The crisis of the Islamic Revolution: 1979–2009–2026
Chris Cutrone, Mateo Farzaneh, Tirdad Kiamanesh, Grayson Walker
Platypus Review 189 | September 2026
On April 9, 2026, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel at Northwestern University on the Islamic Revolution in Iran as a satellite plenary to its 18th annual International Convention. The speakers were Chris Cutrone (founding member of the Platypus Affiliated Society), Mateo Farzaneh (professor of History at Northeastern Illinois University and author of The Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the Clerical Leadership of Khurasani[1]), Tirdad Kiamanesh (co-founder of Chicago4Iran, lecturer at Northwestern University), and Grayson Walker (American Communist Party[2]). Platypus member Ed Remus moderated the panel. An edited transcript follows.[3]
Introduction
The recent protests against the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) recall the Green Movement in 2009, when election results provoked an immediate and nationwide outbreak of popular demonstrations.[4] At the time, the Left hailed this social upheaval as a progressive democratic movement with revolutionary implications. While President Obama offered direct negotiations with Tehran, Trump’s current war on Iran presents the possibility of dealing a final blow to the IRI. But what would take its place? “Maybe all that will be destroyed is the ‘republic’ and not its Islamist politics, resulting in a rule of the mullahs[5] without the accoutrements of ‘democracy.’”[6]
With the present crisis in Iran and its grim outlook we pay the price for the historical failures of the Left, going back at least to the period of the 1960s–70s New Left of which the Islamic Revolution was a product. What lessons should the Left take from its role in the 1979 Revolution in Iran? What was the Left’s role in the Green Movement? What opportunities did the Green Movement present for the Left? What would the end of the Islamic Republic of Iran mean for the Left today? How is the trajectory of the Islamic Republic (IR) a part of a larger political history that extends beyond Iran? What does it tell us about the history of the Left in the 20th and 21st centuries?
Opening remarks
Chris Cutrone:[7] Donald Trump has simultaneously claimed to have achieved a “regime change” in Iran as well as disavowed any intention to do so. It has come out that in the lead-up to the current war in Iran, Trump agreed only to pursue prospects for removing the top leadership and the degradation of the Islamic Republic’s capacity to wage war. Trump wants not a change of regime but of behavior of the existing regime. This is modeled on the replacement of Nicolás Maduro by his Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez, which left the power structure of the Venezuelan state in place. Trump seeks a similar outcome in Cuba. Trump has proudly declared that he can “get along with communists” — pointing to Zohran Mamdani, the “socialist” Mayor of New York. He wants not a change of politics but only of policy from adversaries.
The accidental “regime change” in Iran came not from American but Israeli action: it was Israel not the U.S. that killed the prior political leadership, including those Trump sought to negotiate with — as he complained about at the time. And Israel has continued to do so. At the same time, the Islamic Republic and its power structures remain in place. Trump seeks their “unconditional surrender” to his terms rather than their destruction. But to achieve this, there must be a credible threat that they could lose it all. For Trump, this was the significance of the January protests in Iran: they represented not a potential revolution but leverage against the existing state. Back then, Trump implored the regime to “take the deal” while also promising to “protect the protesters,” and warning the Islamic state against their repression — which followed on, regardless.
If the protests set the conditions, this was still not the trigger for the eventual military action Trump took. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner judged that the Iranians were not serious about their negotiations, but only stalling for time — as usual. The Iranians said they would not surrender in negotiations what could not be achieved militarily. Trump has obliged them. Israel presented the opportunity to “decapitate” the regime, as Israel had done with Hamas and Hezbollah leadership, and Trump assented to it, joining a war that was going to result from the decapitation anyway. Trump chose surprise and radical action to reset conditions, and to immediately offer to negotiate mere days into the campaign. When the Iranians refused to do so, Trump decided to continue the planned 4–6 week schedule of attacks to degrade Iran’s military capacities. Trump was recently threatening a second phase, broadening the war to include attacks on Iranian essential infrastructure as a further pressure on the regime to capitulate and negotiate. Whether Trump can achieve his goals this way — what Secretary of War Pete Hegseth calls “negotiating with bombs” — is unclear. But he will try. The current provisional ceasefire has behind it a threat to continue the war.
A note on the war itself, especially as regards Israel’s controversial role: Trump’s U.S. “Epic Fury” war in Iran is not the same as the “Roaring Lion” of Netanyahu’s Israel. Trump is most comfortable when he can serve as the negotiator, positioning himself between Israel and Iran as belligerents. Trump ultimately aims at a stable balance of power in the Middle East, in which neither Iran nor Israel will play the role of a unilateral rogue actor moving forward. Trump was sincere about expanding the Abraham Accords to include not only Saudi Arabia but Iran itself. The goal remains the same as American policy historically, in general: normalized relations between states. The only question is whether a revolution is necessary in Iran to achieve this — and, if so, what kind of revolution?
I wish to clarify my previous writings on the 2011 Arab Spring and the 2009 Green Movement crisis of the Islamic Republic as well as on the original 1979 Iranian Revolution, on the question of the form and content, the terminology and substance of “democratic revolution.” What makes the 1979 Revolution in Iran so painful is that it was a rare occasion in which there was more than a mere regime change, but a thorough-going popular smashing and reconstitution of the state. While of course some Shah elements of the Iranian state continued, mostly it was purged, and the composition of the state in the Marxist sense — the “special bodies of armed men” — was changed. As with all revolutions after 1848, however, the question is the democratic outcome or absence of this as a result.
The “Left” in Iran rightly considered the Revolution to have been hijacked by Khomeini’s Islamists, that they had been tricked by Khomeini, whom they had wanted to use as a mere symbolic figurehead for the revolution, but who took control as Supreme Leader in more than just name. This did not happen all at once, but over a process, first in the early moments of the Revolution, then as a function of the war with Iraq, in which the new power-structures of the Islamic Republic were consolidated. The initial liberal political leader, Bazargan, was sidelined and driven out of power early on. But even the subsequent Banisadr government chosen by Khomeini fell quickly as an obstacle to Khomeini’s ultimate aims. So it was not a matter of a change in political leadership masking the continuity of the state and its bases of power. There was even a significant social content to the revolution, as much of the prior Iranian ruling class under the Shah fled with him and his officials into exile.
