There are interesting lessons to be drawn from recent developments in Iran. An overtly reactionary Muslin theocracy has been in power in Iran . There presently exists a growing reform movement that seeks to transform Iran in a secular direction. At the same time the theocratic authorities have been chipping away at the reform movement by a strategy of repression such as imprisoning many of its influential figures and closing down its print media etc. The movement for reform has its base in growing popular antagonism against the clerical regime. The reform movement constitutes an attempt to prevent this popular opposition from becoming stronger and increasingly radicalised. The reforming leadership represents an attempt to exploit and limit mounting popular opposition to establish a more clearly bourgeois regime while limiting the opposition. At the same time the clerical authorities, by seeking to limit and weaken the reform movement with a strategy that entails direct repression, hope to moderate the secularising character of programme of reform --hoping to moderate the extent to which Iran produces a secular state. The clerical authorities' strategy is not one of completely destroying the reform movement. It accepts its inability to crush reform without resorting to bloody and savage civil war in which the clergy could loose everything. It has instead confined itself to limiting the power of the reform movement to introduce reforms. In a sense this suits the moderate wing of the reform movement. There is then, in a sense, a de facto unspoken alliance between the clerical authorities and the more moderate wing of the reform movement Comradely regards George Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ Subscribe to Revcommy Mailing Community at [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---