Anti-Communism in Iran: From the Pahlavi Dynasty to the Islamic Republic

 By Nikos Mottas

In modern Iranian history, anti-communism has never been an accident or a mere ideological reflex. It has been a permanent weapon of bourgeois state power. Across regimes that appeared to stand at opposite ideological poles — the pro-Western, secular monarchy of the Pahlavi dynasty and the theocratic order established after 1979 — the repression of communists and revolutionary leftists formed a stable axis of continuity. The language of power changed; its class function did not.

Iranian Marxism and its main challenges

Two days before Israel launched an attack on Iran, the Tel Aviv branch of the Communist Party of Israel (Maki) hosted a meeting on the topic of Iranian Marxism. This was as part of the series of lectures on Marxism in the Middle East. The meeting, held online, included a lecture by N., an exiled Iranian Marxist, who asked that his name not be published.

The lecture opened with introductory remarks: One of the central characteristics of the Marxist movement as a whole is the ability to learn from failures and see them as setbacks in a long struggle.