The new Islamic Republic state established in the Iranian Revolution and consolidated and strengthened through the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s, however, soon exhibited reform impulses in the 1990s, following Khomeini’s death in 1989. By the time of the 2009 Green Movement election crisis 20 years later, it was clear that the state itself was in crisis and that mere reform was not only inadequate but impossible to achieve the necessary changes. The Iranian state has subsisted on an increasingly narrow basis since then, with periodic protests — and their repression — growing in scale and intensity, up to those of earlier this year. There has been a steady stream of middle-class emigration from Iran. Even many members of ruling class families have ended up living abroad. As with other countries, Iran exports its discontents. This hollowing-out of the state portends ominous results.
Still, Trump is cautious and conservative about seeking substantial political change in Iran, which he thinks is unnecessary to achieve his goals — the same goals as those of successive American Administrations, namely, to normalize Iranian behavior and relations, ceasing to be a “rogue state.” As usual, Trump paints a rosy picture of possibilities for Iran, if only its political leaders would choose a different course of action — a different policy. In many respects, this is realistic, as Trump seeks a regional power-balance that can contain conflicts, preventing instability and war from breaking out. There is no reason, in Trump’s mind, why Iran, the Arab states, Turkey and even Israel cannot coexist peacefully in a regional settlement of the Middle Eastern countries, putting an end to decades of dysfunction and failure. Is he wrong?
The “Left” gives specious explanations for why things have been as they are. In so doing, it is worse than the capitalist politicians, who seek action to ameliorate problems and improve conditions in ways barred to the “Left.” The “Left” is sunk in delusions where the capitalist policymakers are acting in reality.
So, what are the possibilities for more substantial change, if any? This is unclear. The long history of the past 40 years has seen the complete destruction of even the ostensible “Left” in the Middle East — with perhaps the partial exception of certain Kurdish political organizations and marginal hangers-on among Palestinians. The most powerful agents of change have come from the avowed Right, for many decades, now. The Islamic Republic political leadership is one of them — but even it is quite old and degenerate at this point.
Since 2009, the Islamic Republic has degenerated such that it has come to resemble its neighbors and other similar countries of the developing world, and increasingly lost whatever specificity it had as a result of the 1979 Revolution. It has become a corrupt kleptocracy in which its ideological legitimation has been undermined, more like Saddam Hussein’s Baathists in Iraq, and the governments of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Egypt’s Nasserite nationalist Mubarak, Syria’s Assad, etc. Degenerate nationalism was replaced by Islamism, which has itself now degenerated in its turn. Its heroic days are long past. Additionally, the youthful population of Iran today mostly was brought up after the Revolution and therefore have no particular allegiance to the status quo that would flow from having participated in bringing it about. They don’t have any particular investments in the political status quo.
The idea that the Islamic Republic will reinvent itself now as an Iranian nationalist state, after the assassination of Ali Khamenei and his inner circle, without a crisis in its power structure depends on the long history of frustrated democratic revolution throughout the world. No doubt, any democratic revolution will depend on existing state elements, even more so than in the case of the overthrow of the Shah. It seems that the transition is impossible without overcoming Islamism as an obstacle.
But there can still be a significant crisis — and change of policy, for instance in diplomatic orientation. The Iranian state has long tried to navigate world politics by avoiding succumbing to subordination to any other states. This has seemed tenuous at times, and there have been crises and humiliating episodes, but Iranian political independence has been preserved successfully for over a hundred years. Today, however, it is part of the Russian and Chinese spheres of influence, and dependent on them for survival. Trump wants them to be replaced by the U.S. instead, to become an American client, like Israel, Egypt, Turkey and the Gulf and other Arab States.
The problem is that it is precisely the radical character of the Islamic Revolution — its actual democratic (meaning, popular) character — which now threatens a deeper crisis for the Iranian state: a brittleness that goes beyond even that of the Shah’s state in 1979. It could be that the hitherto strength of the state will become a liability due to lack of flexibility.
And the global dynamics Iran faces are even greater today than in the past. The Islamic Republic might hope to balance the Russians or Chinese against the Americans, and to exploit differences among Middle Eastern states, but it is also the case that Iran, like many other countries, is actually weaker and more fragile today than in the past. The developing world was hard-hit by both the post-2008 Great Recession and the COVID crisis, which, as elsewhere, exposed deep societal deficits. That there is no movement and thus credible alternative to the existing state will not guarantee the survival of the latter but only the violence of its fall.
Trump is offering not to deliver the coup de grace but rather to rescue the Iranian state from its crisis, saving it from the fate of a further downward spiral into paranoid isolation that was perhaps always the true character and intention of the Islamic Revolution from the beginning. There are two aspects of Iran: the capitalist state; and its Islamist ideology. — Trump doesn’t think that either needs a radical change, but only a change of orientation and behavior. This is not impossible. The only question is how to achieve it.
The religious-messianic utopian fantasy of a Shia Islamic state transcending the strife of world politics in capitalism was never a viable proposition long-term. At best it served as an ideological framework that facilitated the reconstitution of the Iranian state after the demise of the Shah, for instance by integrating a rapidly urbanizing society under modern conditions better than the Shah’s state was able to do. It achieved a further basis in defending Iran against Iraqi attack. But it has long outlived this function and purpose. The only question is how radical a political change will be required to transition from the crisis of this ideology.
There is no reason why Iran cannot replicate the experience and become like Egypt, or Pakistan (itself officially an “Islamic republic”) or Turkey (with its Islamist government and ruling party), none of which is lacking independence or without differences or is otherwise in lockstep with American policy — but even those states have not been without dramatic political controversies and events of crisis in recent decades. But none of them became international pariah states with economic and political sanctions against them like Iran, as a result of their crises.
Iran today faces another. The war with the U.S. is not the cause but the effect. It is a symptom of the Islamic Republic’s terminal illness if not death agony. Iran has been uniquely isolated ever since 1979. Trump’s attempt to mediate and actively manage a transition for Iran might be ill-advised. But the crisis in Iran was and is real, with or without the war. It must be resolved based on changes within Iran. If they are inadequate, it will only be deferred — not avoided. Trump grabbing the opportunity to settle it on his watch — and how he did so — can be disputed, but what cannot be denied is that there was a real crossroads that had been reached.
