Bulletins and News Discussion from April 15th to April 21st, 2024 - Between The Darkness And The Dawn, There Rises A Red Star

It is noteworthy that Tudeh was never a grassroots organization in any meaningful way. The places where the masses were gathering during the revolution was the Mosques and not student gatherings or the Tudeh headquarters. The Tudeh failed to create labor union movements because they kept wanting to make them secular organizations in a country that is 95% Muslim. (Ramin Mazaheri discusses this somewhat). Even by Tudeh's own accounts they did not have a very large amount of members.

It's also noteworthy that whenever people talk about the Islamic Republic "purging leftists" in the late 1980's, the vast majority of those purged were MEK. MEK are CIA-backed contras who had fought on the side of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. These are the terrorists (Mariam Rajavi) who meet with John Bolton at annual events and are responsible for murdering 15,000+ Iranians through terrorist attacks over the last 40 years.

However lets focus on the communist groups instead of MEK. In order to understand this we have to understand the role of the USSR in Iran during the time. The Tudeh communists had a long-standing relationship with the USSR. From 1980-1982 the USSR had a position of "neutrality" in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). However in 1982 the USSR began supporting Saddam in an attempt to crush the Islamic Revolution. It's unclear to me why they did this but it prompted the Islamic Revolutionary government to begin arresting Tudeh members due to their relationships with the USSR. (This is all verifiable in English its probably even on CIA-pedia.) It's also noteworthy that the 1982 wave of arrests was not just targetting the communists but also purging a lot of corruption that was emerging from within the different wings of the Revolution. Many of the leaders of the revolution were assassinated during this time due to the presence of spies and traitors backed by the CIA as well. Revolutions have to defend themselves from counter-revolution.

The "repression" of the backwards and counter-revolutionary communists didn't really pick up until 1985. The Tudeh members and other (non-MEK) communists who were purged were done so on the basis of attempting another revolution in the middle of the war. In 1984-85 Tudeh Party and the Fedaian party released a joint statement calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. (This was called the 18th Plenum and you can read all about it on the Tudeh own website. They brag about trying to overthrow the revolution!)

The country had only just had a revolution and was being subjected to the most horrific war from Iraq which was backed by both NATO and the USSR. And Iraq was unleashing chemical weapons and ballistic missiles on the civilians of Iran. And in the middle of this horrific war, the Tudeh party calls for another revolution! This is treason of the highest order.

Before this treason, they did contribute to the revolution of 1979 and that is also openly verifiable. They endorsed the national vote to create the constitution of the Islamic Republic and identifying the new government as an Islamic Republic (Something like 97% of the country voted in favor of that).

So honestly these communists deserved what they got and they are unsurprisingly still garbage today. Tudeh were respressed for being reactionaries. I have no sympathy for them and I find it somewhat disturbing how many leftists want to position Iran as being backwards "repressing communists" without knowing the details of the actual history.

The Iran-Iraq war was a defining moment of modern Iran, and instead of supporting an obviously anti-American government, the USSR armed Saddam. By 1986 I believe the USSR was the largest sponsor of weapons to Saddam. So, if we're going to blame anyone then blame America, Brezhnev and Gorbachov.