A Pyrrhic Defeat - Margins on Power and the Iran War

To comprehend the ongoing upheavals in Iran, one must grasp the underlying nature of class struggle in the country over the past half century.
Before 1953, Iran possessed a democratic government under the leadership of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who undertook the bold step of nationalizing the oil industry, then under British control. In order to safeguard the interests of capitalist corporations, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and British intelligence (MI6) coordinated a coup to overthrow Mossadegh, dismantling the nascent democracy and directly reinstalling the Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) with absolute authority, transforming him into a geopolitical proxy of Washington.
From 1953 to 1979, the Shah’s state constituted a bourgeois monarchy representing the interests of a newly consolidated aristocracy, comprador bourgeoisie, and Western imperial capital. Under the Shah, the so called White Revolution amounted in substance to a transition from feudal structures to state capitalism, in which national resources were appropriated by a network of crony elites and foreign conglomerates. Pahlavi relied on the secret police Savak to ruthlessly suppress all forms of dissent.
In 1979, the Islamic Revolution erupted to overthrow the Shah’s dictatorship, emerging from a coalition that spanned clerical forces, leftist organizations, and segments of the working class. Yet after Pahlavi’s removal, Ayatollah Khomeini swiftly consolidated power, purged the very leftist allies who had stood beside him, and established a theocratic regime. The Islamic Republic of Iran became a despotic order dominated by a religious bourgeoisie and the upper clergy. The state deployed religious ideology as an instrument to regulate the forces of production, transforming religious foundations into vast economic conglomerates, while perpetuating the exploitation of the working class through the prohibition of independent trade unions and the abolition of the right to strike.
Thus, the Islamic Revolution replaced monarchy with theocracy, but in structural terms it represented merely a substitution of ruling factions within the same oppressive superstructure. Both before and after the Revolution, notwithstanding the distinct features of clerical rule, the Iranian state has remained a capitalist state.
This structural continuity explains the persistent waves of anti-government protest over decades, most prominently the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising following the killing of Jina “Mahsa” Amini in 2022. Accumulated grievances intensified and erupted with particular force in 2025 to 2026 amid nationwide instability and deepening economic crisis. In response, Ali Khamenei authorized severe repression, including the use of live ammunition against demonstrators, resulting in massacres that claimed thousands of lives and marked one of the darkest chapters in contemporary Iranian history. Iranian human rights activists confirm at least 7000 deaths, while the Iranian government acknowledges 3117 fatalities.
It must also be noted that segments of the international left hastily characterize these protests as a “color revolution” orchestrated by the CIA or Mossad, citing the visible presence of exiled factions seeking restoration of the pro-Western Pahlavi dynasty. However, it must be clearly affirmed that when the working masses are driven to the brink, insurrection becomes a historical inevitability. Revolutionary conjunctures are inherently chaotic terrains in which all political forces, from the left to reactionary imperial interests, attempt to appropriate and redirect popular anger for their own strategic ends. One must reject the false binary that presents only two options: support the existing theocratic regime in the name of anti-Americanism, or endorse a Western backed “color revolution.” Neither trajectory serves the interests of the Iranian proletariat.
Therefore, upon news of Khomeini’s death, many Iranians celebrated, a reaction understandable among a population long subjected to repression. They celebrated in the hope of systemic transformation. Yet it would constitute a grave strategic and moral error to interpret what is dispensed from Western missile arsenals as “liberation.” The historical experiences of Iraq and Libya demonstrate that liberation delivered by American and Israeli missiles yields comprehensive collapse. Freedom bestowed from the altitude of foreign air power merely furnishes additional fuel for extremist factions.
More starkly, bombing campaigns by imperial powers would primarily enrich the shareholders of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, facilitate the entry of private conglomerates into a forcibly “opened” Iranian market, and consolidate authoritarian monarchies in the Gulf. The removal of an individual at the apex of power does not equate to the dismantling of oppressive structures. Genuine justice must reside with the Iranian people themselves through a process of self determination.
In sum, the slogan cited above serves as a warning that rallying behind the faction of the Shah’s son today does not constitute a solution. Exchanging a monarch for a cleric, or vice versa, amounts to a cyclical reproduction of bourgeois authoritarian forms. Only when the proletariat directly controls the means of production and abolishes the property regimes upheld by both monarchist and clerical elites can authentic emancipation be realized. What Iran requires at present is a revolutionary vanguard party capable of leading the country toward a proletarian revolution and the construction of socialism.