Perhaps the Islamic Republic will save itself and remain alone, entrenched behind nuclear and conventional weapons like North Korea. But this won’t justify the regime but only condemn it, especially in the eyes of its own people. Perhaps the Islamic Republic’s efforts will lead to a settlement of regional and domestic conflicts in its favor, forced by resisting American intervention. Either way, it will be the end of the Islamic Revolution in substance if not in name.
Grayson Walker:[8] 1979 was a revolution of world-historical significance — yet another moment in the long arc of a world revolution begun in 1917. The actual consequence of this revolution is the emancipation of the world from one historical trajectory of modernity — defined by capitalism, liberal democracy, open society — and the invention of a sovereign form of power capable of pursuing an alternative path. What this path is is an open question, but its construction of machinery for ensuring the sovereignty necessary to assert that openness is what defines it as progressive rather than reactionary.
Lenin, reflecting on the hopelessness of the situation in 1923 — the world encirclement of Soviet Russia, its isolation as a backwards, semi-capitalist power — says that there was the opportunity to create the fundamental requisites of civilization in a different way than in the Western European powers, and that a new line of world history had been born out of the October Revolution.[9] Lenin was already anticipating that the consequences of the October Revolution were not defined.
Of course, the Islamic Republic did come at the expense of those elements that were, facially, direct results of 1917. We know the fate of the Iranian Communist Party, the Tudeh Party of Iran, and the socialist revolutionaries. We also have the dubious revolutionaries, like the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK),[10] which ended up siding with Saddam Hussein and then becoming buddies with John Bolton.[11] But that should be a challenge for us on the Left to think through its failure and to meet the moment of 1979, to learn not just from the failures of the Left but also from the successes of the Revolution, to the extent that it integrated the revolutionary tradition more broadly within an Iranian context.
The failure of the Left in 1979 was the failure of socialists and Leftists to root themselves in the people. Ali Shariati, the Iranian red Shia revolutionary, thought that Marxism was economically reductionistic and too dismissive of religion: Tudeh and other socialist groups were unrooted in the civilizational realities of Iran; they appeared as puppets of another power. He was not wrong. Since the 1946 oil crisis,[12] Tudeh had supported Soviet-backed separatists in Mahabad and Tabriz, and the Communist forces had lost all legitimacy as an anti-imperialist and patriotic alternative. They supported parliamentary motions which would have given the Soviets oil concessions in the North, not dissimilar from the British oil concessions that were fought by Mohammad Mosaddegh in the 1950s.[13] When Tudeh began anti-Shah broadcasts from Bulgaria, the Soviet Union moved them to Berlin. This discredited them immensely. Tudeh was a huge part of the 1930s, and they ruined this in the 1940s.
It was only natural that the consequences of this, and that the consequential Iranian Revolution, would fall to those who did articulate a revolutionary position from an Iranian perspective, repudiating the substantialism left over from Marxism. Marxism had lost its revolutionary essence after the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the last moment where we had a real cause: Che Guevara and Maoist guerillas. This substantialism of Marxism was the target of Shariati. Martin Heidegger was his ideological forerunner; Shariati shared his critique of technological reductionism. The holdover from Second International social democracy dismissed the ontological dialectic expressed in Engels’s Dialectics of Nature (1886), but also in Marx’s earlier work, where he explicitly repudiates the mechanistic materialism of Democritus.[14] Marx sides with Epicurus; he talks about the swerve between atomic relations: a gap of freedom which allows us to be independent from determinations. Marxism is not compatible with secularized materialism.
1979 compels us to think through modernity itself: modernity is not simply a break from the past and from tradition, but rather what happens when we get to negotiate what to do with tradition itself. Marx, in his correspondence with Vera Zasulich, was telling the Narodniks, who were struggling in a semi-capitalist society, that the Western European line of development isn’t exclusive.[15] Is this not precisely the negotiation in which the Iranians participated in 1979 through the interaction of Islamic mysticism and modernity, articulated through a Left-wing, even socialistic perspective?
In January 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini sent Mikhail Gorbachev a letter asking him to convert. Why? Of course, because Khomeini was a Shia cleric, but also because Soviet socialism lost the sauce. It was no longer a compelling vision for the world. The sense of a sacred and integrative world-historical vision for revolution was rediscovered in 1979.
To fight, we need a horizon that compels people beyond the satisfaction of base and material desires. We are trying to articulate a position that coheres the integrity of human history itself. This articulates itself differently in all civilizations. That is the lesson for us to learn: not to be Shia revolutionaries, but to articulate the revolutionary tradition in an American way.
Mateo Farzaneh: I’m now an Iranian-American because of the revolution that changed the trajectory of my country. It was immediately followed by foreign aggression: the Iran–Iraq War. My father was a practicing Shia Muslim who always made sure he did his night prayers after sundown before he drank his Johnnie Walker. Iranian society is full of contradictions. If you want to understand it, you have to appreciate those contradictions. Mine and millions of other stories in this complex society originate from a very old civilization of at least 25 centuries.
The so-called Iranian Left was composed of various Leftist ideologies including Maoists, social democrats, and communists, among others. Because the Left in general was non-religious, or even anti-religious in Iran, the hubris prevalent in the Leftist groups made them vulnerable to underestimating the power of religion in a very conservative society: Shi’ite belief, ideology, institutions, and a highly organized network of clerics not accountable to anyone other than God. The Iranian Left was super-educated. Its members were highly intelligent, nicely organized, and they were dreamy — as the Left essentially is.
The Left gave Islamists a veneer of acceptance. If they had not, the outcome of the revolution might have been very different today. They handed Iran to the Islamic Revolution, to the clerics only when they realized that the clerical establishment was far more sophisticated.
