IRAN: The Leftists: A Waiting Game

(2 of 2)

Several other leftist groups are united in their staunch opposition to the government. They include the People's Fedayan, a Marxist guerrilla organization; Peykar, a Marxist offshoot of the Mujahidin; and the KUMOLEH, a largely peasant-supported party.

The militant leftists are all fighting in Kurdistan alongside the Kurdish Democratic Party (K.D.P.), which has been leading a determined rebellion against the Tehran government for more than a year. Bitter fighting last week left 1,500 Kurds, most of them civilians, and 500 government soldiers dead, prompting Khomeini to declare in an angry national radio broadcast that "Kurdistan must be combed and purged of all the antiregime elements."

The least radical of the rebellious leftist parties, the K.D.P. is led by Abdol Rahman Qassemlu, a Marxist economist with a reputation for fierce independence. Says a veteran Tudeh member: "Qassemlu prefers to be his own master—a fact that doesn't go down well with Moscow at all."

Despite its reservations about Qassemlu, the Kremlin is pressuring Tehran to compromise with the Kurdish rebels. At the same time, Moscow and its Tudeh surrogates are vocally supporting the Khomeini regime. The apparent Soviet-Tudeh strategy is to avoid a premature Communist revolution, and instead let the clerical regime crumble through its own incompetence and internal schisms. Moscow is therefore wary of the more impatient and militant leftist groups; should any of those maverick parties come to power, they would probably have to fear the Kremlin's wrath more than that of the defeated mullahs. In the words of a longtime Iranian Communist: "Moscow is willing to have any regime on its southern borders—Khomeini's, the Shah's, even Franco's." But "it will never tolerate an independent Marxist government."