology based on an objective analysis of the dynamics of capitalism in its monopoly stage. This is what the Ayatollah cannot offer them, and in fact is fighting.
The Iranian bourgeoisie, even the most radical of them, seek to limit the struggle against imperialism and to arrive at a modus vivendi with it. Otherwise, they fear, either a socialist revolution will occur or the imperialists will utilize the economic and political difficulties of the moment to bring about a full-scale counter-revolution.
The Iranian bourgeoisie, particularly those who have had the least connection with the old regime, see themselves as the legitimate heir to the wealth, particularly the oil wealth, or Iran. Nationalization of industry, as such, to them is merely an unavoidable first step, a step into the shoes which the shah vacated.
Khomeini combines within his political outlook irreconcilable class contradictions, the most acute of which is his intransigence against imperialism while failing to recognize that the bourgeoisie, as a class, are property owners who organically lean in the direction of compromise with imperialism on a live-and-let-live basis.
The students’ constant accusation against the Bani-Sadrs and their ilk is that the latter are “compromisers.” This, however, should not be construed as dogmatic opposition of the Islamic students to all compromises. It reflects the Ayatollah’s understanding that the bourgeoisie seeks not merely a specific compromise on the narrow issue of the hostages, but a general compromise. While the Iranian bourgeoisie seeks a limited compromise, Khomeini understands that the imperialist bourgeoisie has an unlimited appetite for expansion.
His dual role of fighting imperialism on the one hand, but stifling the revolutionary and creative initiative of the working class on the other, places him in an impossible situation. When he speaks to the masses and inveighs against Satan, they understand it as a struggle against imperialism and capitalism. They differentiate themselves from the bourgeoisie. Khomeini, on the other hand, seeks to erase the class contradiction between the workers on the one hand, and the bourgeoisie on the other, with his call to unity.
Under the present circumstances, however, unity means following the leadership of the Bazargan-Bani-Sadr-Ghotbzadeh grouping, which represents the bourgeoisie. This is an inescapable contradiction which the Ayatollah cannot but be cognizant of.
By his immense moral and political authority, he can make and unmake fundamental government policy. However, the execution of any and all directives rests firmly in the hands of the bourgeoisie which controls the government.
The Ayatollah is in a struggle with the bourgeois government and not just some of the leaders. He relies on his authority with the masses. The mood of the masses, however, is not a constant factor and is subject to a variety of influences of both a domestic and international character.
In a more serious struggle with the bourgeoisie, the Ayatollah’s constituency, reduced to its bare bones, rests with the clergy. The clergy have no independent role in the process of production. They cannot by themselves carry on a progressive, anti-imperialist struggle. The clergy can serve either the working class or the bourgeoisie.
During the struggle against the shah, they were able to get the support of the Bazaari (the merchants). But this is changing. The merchants will now follow the bourgeoisie. The clergy cannot lead the workers. Their ideology is an overwhelmingly reactionary obstruction.
The U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie is approaching the latest crisis cautiously. It is aware of the tremendous political and moral authority of the Ayatollah, but it has been instinctively drawn to the Bani-Sadrs and earlier to Bazargan and his ilk.
It senses a compromise. It sees the Ayatollah and his constituent group of followers, even including the militant Islamic students, as a transitional factor. That is why a part of the U.S. bourgeoisie is willing to bide its time, at least for the moment, and utilize the UN commission as a screen to put across its restorationist plans.
It should be equally clear to revolutionary, working-class, vanguard elements in Iran that the Ayatollah’s tenure in power is of a transitional character and that this is understood by the imperialists. It should also be clear to those who have forsaken and abandoned the independent, revolutionary working-class perspective by hanging on to the coattails of the Ayatollah, hoping in that way to gain respectability with bourgeois politicians, that this is a self-defeating strategy.
Should the struggle waged by the Bani-Sadr-Ghotbzadeh grouping against the Ayatollah be victorious, they will almost surely attempt to carry out their conciliationist program with imperialism by diverting the anti-imperialist struggle into an anti-communist and anti-Soviet struggle. Bani-Sadr’s latest attacks on the Islamic students says as much.
The revolution, however, is still very young and the possibilities for the working class to free itself from bourgeois leadership are immense, especially if one considers how easily some of the bourgeois leaders have had their heads turned by disgusting flattery.
Listen to what Bani-Sadr had to say about the report of the UN commission: “The report of the commission is for us of capital importance. An investigation directed against a super-power is a turning point in the history of humanity.” He went on, “It is the debut of a new era of all the oppressed on the planet. Unfortunately, the Islamic students are not able to understand that.”
Three cheers for the Islamic students! Despite profound political differences with the revolutionary, working-class student movement, the Islamic students have their feet on the ground as compared with Bani-Sadr, whose head has become swelled with the flattery he’s getting in the imperialist press.
Last updated: 11 May 2026