“What was the Left’s role in the Green Movement?” I did not know that the Left had anything to do with the Green Movement. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who was the ex-Prime Minister and got shafted with the elections (Ahmadinejad won) — because he was a student activist, maybe he was a Leftist. During the Movement, I went to Iran to see what was going on. There was no talk of the Left. There was talk of justice, equity, equality. And Mousavi was part of the regime. As an (Iran–Iraq) war volunteer, he would encourage everybody to go to war and die. The Green Movement wasn’t really affected by the Left, but maybe by some specks of Leftist ideology, if we consider the idea of social justice. But at the heart of Islamic teachings is this idea of social justice. Most of what Shariati talks about is about social justice, and that goes for both genders. So I don’t know if you want to call it Leftist. In Iran, the people that read Shariati came from a conservative background.
“What would the end of the Islamic Republic of Iran mean for the Left today?” Which Left? If the IR were to cease to exist tomorrow, the Left would still be challenged by a society that is sick and tired of tyranny, injustice, and the lack of freedom to organize politically and to prosper economically. If the Left wants to do anything, they need to contextualize these ideas based on an Islamic identity that Iranians identify with. The Left needs to be practical — to be realist rather than dreamy. That is the ultimate failure of the Left.
Tirdad Kiamanesh: The problem of the Left in Iran, as Mateo mentioned, is that it’s dreamy, not practical. I’m managing protests in downtown Chicago, and I have problems with both the Right and Left. Right-wing people don’t come to the protests, and Left-wing people don’t come to protests because they say these people bring in the Lion-and-Sun flag.[16] The definition of Right and Left is based on Western history and Western culture. When this comes to Iran, which is my country, it doesn’t fit. Most of the time it makes more problems. So I try to avoid that. For example, the Shah’s political policy was far Right: law-and-order, censorship, SAVAK.[17] But when it came to economic policies, he leaned toward socialism: free education and healthcare. The problem is the Left is not practical, just like before the Revolution: it didn’t matter what the Shah did; they opposed him. For example, the Shah did land reform. The Left opposed it just because it was run by the Shah. The leader of the Tudeh said, “they are trying to steal our revolution from us.” But if you want to do something for your people, that's a good policy to support!
This was their trap when it came to the Revolution in 1979. At the end of the Shah’s time, he selected Shapour Bakhtiar as Prime Minister. Bakhtiar started some reform: he dismantled SAVAK, gave freedom of speech and of assembly, and he was working on creating a free election. The Left, doing revolution for the sake of revolution, continued despite achieving lots of their demands. They were demanding things they couldn’t have imagined six months before Bakhtiar. I’m strongly opposed to saying that the Revolution was hijacked by Khomeini. The Revolution was given to Khomeini by Leftists, because they didn’t plan anything for after the Revolution. They were not creating any networks, infrastructure, or leadership for after the Revolution. Now they are just against the Islamic Regime and against Pahlavi.
About the Green Movement, I totally agree with Mateo. I was in the street; I don’t know where the Left was. It was not about the Left; the Green Movement was about the right to vote. The biggest achievement of the 1979 Revolution was the election and the vote. In Iranian elections, the system sets up everything. It’s a theater. We said, we are playing your game to achieve our minimal goals. Even with that, Khamenei cheated and chose another person. So that was a protest against the fact that we played by their rules and they didn’t accept our vote. It was not about Left or Right, but the last achievement from the 1979 Revolution and fighting to keep it. After that, our elections became meaningless.
When I was a kid, I read a philosopher who said that, “The biggest betrayal in the world is betrayal of the meaning of the words.” That’s the problem: Iranian society becomes far Right because they want to define themselves against the Left, which they think is the Islamic Regime.
Responses
CC: Grayson, you mentioned the Tudeh, the MEK. What about the Fadaiyan-e-Khalq (Devotees of the People)?[18] They were hybrid Guevara-Maoists. They were big in terms of organizing popular demonstrations, like the MEK. It’s easy to point to the Tudeh Party with respect to the accusation of Soviet imperialism, which Khomeini accused the Communists of representing, but that wouldn’t really apply to the MEK early on, and it wouldn’t apply to the Fadaiyan. That’s one wrinkle.
The other is Shariati. A lot of people in the West think that Shariati gives some kind of key to the meaning of the Islamic Republic, but the IR is Khomeini-ite — it’s not Shariati. Now, Mousavi was a Shariati acolyte, but then went over to Khomeini. That's the distinction: 1979 can’t be summarized as merely reactionary, however, Khomeini himself is reactionary. That’s pretty indisputable. Shariati is an interesting thinker, however, his vision is betrayed in the Revolution, not realized.
GW: Shariati wasn’t a direct participant of Khomeini's dramatic return, but he did play an indispensable role inspiring Leftists to make common cause with Khomeinism. Khomeini had disagreements with Shariati he vocalized clearly, but he didn’t dismiss him outright. There’s a reason for that. The other Leftists were not able to articulate revolutionary tradition in an authentic, Islamic, civilizational, Shia context. What actually compels people to fight for a cause? To realize a better world. To be able to articulate that in a way that’s not antithetical to the civilization, or the people you’re addressing. Mateo said that the Western Left and Leftist ideas confronted the Iranians as a kind of pure negation. The same negation is at work with U.S. imperialism.
Mousavi during the Iran–Iraq War state-directed a socialistic economy. Ahmadinejad pursued a kind of limited neoliberalism. Some switcheroo. But Mousavi gave way to pro-Western discourse, and that’s what has delegitimized our attempts to import Left-wing ideology into Iran.
MF: Going back to Chris, I’m not a Trump supporter, but there is more to the man than meets the eye. He feels in his head, as a negotiator, the right time to deliver. I’m going to make a prediction here: we will have peace with Iran. Israel has already been told to calm down. I was on Fox, They asked, “where are we going with this?” And I said, “We need to wait and see if Israel allows this to move forward. Then you will actually see a rapprochement.”[19]
The Islamic Republic of Iran is degenerate, but it’s going to move to a different kind of degeneracy. If it means that 92 million people will have a chance to live, I will actually agree with Trump when he does this. You might ask, what kind of revolutionary is that? But, I’m not a revolutionary — I’m a realist. If everybody plays their cards right, the Left can benefit. Why can’t we give that opportunity to the Iranians even if it’s under the banner of the Islamic Republic?
