# Polling ## Attitudes to the 12-Day War * [GAMAAN](https://gamaan.org/2025/11/05/12-day-war-survey-english/) poll * 44% blamed the Islamic Republic for starting the war, 33% blamed Israel and 16% said both sides were equally at fault * 51% believed Israel achieved its objectives, 16% thought the Islamic Republic had been more successful * Emotions experienced during the war * 42% - "anger at the Islamic Republic" * 38% - "worry about the future" * 30% - "anger at Israel" * 27% - "hope for the future" * 21% - "fear of death or losing loved ones" * 17% - "grief and mourning" * 63% viewed the war as "between Israel and the Islamic Republic, not the Iranian people", 30% disagreed * 33% viewed it as a national-patriotic war, 52% rejected this characterisation * 34% believed the Islamic Republic was able to defend the people, 58% said it failed * 27% evaluated the Supreme Leader's performance positively, 58% negatively * 62% believed Trump's intervention played a key role in ending the war, 22% disagreed * 69% believed the Islamic Republic should stop calling for the destruction of Israel, 22% opposed direct talks * 46% believed the missile program increased Iran's security, 43% disagreed * 49% opposed developing nuclear arms, 36% supported * 47% believed Iran should stop enriching uranium to prevent another war, 36% disagreed * 75% blamed domestic mismanagement and inefficiency for the water and electricity crisis, 4% blamed sanctions * 56% were very concerned about the activation of snapback sanctions * Favourability of countries * USA: 53% positive * Israel: 39% positive, 48% negative * Russia: 68% negative * UK: 65% negative * China: 58% negative * Turkey: 53% negative * Saudi: 49% negative * 43% strongly and 14% somewhat agreed Israel's actions in Gaza could be considered war crimes, 24% disagreed * Most effective way to change the country * 31% civil protests * 18% foreign pressure and intervention * 14% elections * 6% violent struggles * Participant makeup * 41% pro-regime change * 21% "structural transformation and transition from the IR" * 12.5% reformist * 11.8% principlist ## Anti-Semitism / attitudes toward Israel * [ADL Global 100 Index](https://www.jfeed.com/antisemitism/iran-least-antisemitic-middle-east?utm_source=chatgpt.com) * Iran significantly less anti-Semitic than other MENA countries * 56% of Iranian adults "harbour antisemitic beliefs", significantly lower than the Middle East average of 76% (global average is 46%) # 1953 coup * https://iranwire.com/en/features/64797/ # 1964 speech * Targeted at newly passed laws which granted American government personnel and their families immunity from Iranian law * http://www.professorcampbell.org/sources/khomeini.html # Khomeini's secret engagement with the US * https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36431160 # 1980s ## 1981 massacre * Mass murder of Communists, Social Democrats, Liberals, Monarchists and Ba'hai * Modelled on the Chinese Cultural Revolution * Education * Executive order issued by Khomeini, 14 June 1980, to "purify" higher education from non-Islamic, Western, liberal and leftist influence * Universities closed from 1980-83, independent student unions banned, most campuses violently occupied * General Islamification * Dress code enforced, including mandatory Hijab * Expulsion of independent / secular political parties * Expulsion of critical academics and harassment of intellectuals and artists * Responses * 15 June 1981 - National Front of Iran and other opposition groups attacked proposals for Islamification of the justice system * Khomeini issues a *fatwa* the same day accusing the National Front of apostasy and declared that all critics of the new laws "have dug their graves with their own hands" ; hundreds of protestors promptly arrested * 20 June 1981 - Largest anti-government demonstration since the revolution, organised by the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), against the impeachment of the IR's first president Abolhasan Bani-Sadr ; dozens of protestors were shot dead * 26 June - Ali Khamenei uses Friday Prayer speech to warn all critics that they would be treated as apostates and enemies of Islam * Executions * June 21st 1981 - Islamic Revolutionary Court of Tehran announced the execution of 15 leftist activists * Summer 1988 - Khomeini issues a secret *fatwa* intended to exterminate all political prisoners who were still alive * Official cemetery database has removed most records for political dissidents from the 80s - Islamic Revolutionary Courts - Evolved out of *ad hoc* revolutionary tribunals; first established by Khomeini few days after the revolution - Sharia judges, appointed by Khomeini, tasked with punishing state officials and military commanders, though the mandate was loosely defined ; hundreds of death sentences issued within a few months - 17 June 1979 - Provision Concerning Revolutionary Courts and Tribunals - Initially intends for courts to be temporary, though they would eventually become incorporated into the state justice system - Became a permanent body after the ratification of the 1982 Penal Code - Judges gained increasing discretion to sentence people on vague grounds such as "corruption on earth", "waging war on Allah" and "religious hypocrisy" - In practice - Functional in all parts of the country and worked to terrorise critics and remove dissidents - Punishments included flogging for drinking alcohol, stoning for adultery, death penalty for same-sex intercourse and execution for waging war against Allah - Tabrizi warned prosecutors that they would be punished if they "do not decisively against dissidents" - Most Sharia judges of these courts are still serving as ministers, judges, IRGC commanders, members of the Assembly of Experts, and Expediency Discernment Council - Ideological enemies of the regime did not have the right to legal counsel and were not allowed to be defended by a lawyer - Judgements often based on forced confessions - Based on official press releases, more than 370 executed were women; in Tehran 38% of female dissidents were teenagers, mostly high school students ; some were executed while pregnant - Children of prisoners used as hostages to pressure parents - Since the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of citizens have been arbitrarily detained, tortured, executed, imprisoned, or forced into exile - 18-24 year olds most represented ; ~100 killed were 18 or under, the youngest being 11 (male) and 15 (female), both on charges of *moharebeh* (waging war on Allah) and "sympathising with hypocrites" ; in 1973, the Penal Code exempted minors from full criminal liability, with the maximum penalty being 8 years in a reformatory institution - Justified by Sharia judges who invoked Khomeini's doctrine that the age of maturity for girls and boys was 9 and 15 lunar years - Of 138 [recorded executions of juvenile offenders](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10612-022-09605-4) in the world between 1990-2018, 93 occurred in Iran >[!quote]- Hossein Moussavi Tabrizi, Attorney General of the Islamic Revolutionary Courts >*"It is an absolute religious necessity to exterminate all dissidents who stand against the Imam. Their captives should be killed, and their wounded should be tortured to death. \[...] Every person who does not follow the Imam and stands against the Islamic Republic should be executed."* * https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2022.2105027 ## 1988 prison massacare * https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/the-1988-iranian-prison-massacre?utm_content=topic%2Febrahimraisi&utm_source=flipboard * History of political prisoners in Iran * Prolonged imprisonment was not so common pre-20th century * Qajar era (1890s-1925) system of overlapping royal and sharia courts, acting as a mutual check and balance e.g. death penalties passed by the clerics had to be approved by the Shah & royal courts couldn't act beyond recognised sharia practice * Iran's first modern penal code took influence from European models in the early 20th century * 1920s - Pahlavi dynasty expands the penal code and builds modern prisons, designed to hold around 4,000 inmates ; not completed until the 60s * Qasr opened in 1929-30 with 300 prisoners (18 political) ; 2,000 by 1940 (200 political) * First large batch of inmates involved 200 Communists arrested in 1929-30 after they had organised a series of strikes ; most were released or exiled, but 38 stayed in Qasr * 1930s prisoners were typically not physically tortured; though some were "cross-cuffed" and others were so deprived of food and medicine that they ended up dying * Psychological torture involved solitary confinement and being forced to watch executions * 1931: The "Black Law" declared membership of organisations with a "collectivist ideology" a crime, punishable by 3-10 years in solitary confinement * 1938: "Group of Fifty-three" arrested for forming clandestine communist cells ; Iran's first political 'show trial' ; prosecutors accused the group of 'atheism' and 'materialism', and of plotting against the monarchy ; most were Democratic Socialists, not Stalinists * 1941: Fall of Reza Shah, general amnesty given to political prisoners * 1949: State crackdown on the Tudeh Party, accused of a failed attempt on the Shah's life * 200 party members accused of violating the 1931 law - not the attempted assassination * 10 leaders received 10 years or less; others were given relatively short sentences * 1951-53: Mosaddeq's premiership ; treatment of prisoners relaxed initially * 1952: "Societal Security Law" passed amid growing destabilisation ; restricted right of assembly and forbade strikes and protest in all government agencies ; all sentences would be final and could not be appealed * 1953: Mosaddeq overthrown in CIA-sponsored coup * Tudeh Party becomes the main target of post-coup repression ; over 4,500 members arrested ; most from the educated and professional middle class * 2,844 released after signing letters of regret * Torture still not widespread, but Tudeh members reported 11 deaths caused by torture between 1953-58, mostly from beatings * 31 political prisoners executed in the 1950s - almost all Tudeh military personnel * One National Front leader executed - Mosaddeq's anti-Shah Foreign Minister, Hossein Fatemi * Severe measures were supported by the British and Americans * By the late 1950s, torture and executions sharply declined with the Tudeh party defeated * 1960s: Notorious prisons at Kharg Islang and Falak al-Aflak closed ; most inmates freed * Only ~24 Tudeh members remained in prison * 1960s prisoner treatment seemed significantly more peaceful * Early 1970s: Armed guerrilla outburst * 368 guerrillas killed from 1971-77 ; 4/5 of whom were college students and middle class professionals * American and Israeli training of Shah security forces increased * Organisation of State Security and Intelligence (SAVAK) expanded and linked with urban and rural police * Evin prison built with an execution yard and underground torture chambers * SAVAK given a free hand to immediately torture suspected guerrillas * Bastinado method used most commonly with electrical cables and a helmet fixed over the victim's head in order to make their screams louder * Extra-judicial killings also carried out e.g. 9 secretly killed in 1975 * Peak of 7,500 political prisoners in the mid 70s * 1975: Ruhollah Khomeini steps up opposition to the Shah * Islamic Mojahedin guerrilla org splits into Marxist and Muslim factions * Muslim clerics begin to boycott Marxists as *najes*, meaning "pollutant" * Televised recantations used by the Shah's regime, especially from celebrity figures e.g. writers, athletes * 1976-77: Guerrilla movement mostly destroyed * International campaign against repression yields results and many prisoners are released * Red Cross visit in 1977 found 3,000 political inmates ; almost all freed in the last months of 1978 * 1979: Islamic Republic comes to power * 757 executed in the first 2 years, mostly with "sowing corruption on earth" ; about 2/3 were political, mostly from the old regime * 1980s: Reign of terror * Peak periods of 1981-85 and 1988 * ~12,250 killed between June 81 and June 85; 75% of whom were executed, the rest in armed clashes (less than 100 political executions in the Shah's most repressive period) * Most executed by firing squads and were mostly young, high school / college students or recent graduates * Backdrop of intense opposition; armed rebellion from the Kurds, the Mojahedin, and Iraqi invasion from 1980-88 * Torture explicitly forbidden by the new constitution; though spokesmen argued that pain and suffering caused by *Tazir* (discretionary punishment) was 'cleansing' and 'penance' * Torture methods were somewhat similar to the 70s; flogging of the feet was the most common method; prolonged confinement in small boxes called 'the coffin', being forced to watch or even participate in executions * In sharia courts, a cleric could serve as judge, prosecutor, interrogator and executioner * Recantations used in the same format as under the monarchy ; now included an announcement of return to Islam * 1988: Humiliating cease fire with Iraq * Khomeini issues a *fatwa* empowering a special commission to decide the fate of remaining political prisoners * Clerical judges quickly carried out final trials, accusing already sentenced prisoners of crimes punishable by death * Mojahedin prisoners charged with "war against God" and Marxists charged as "apostates" * Estimates range from 2,000 - 12,000 killed * Khomeini's successor, Hossein-Ali [Montazeri](https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/the-1988-iranian-prison-massacre?utm_content=topic%2Febrahimraisi&utm_source=flipboard) resigned in protest * 1990s: General amnesty announced and televised recantations ended * By 1994, Amnesty claimed about 19,000 political prisoners remained in Iran * Confessions still allegedly extracted through torture on video, but not broadcasted * https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00263200600826323 # Interviews and speeches ## NYT 1979 - [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1979/10/07/issue.html](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1979/10/07/112125983.html?pageNumber=375) - Acknowledges that he had initially offered political freedom to liberals and communists ; argues he had only taken it away 5 months later following subversion and criminal activity from these groups - Argues the left contributed nothing to the revolution ; those who did fight only did so for their own ends - March 1979 referendum on whether Iran would be a republic or monarchy, Khomeini prohibited the term *"Islamic Democratic Republic"* because: *"the word Islam does not need adjectives such as democratic. Precisely because Islam is everything, it means everything. It is sad for us to add another word near the word Islam, which is perfect."* - When asked about execution of prostitutes, adulterous women or gay men: *"If your finger suffers from gangrene, what do you do? Do you let the whole hand, and then the body, become filled with gangrene, or do you cut the finger off?"* - Denies a pregnant woman being shot by the regime, but then quickly argues that she probably deserved it - Argues that the women who contributed to the revolution were all covered up; the ones *"who put on make up and go into the street showing off their necks, their hair, their shapes, did not fight against the Shah. They never did anything good, not those."