In response to “UW Iranian-Americans respond to recent political turmpol in Iran,” by Michael Truong, July 1:

I, along with my colleagues at the Freedom Socialist Party national office in the University District, stand in solidarity with the courageous Iranian youth, women, workers, trade unionists and intellectuals who took to the streets and engaged in work stoppages to challenge the repressive Islamic regime, using the recent presidential elections as their starting point.

For the majority of Iranian voters, the election was a choice between the bad and the worst. In a theocracy such as Iran, the ultimate power and legitimacy of the regime rests not with the people, but with the clerics. Any vote or governmental decision can be overturned by the supreme spiritual leader and the 12-man Guardian Council, which pre-approves all candidates and has blessed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ostensible victory.

However, the president’s main challenger, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who supposedly represents a “reformist faction” within the ruling regime, ordered the execution of thousands of progressives as prime minister and should be on trial for mass murder. The conflict between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi is a sign of a deep rift among warring factions at the highest levels of government that is being fought in the open and can no longer be resolved internally. This deep division is the result of years of economic and political crises since the birth of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

In this context, it does not go far enough to demand a new, “clean” presidential election. What is needed is an entirely new, secular regime where democratic rights are respected, including those of national minorities — one in which stoning is outlawed, persecution of women, young people and homosexuals who do not conform to the fundamentalist worldview is banned, the right of unionists to strike is protected, freedom of thought and political affiliation are encouraged, and the vast wealth of the country is in the hands of the working people who create it and not a free-trade elite.

The days of the Islamic regime are numbered. If not this year, sometime in the near future it will be overthrown by Iranian workers of all nationalities and both sexes, just as they overthrew the despised Shah in 1979. Women played a vanguard role in that revolution only to be violently repressed by the Islamic extremists who seized control of the anti-Shah movement. For 30 years, women have suffered as second-class citizens, but today, they are proudly once again to be in the vanguard of the movement for democratic freedoms. We hail their courage and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

We are sickened by the reign of terror that has been unleashed against protesters since the polls closed. We denounce the murder, brutal beatings and mass arrests of demonstrators and call on the government to put down its truncheons and lower its guns, disarm the Basiji militia and order the police and Revolutionary Guards to respect the rights of free speech and assembly. Members of the militia and other armed forces that are killing and maiming protestors must be tried for their crimes.

The dangers confronting Iranian working people are real. The protest movement must move — sooner rather than later — beyond the “reforms” of Mousavi and reject any compromises offered by fake lovers of democracy in imperialist ruling circles. What is needed is a revolutionary party capable of leading the inspiring struggle for a new, free socialist Iran.

Frederick Hyde

UW Law School, JD, 1975;

Civil rights attorney, and Freedom Socialist Party national committee member

Seattle, Wash.