TK: The problem is that we simplify. I thought that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps[20] (IRGC) would never close the Strait of Hormuz physically. They didn’t; they just made that area dangerous, so no one sold insurance to the ships. Hegseth said it beautifully: the Strait is open if the authorities let the ships pass. Right now they are negotiating about the Strait. If they want to charge each ship $2 million, that means $90 billion per year. It controls the food chain of the world. Is it an opportunity? Is it a danger? I'm happy that the war stopped,[21] but the dangerous thing for Iranian people starts now because they’re left alone with the harsh regime that may take revenge on them. It’s complicated.
Q&A
What does the Iranian Revolution mean as a bourgeois revolution in capitalism? Marx and Engels summarize revolutions in their lifetime by saying that Napoleon III and Bismarck are “executors” of the 1848 revolutions, yet that’s the counter-revolution at the same time. In 1979, it seems like a revolution was inevitable because the global situation was one of transformation. How does it get past Marx and Engels?
GW: Modernity is what Leftists have been unable to answer in a satisfactory way for decades if not centuries in the West, in part because we haven’t had our own revolution in the West — we had revolutions in the pre- or semi-capitalist societies: Russia, China, Korea, and so on. Modernity is itself a revolution that socialism is clarifying. The context of Marx and Engels is the dissolution felt at every level in the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. Meaningful social life is being dissolved, and socialism emerges as an answer to this social question.
The Left and Right congealed in the West as useful, ontological designations. We are all Leftist, but we need to rethink what that means. Some comrades here identify as reactionaries the people who are fighting for Iranian sovereignty. Maybe they have conservative social views, maybe they are “hardliners,” but they are people who are opening the space for something distinctly Iranian which isn’t an appendage of this global system. Who can deny today that Iran is not playing a revolutionary role in world history? They have successfully resisted the preeminent imperialist power. If you define U.S. imperialism as progressive, it is reactionary. That’s the tacit understanding of most Leftists. They have a Whiggish view of history, where the Left is identified with this trajectory of liberal modernity. That is the reactionary position. The Left-wing position is to view this as a specifically European form that we can’t impose on the whole world, but this revolutionary tradition belongs to all people.
CC: Going back to the French Revolution: Left means more democratic; Right means less democratic. Socialism historically associated itself with the movement for democracy because Europe was not particularly democratic after the French Revolution.
The question raised Louis Bonaparte and Bismarck. The 20th century has been about this kind of crisis of democracy, whether in or outside of Europe. In the developing world, anti-colonial struggles were largely conducted under the banner of democracy, so the question is the popular character of a revolution that has a culturally conservative outcome. Not all mass movements in the last 200 years have been in a socialist direction. Often there have been popular movements, even democratic movements, that have called for less democracy, for law and order, for a strong state.
In terms of the Cold War, certainly the West considered the East to be not merely illiberal but also simply undemocratic. I tried to raise in my opening remarks that the 1979 Revolution is a democratic revolution. One doesn’t see a successful democratic revolution very often. Mao coming to power in China in 1949 is not a popular uprising; it’s an army. If you sideline the people, how do you get them motivated? You do Cultural Revolution.
GW: It’s mass democracy in some sense.
CC: 1979: was it hijacked, or was it true to its actual spirit? The painful part is that there was a democratic revolution. However, starting in 2009 at least, that democratic impulse was betrayed. The theology of the Guardian Council is very specific: the people of Iran cannot be trusted to merely express their democratic will, but actually need spiritual guidance and control — to be cleansed of the influence of Western imperialism. After 47 years, has Iran been cleansed of Western imperialism adequately? When will that ever be satisfactory?
MF: It’s gotten worse.
CC: Right.
TK: Before the election of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt (2012), I was talking with my friend and said Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, was going to win. He became mad, shouting at me. When Morsi won, he came to me and asked, “How did you know?” I said, because it happened in my country. If you want to win the election, a free, democratic election, you need a campaign, network, resources, volunteers. Left or Right, it doesn’t matter. After the 1979 Revolution, there was a free election — we had several free elections at the beginning. Who won that election? The religious people, because they had mosques, networks, money, and resources to win a free election. So the Revolution was not about democracy. Because society didn’t have infrastructure, parties, networks, diaspora organizations, or NGOs, the one who had the network and resources won the election. That’s how they failed and the Revolution became an undemocratic revolution.
MF: Chris, you are saying it wasn’t a democratic revolution; Grayson, you are saying it was a democratic revolution. Generally, I think we don’t have revolutions but evolutions. Societies evolve. The Islamic Revolution had its seeds sown back in 1906, because Article 2 of the constitution called for five mujtahids, clerics, to vet all the laws and not violate Islamic law. The only article that the Qajars and the Pahlavis did not invoke was that one. The clerical establishment said, “we are not going to forget this!” In my dissertation “Shi’ite Clerical Authority and Modern Politics,” I explain that clerics were modernists.[22] They said, “we are going to adopt a constitution that is identical to the constitution of Bulgaria, Belgium, and Russia, with one exception: it has to have an Islamic veneer and not violate Quranic commands.” It is an evolution that is happening, and why I don’t think things will drastically change.
GW: Chris says that the Left is more democratic and the Right is less. I would go further: the Left brings society to its premises, judged on the basis of its failure to live up to what it purports to be: a recognition of contradiction which the Right does not recognize. This is reflected in the democratization of the state. Liberal democracy is not synonymous with democracy. There is a procedural way for people to participate in the state. Even during the Cultural Revolution, which was almost anarchic, the Communist Party itself —
CC: Was the target.
GW: “Bombard the Headquarters.”[23]
Form is important. The Islamic Guardianship is analogous to the party-state form that you find in actually existing socialist states. You can say this aspect of the state is not open for negotiation because we don’t trust the people — that’s one way of reading it. Another way of reading it is that it is a form of state sovereignty which is not pretending to be something else. Do we have something so different in the U.S.? We don’t have a theocracy, but we have undemocratic institutions, not only in terms of what the Right calls the deep state.