* # Khomeini and the Western left * Chehabi analysis of Iran's class structure * Population divides were largely on cultural Westernisation, not class in the traditional Marxist sense * *Bazaari*, traditional middle classes, peasants and industrialists with *bazaari* roots were in the *traditional* camp, and government officials, army officers, modern entrepreneurs, professionals, teachers and oil workers were in the *modern* camp ; some of the latter allied with the Shah, most did not * "Selective Westernisation" and the consequently uneven material benefits created a politics of resentment * The White Revolution * Rapid modernisation programme announced by the Shah in 1963 and launched from the top down after dismissing parliament * [Included](https://greyartmuseum.nyu.edu/2015/12/a-brief-history-of-20th-century-iran/): land reform, nationalisation of forests, sale of state-owned enterprise to the private sector, profit sharing plan for industrial workers, formation of a Literary Corps to eliminate illiteracy, women's suffrage, raising minimum marriage age to 18, improving of women's legal rights in divorce and custody matters * Leftist critics e.g. Fred Halliday dismissed the White Revolution as an attempt to pre-empt another Cuba ; saw opposition as a working class striving for revolution over reform, not as religious fundamentalists trying to preserve their values and the economic security of the *ulama* - Halliday later regretted his underestimation of Khomeini * Le Monde interview 1978 * Khomeini clearly states his intentions to hinder the communists in Iran * NOTE: find original interview, government website still down * The left under the Shah * Opposition to the Shah had moved into guerrilla warfare as state repression prevented them from building a base among workers - this "created a vacuum that only the clerics were able to fill" * Tudeh party was against guerrilla-ism as a "petit-bourgeois" diversion ; ultimately supported the Ayatollah until the revolution on the theoretical background of a 'non-capitalist road to socialism' * Leftist support for the Ayatollah * Khomeini wasn't so much supported as he was acquiesced and assumed to be a symbolic leader of a revolution that would quickly return to secular politics after the Shah had been removed * No leftists seemed to suggest it would be a good thing for Khomeini to rule * Leftists had been attacked by gangs even before the Shah fell * CPUSA described Khomeini's views on women's rights as "egalitarian, humane and democratic" * Tudeh Party * By 1981, after the majority of Iranian leftists had denounced the regime, the Tudeh party stayed loyal, even after their leader was arrested, tortured and forced to recant on TV * US Socialist Workers Party * Trotskyist party that mimicked Tudeh's loyalty to Khomeini, even into the early 80s * Defended the regime on the ground that factory *shoras* (workers' councils) enjoyed "considerable control over working conditions and production" ; in fact, most were weak and dominated from above * Defended the regime, even after 12 members of their sister organisation, HKS, were sentenced to death in August 1979 * Ernest Mandel shrugged off the arrests because at least HKS were able to sell their newspapers, which was better than under the Shah * The hostage crisis * Few mainstream leftists were supportive of hostage-taking * Halliday described it as "the anti-imperialism of fools" * *Marxism Today* described the anti-Americanism of Khomeini as a diversion from economic issues in Iran * US SWP supported the embassy seizure * Richard Falk initially defended the seizure, but then later revised his view * Fourth International * Divided on the progress of the revolution * European Socialist Workers Party members were increasingly critical compared to the US ones * By the end of 79, Mandel warned that "to identify revolution with religious obscurantism is an act of ideological treason no less detrimental to the cause of Iran and world socialism than the more classical forms of capitulation to oppressor classes" * Richard Falk * Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories from 2008-2014 * Supported the regime long after many liberal-left associates had abandoned it * In 1980, he called it a 'malicious falsehood' to suggest that one tyranny had replaced another * Defended summary executions on the grounds of 'the long record of mass abuse associated with Pahlavi rule' * Didn't denounce the regime until 1982 when he acknowledged that Iran was "worse off now than it was under the Shah" * The *ualama* in Iran * 1905-09 and 1953, the clerical leadership had turned on secular reformers in order to combat modernisation * [Britain](https://www.declassifieduk.org/iran-1953-mi6-plots-with-islamists-to-overthrow-democracy/) had considered installing Ayatollah Kashani following the 53 coup ; Fadayan e-Islam was assisted by the CIA ; some claim Khomeini was among the CIA/MI6-sponsored crowd against Mossadeq in 1953 * Halliday in the 80s * "The events of 1979 bring out what was, in my view, the central avoidable error of most of the Iranian Left - its catastrophic stand on 'liberalism'. In essence, the Left allied with Khomeini to break 'liberalism' - that is, those moderate democratic forces that opposed the Shah but were against the clerical dictatorship." * This failure "must rank with the errors of the KPD" * Link: https://sci-hub.ru/10.1080/0308514042000329351