Iran is not a socialist state constitutionally, but it is modeled on the same sovereign-state form emerging from this mass democratic movement. It is also preserving itself in the face of capitalist globality. Can you really blame a state for wanting to protect itself from the infiltration by not only intelligence agencies — the Green Movement was an instance of this — but also culturally? Blue-jeans culture seduces people away from exploration of their own Being. You need to ensure some form of state sovereignty rooted in the demos.[24]
It’s the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. For there to be a change in Iran, does there need to be an Iranian-specific idea? Both Mateo and Grayson mentioned an Iranian- or Islamic-specific idea of social justice. It seems like Chris and Tirdad agree that the Iranian people might be asking for something not specific to Iran, something more universal, and very American: freedom! Is the American Revolution for Iran, or is that American imperialism? And what should the Left tell Iranians who are asking for freedom?
CC: Beyond the Constitutional Revolution (1905–11), the big crisis in Iran with respect to democracy is the coup against Mosaddegh in 1953. Khomeini and the clerical establishment supported the coup. People forget that there was domestic Iranian hostility to Mosaddegh; it wasn’t just a British-American conspiracy. The question of democracy in Iran did pose itself, and it was resolved with Pahlavi, the Shah, in the Cold War context where the idea is that if countries don’t modernize, they’re going to be susceptible to communist subversion. Khomeini was more mature as a political actor at the time of the White Revolution (1963), which is what the Shah tries to implement in response to the demand for reform coming from outside and inside. Khomeini got his start politically against the White Revolution, against modernization.
Is capitalist modernity, especially as experienced in the U.S. and Western Europe, the only modernity that’s possible? No, of course not. The point of socialism was to allow for a different kind of modernity, perhaps many different kinds of modernity, after capitalism, which would have a different relationship to the pre-capitalist past. The question is, was that actually realized, or do you just get capitalism with an Islamist face in Iran? We might want to believe it’s Persian civilization, Shia Muslim civilization — or, it’s a capitalist state! Every capitalist state has its ideology to justify it. Do the people buy that ideology any more? It seems not. It has to do with capitalism in Iran, which can’t be turned into a matter of U.S. imperialism, because, as Mateo pointed out, if Trump is able to pull off a deal, it’s going to be with the capitalists in Iran!
MF: When Iranian friends ask, “Why can't we be like the U.S.?,” I say, “It’s taken 250 years to get here!” That freedom that people think exists, I don’t think it’s here. You have a filtering situation in elections in the U.S. called campaign finance. Whoever raises the most gets to go on the ballot. In Iran, we have the same situation: whoever can prove to believe in God, in the Messiah, and in the Vali-ye Faqih,[25] gets to go on the ballot. So we have the same filtering system. In some way, yes, capitalistic. They’re the spitting image of what we do here but in a different light. We need to notice that.
TK: There are capitalists that we call Leftist right now. That's a problem. Society says that the Islamic Regime is Leftist, but it is actually capitalist. They removed every socialist-leaning policy that the Shah created.
Iranian society, in a magical way, is like American society in terms of diversity, different languages, deep religiosity. But freedom is above democracy. Democracy could be a luxury, but freedom is what we are looking for. We are a failed nation because for 150 years we have been fighting for basic rights like justice and a justice system — that is how the Constitutional Revolution happened — and we still don't have it. So maybe we have to look at ourselves more deeply.
GW: To build on what Mateo was saying, both countries have their own filtering system, but there is a difference: in the U.S. this filtering system is money. The fact that Iranian politicians have to justify themselves on a religious basis is tied to social justice, alms for the poor, and sovereign development. The Iranian filtering system is not a capitalist one. The Iranian government has to engage with capitalism, but its logic isn’t dominated by the M–C–M’ circuit[26] in the same way as the U.S.
CC: The mullahs have enriched themselves through the Islamic Republic!
GW: But a lot of this is to evade sanctions. It also resulted in kleptocracy and corruption. This is a contradiction. The hardliners who were formed in the Iran–Iraq War have failed to pass down revolutionary lessons to the younger generations. It’s not so easy to say that they’re all simply corrupt, or self-interested. They endure grueling poverty and sanctions. You can’t take that forever, just like in Cuba. Soleimani[27] and Khamenei are not heroes in Iran, they're martyrs. At least for the regime and for a third of the population.
I’m with the Freedom Socialist Party.[28] You can’t talk about the Iranian Revolution without talking about women! Women supported the Revolution against the Shah, but ever since they have been fighting for their rights. The protests in December through January are not just a conspiracy of U.S. imperialism. Of course the CIA, the American government, and the Pentagon are always trying to demonstrate superiority over the world, but that doesn’t take away from the actual popular resistance and what the people need. Is it pragmatic to say, “It’s just not the time or place for full women’s rights”?
MF: Which women are we talking about? During the Pahlavi dynasty, the Iranian women that didn’t want to lose their hijab were held at home, were not allowed to progress. When the Islamic Republic is established, that same girl can pick up a gun, be in the bunkers with a bunch of men, and can deliver for the Islamic Republic. The IR provided that opportunity, because the great majority of Iranian women were from that class!
The diaspora does a good job to make sure that we don’t talk about the women that we disagree with. We want our women to be clean-shaven, to have makeup on, to be without hijab, whereas even today the women that are part of the security services get called out for being smelly, for not shaving their mustache, for wearing the hijab, etc.
GW: Whether the IR capitulates about the hijab is secondary and ultimately is derivative of a Western notion of what women’s liberation means, what it means to be a universally free woman. Freedom isn’t just freedom to do whatever you want; that’s meaningless. Freedom is contextually situated; it makes sense of the world for you.
CC: You could say that the Shah with his modernization program had one kind of repressive way of implementing things, replaced by another with the Islamic Republic. By contrast, in the U.S., women can wear hair coverings or not. There’s no law against it. It’s not like France: it would be unconstitutional. It’s not a simple matter; there isn’t just one image of freedom. But we can say there is freedom to have multiple ways of living.
GW: The possibility to determine that is sovereignty. The freedom to choose is a real dimension, but what contextualizes your choice is the bigger question, and that is a civilizational one, denominated politically by the “dictatorial” aspects you see of socialist polities. Just contending with freedom, unmoored from what is actually free to act, is an anti-human way of looking at things; it is a liquidation of human Being.
TK: It is mind-blowing how many women were involved in the Constitutional Revolution and even before. In 1979, women were the first to understand that it was going the wrong way, even before the Left. Women were the first oppressed group who went to the street and protested against the regime about the hijab. The hijab is not just a hijab: it’s force, a way that they control you. Indirectly, they say, “you are not adult enough to understand what you should wear and how you should behave; we control you.” This is a tool to control 50% of society.
For a long time Iranian women were okay to sacrifice this right and be part of the movement for democracy. Even during the Green Movement we were saying, “it’s just a hijab, forget about it,” and they were okay with that, because the election is more important. But after Mahsa Amini, suddenly — not suddenly — it became the main topic: that we need to free the majority of the society from this oppression.[29]
Women are the only group in Iranian history after the Revolution that could take their rights from the government! The government tried to pass more hardline laws to control the hijab, but when people don’t want to, do you arrest everyone? That is the only time that a civic movement was successful in Iran. That’s the sad story, because you can achieve something like that by social disobedience, but how are we going to protect elections or have freedom of speech by social disobedience? We can’t. This is what we learned from the Mahsa Amini movement: these things are not practical on the ground to push back the regime. That’s the reason lots of people lean more towards war and international intervention.
I’m a supporter of the Spartacist League.[30] The 1979 Revolution was not a democratic revolution; it was an Islamic revolution. It was reactionary, and the Left handed over a victory to the mullahs and Khomeini. The whole question of the Left is to win the working class and the oppressed to fight for their liberation. In 79 the Tudeh Party quickly gave up their independence and lined up behind the regime. Today, as back then, there is a common enemy. U.S. imperialism is the biggest enemy worldwide. You need to fight for anti-imperialism — a blow to imperialism wherever it is — and class struggle. There’s a big working class in Iran with a secular history who could be mobilized in their own interest. U.S. Leftists, what are you going to tell a worker or anyone in Iran to defend? You have to defend Iran to defeat U.S. imperialism. That will be the basis for your progressive path in Iran against Islamicism. There are class forces at work. Which side are you on, and how are you going to fight to bring the working class to power in Iran, in this country, and internationally?
Moderator: I invite you all with this final question to think about the prospects, historically and today, for an independent politics of the working class.
CC: “The Left is dead, long live the Left.” What's meant by the Left is proletarian socialism, a working-class base — that’s been absent for a very long time. Indeed, 1979 is part of the story of the death of the Left internationally. That it’s not actually a clear situation is deeply unfortunate. The reason for that is that there isn’t an independent, working-class, socialist movement in Iran — nor could there be. There could be here, and yet there also is not. There isn’t an independent socialist politics in either country; there because it was actively suppressed, here because it suppressed itself.
There were many Iranian students in the 1970s in the U.S., Europe, Canada, and other countries. The Left told those students, “you should get in touch with Islam,” “don't reject Islam,” “be true to the culture, the civilization, of your home country.” It didn’t work out particularly well. The account of history is not settled cheaply. We are paying the price now for things that were done in the past.
To say the war makes things clearer, “defend Iran against U.S. imperialism” — sure, of course. Oppose the war. On the other hand, what about the fact that there is significant discontent in Iran such that people could imagine that this war has some liberatory content? That’s the result of history.
You can’t just take a snapshot today, nor can you take this thousand-year view of "civilization.” It’s recent; it’s the last 50 years. And the chickens come home to roost in terms of not only mistakes but crimes of the Left. We’re paying the price for it now, and there is no simple and easy way out of it, because in both countries there is no independent Left, or even democratic, movement.
GW: This view reminds me of the slogan “Neither Washington nor Moscow”[31] —
CC: Nor Beijing!
GW: — which you and I know resolves to this purely intellectual position with no skin in the game, no risk, no revolutionary organization. It’s just constant critique.
Of course, we’re on the Left: “a ruthless criticism of everything existing.”[32] But at the same time, the Left is not just criticism; it is finding in practice, through concrete struggle with a real people, a real working class which has a real thousand-year civilization, which pulls from various traditions but which is united by this common cause that we can call socialism. Maybe Iranians call it “justice,” or they call it Shia eschatology, but this rationale motivates people beyond just economic interests.
There is a purity fetish on the Left: this idea of a Left that is purely ideational, exempt from the concrete vicissitudes of struggle.[33] We need to lose that. We need to indigenize ourselves. It doesn’t mean reducing our imaginary to what exists, but it does mean understanding that modernity is what coheres and also clarifies what is the true essence of a people’s Being. This is something an American Left will have to learn from the Islamic Revolution.
MF: Leftists are incredibly ideological, whereas they could use some corporate skills. You need to be practical: answer the email on time; take your three minutes at the board-of-directors meeting and use it to your benefit. The Left doesn’t do that! When I see Democrat politicians just bow down and leave because they don’t want to fight the mofos on the other side — use some of that! I like the ideology, but it needs to be practical. Lose the language so I can understand what you’re saying.
TK: You aren’t taking sides against the Islamic regime because you’re anti-imperialism? What’s the point of that? You’re taking the side of tyranny because your enemy is not your friend. Sometimes my worst enemy’s interest can overlap with my interest. I don’t think Israel is my friend; I don’t think Israel wants to free Iran. Israel just wants to be the only country in the Middle East that can do whatever it wants. But occasionally their interests align with my interests, and I can shut up. I don’t need to take a side.
About mobilization inside of Iran: I want to warn you that the Islamic Regime is a product of revolution. Whatever you want to do, they have already done it before, perfectly. They are 10 steps ahead of you. Do you think it’s possible to strike in Iran? All of the strategic positions are held by the IRGC. I heard two stories about strikes in the past four months: (1) They said, “If you don’t come to work we are going to shoot all of your family.” (2) They said, “We’ll send some militiamen to do the job; you don’t get paid.”
It is a complicated situation, and just repeating ideological stories cannot win people over. You should be flexible and understand the situation, try to find and give them some solution. Otherwise they are just going to go to the people who sell them dreams. Right now, international far-Right people sell them dreams, and they buy it. |P
Transcribed by D. L. Jacobs, Benjamin Katz, Anthony M., and Cristian Martinez Vega
[1] Mateo Mohammad Farzaneh, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the Clerical Leadership of Khurasani (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015).
[2] The ACP was founded in 2024 by members of the Infrared Collective, Midwestern Marx, and ex-members of the Communist Party USA.
[3] Video of the panel is available at <https://youtu.be/eENdboxmnhY>.
[4] See Danny Postel, Kaveh Ehsani, Maziar Behrooz, and Chris Cutrone, “30 years of the Islamic Revolution in Iran,” Platypus Review 20 (February 2010), <http://platypus1917.org/2010/02/18/30-years-of-the-islamic-revolution-in-iran/>.
[5] A Muslim religious leader, especially one involved in the theocratic government of Iran.
[6] Chris Cutrone, “The Failure of the Islamic Revolution: The nature of the present crisis in Iran,” Platypus Review 14 (August 2009), <https://platypus1917.org/2009/08/24/the-failure-of-the-islamic-revolution>.
[7] These remarks were published as Chris Cutrone, “Trump’s ‘not regime change’ in Iran: Name vs. substance,” Sublation (April 17, 2026), <https://www.sublationmag.com/post/trump-s-not-regime-change-in-iran-name-vs-substance>.
[8] These remarks were revised and published in Red America, the journal of the ACP: Grayson Walker, “The Marxist Position on Iran: Reactionary or Revolutionary?,” Red America 19 (May 2026).
[9] V. I. Lenin, “Our Revolution” (January 16, 1923), in Lenin Collected Works, vol. 33 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 476–80, <https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/16.htm>: “What if the complete hopelessness of the situation, by stimulating the efforts of the workers and peasants tenfold, offered us the opportunity to create the fundamental requisites of civilization in a different way from that of the West European countries?”
[10] Also known as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran; it is an Iranian dissident organization that was founded in 1965 by Leftist Iranian students opposed to the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
[11] Bolton is an American attorney and diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (2005–06) and the national security advisor during Trump’s first term (2018–19). See Ted Regencia, “MEK’s violent past looms over US lobby for regime change in Iran,” Al Jazeera (March 29, 2018), <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/3/29/meks-violent-past-looms-over-us-lobby-for-regime-change-in-iran>.
[12] Iran was occupied during World War II after the 1941 Anglo-Soviet invasion. By March 1946, Britain withdrew its forces, while the USSR delayed withdrawal, seeking oil concessions and other strategic advantages. Under international pressure and promises of an oil concession, the USSR ended its occupation in May 1946.
[13] Mohammad Mosaddegh, elected by parliament and appointed by the Shah of Iran in 1951, implemented developmentalist measures including nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which controlled most Iranian oil production. Mosaddegh was overthrown in a 1953 coup backed by the U.S. and the U.K. which re-strengthened the Shah’s authority.
[14] Karl Marx, “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature,
with an Appendix” (1841), <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/index.htm>.
[15] Karl Marx to Vera Zasulich (March 8, 1881), <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/zasulich/reply.htm>.
[16] The historical flag of Iran before 1979, commonly flown in demonstrations among Iranian diaspora.
[17] Sâzmân-e Ettelâ'ât va Amniyyat-e Kešvar (Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State), the Iranian secret police that operated during the Pahlavi dynasty; it was established in 1957 and dissolved in 1979.
[18] Also known as Sâzmân-e Čerik-hâye Fadâyi-e Xalğ-e Irân (Organization of Iranian People’s Fedai Guerrillas); it was established in 1971 and dissolved in 1980.
[19] See “How stable is the US-Iran ceasefire? Chicago professor weighs in,” Fox 32 Chicago (April 8, 2026), <https://www.fox32chicago.com/video/fmc-4aavrusg93839vor>, and Farzaneh’s other appearances on the channel.
[20] The IRGC was established in 1979 by Khomeini in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, and was given the mandate to ensure the integrity of the Islamic Republic.
[21] At the time of this panel, the U.S. and Iran had agreed to a two-week ceasefire.
[22] Mateo Mohammad Farzaneh, “Shi’ite Clerical Authority and Modern Politics: Muhammad Kazim Khurasani of Najaf and His Support of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911” (PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2010).
[23] See Mao Zedong, “Bombard the Headquarters — My Big-Character Poster” (August 5, 1966), <https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_63.htm>.
[24] [Ancient Greek] (1) A country-district, land; (2) the people of a country, the commons, etc. Regarding Walker’s thoughts on the demos and Being, see Grayson Walker, “Marxism and democracy,” Platypus Review 174 (March 2025), <https://platypus1917.org/2025/03/01/marxism-and-democracy/>. On these topics in the eyes of one of the founders of the ACP, see Ben B. and Clint M., “‘The epoch of empires’: An interview with Haz Al-Din,” Platypus Review 163 (February 2024), <https://platypus1917.org/2024/02/01/the-epoch-of-empires-an-interview-with-haz-al-din/>.
[25] [Persian] Guardian jurist or council. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, this is the supreme leader who holds absolute authority over the country, at least until the reappearance of the hidden Imam at the end of time.
[26] Money → commodity → (more) money. See Karl Marx, “The General Formula for Capital,” in Capital, vol. 1 (1867).
[27] Qasem Soleimani was an IRGC commander killed in 2020 by the U.S. and posthumously decorated by the IR.
[28] The Freedom Socialist Party was formed in 1966 when its members split from the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.).
[29] After violating the hijab law in Iran, Mahsa Amini died in police custody, leading to nationwide protests in 2022–23 under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
[30] The Spartacist League was founded in 1964 when its members split from the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.).
[31] A reference to third-campism: an orientation towards the Soviet Union promulgated in the 1930s by Max Schachtman among others in the “Old Left,” who separated from Trotsky and the “Bolshevik” Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) over the question of the USSR’s economic character and obligations toward its political defense.
[32] Karl Marx to Arnold Ruge (September 1843), in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker, second ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978), 13.
[33] See the book by one of the founders of the ACP: Carlos L. Garrido, The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (Dubuque: Midwestern Marx Publishing Press, 2023).
