Social Movement
Statement by Social Movement
Background to the protests The Islamic Republic of Iran has been experiencing a wave of mass protests for over two weeks, the greatest since 2022. They are unfolding against the backdrop of a deep economic crisis, a collapse in the value of the Iranian rial, inflation of over 40%, a sharp rise in food, fuel and housing prices, and systemic corruption in the government. The situation is exacerbated by the most severe drought in Iran in recent times, exacerbated by climate change, which is causing water supply disruptions and food shortages. Added to this are political stagnation, increased theocratic control, further restrictions on women's rights, discrimination against various segments of the population, and brutal repression by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the paramilitary Basij militia.
The current protests are a continuation of a long wave of social discontent that has been growing in Iran in recent years. In 2017-2018 and 2019-2020, the country was already swept by waves of protests and strikes due to the deterioration of the socio-economic situation, rising fuel prices, and shortages of bread, water, and electricity. The symbolic starting point of the current protest movement was the killing in September 2022 of 22-year-old Kurdish university applicant Mahsa Amini, who was detained by the so-called “morality police” for allegedly wearing her hijab incorrectly. After her arrest, the girl was brutally beaten and died in hospital. Her death sparked nationwide protests under the slogan Woman, Life, Freedom, which were drowned in blood but did not break the resistance of society.
The events in Iran will have a significant impact on the whole world and our country in particular. While Putin's Russia is using Iranian drones, among other things, to terrorise the population of Ukraine and attack civilian infrastructure with genocidal intentions to put millions of people at risk of freezing without heating and electricity, the sympathies of ordinary Iranian women and men are on the side of the victims. It is telling that shortly after the start of the Russian invasion, one of Iran's leading feminists, Nasrin Sotoudeh, issued a statement of solidarity with Ukrainian women and men. Various sectors of the Iranian opposition, including the radical left, have also declared their unconditional support for Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression.
How the wave of protests began The current wave of protests erupted at the end of December last year for economic reasons. The protests began with strikes by small traders and shop owners in Tehran's bazaars, who closed their shops en masse, unable to withstand the devaluation of the rial and the decline in the purchasing power of the population. They were quickly joined by residents of the capital's working-class neighborhoods and later by university students. All this confirms the fact that popular anger will continue to erupt until the theocratic clergy's autocracy is overthrown. Within a few days, the wave of protests spread to dozens of cities across the country, from Tehran and Mashhad to Shiraz, Isfahan, Kermanshah and small industrial centers. Socio-economic demands quickly turned into open political slogans: ‘Death to the dictator,’ ‘Down with the Ayatollah regime,’ ‘Bread, freedom, dignity’ (a variation on the traditional slogan of various Iranian socialist groups, which may also include demands for housing and labour).
The class character of the protests
The current wave of protest mobilization, like previous ones, has a clearly defined class character. The protest movement is mainly composed of:
- small traders and artisans from the bazaars, ruined by inflation;
- industrial workers, particularly in the oil and gas sector and transport;
- unemployed and underemployed young people from poor neighborhoods.
- students and young teachers;
- women who oppose forced Islamisation and discrimination.
It is the working-class neighborhoods and small towns that have become the centers of the fiercest clashes with the security forces. In many regions, the funerals of killed protesters have turned into new anti-government demonstrations. The protest is increasingly taking on the characteristics of a nationwide uprising of the poor and oppressed against the theocratic oligarchy, whose regime the left-wing opposition defines as clerical fascism.
This turn of events is not surprising, given the country's long tradition of protest — and the fact that, as local anarchists noted in an interview with Spilne (Commons) magazine, “the gap between the people and the ruling elite has widened so much that it seems as if the representatives of the elite and the rest of society live in two completely different worlds: they do not speak the same language and have no cultural, social, religious or political common ground.”
The son of the deposed tyrant — a self-proclaimed ‘leader’ who has done nothing to deserve this status
Reza Pahlavi, the son of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown by a popular revolution in 1979, is presented as a symbolic figure of the protests in the media. From America, he publicly supported the demonstrators and called for nationwide strikes. Western media outlets are trying to portray him as a potential ‘shah-father’ and a unifying national figure.
However, in reality, it is impossible to imagine a more unsuccessful candidate for this role. The elderly ‘heir to the throne’ is nothing more than the leader (if not the ‘figurehead’) of one of the many factions of the very diverse Iranian opposition — as is, for example, Maryam Rajavi of the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (MEK/PMOI) and the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Moreover, the exiled leadership of both the monarchists and the former Islamic socialists of the MEK have very tenuous ties to the rebellious masses inside the country.
Therefore, not all protesters see Reza Pahlavi as a future monarch or political leader.
The question arises as to what grounds he could claim the position of head of state in the event of a democratic transition. His family's legitimacy is based on the fact that his grandfather led a brigade of cavalry and, as a result of a military coup, removed the Qajar dynasty, which itself had come to power unconstitutionally. The political regime of his father, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was authoritarian and relied on repressive institutions, similar to the subsequent rule of the ayatollahs, although it was oriented not towards an anti-Western but a pro-American course.
After the 1953 coup, carried out with the participation of Western intelligence services and directed against the center-left Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had initiated the nationalisation of the oil industry, the Shah concentrated all power in his own hands. His security service, SAVAK, became one of the key instruments of political control. In the public memory, the Shah's period is often associated with authoritarian rule, social inequality and significant dependence on Western powers. Left-wing political forces, the trade union movement, student organizations and representatives of ethnic communities are particularly critical of Pahlavi's legacy.
The Tehran and Suburbs Bus Workers' Union, one of the country's most prominent independent trade unions, has declared its opposition to the ‘recreation of old and authoritarian forms of power’ and called on protesting workers to form their own representatives and self-governing bodies. For them, the goal of the protest is not to restore the monarchy, but to overthrow the theocratic dictatorship and achieve true social and political democracy.
It is important to prevent a repeat of the situation in 1979, when, after the fall of the regime hated by all, it was the most conservative participants in the revolution who were able to reap its fruits. Since the anti-Shah uprising in Iran, there has been a relentless struggle between its driving forces — reactionary religious fundamentalists on the one hand and opposing democratic movements on the other, primarily left-wing movements, in which the labour and women's movements played a key role. The progressive Iranian intelligentsia, in particular the powerful tradition of critical cinema, was and remains on the side of the latter.
Repression and the threat of a major war
Ayatollah Khamenei's regime typically responds to uprisings with mass arrests, the use of live ammunition, torture, extrajudicial killings, and promises of widespread use of the death penalty. Iran, along with another reactionary theocracy, Saudi Arabia, is already the country that executes the most citizens per capita, and now the Ayatollahs are threatening an even more horrific number of political sentences.
Thousands of people have already been detained, with more than 2,000 violent deaths — and these are only the ones that are officially known (opposition figures have already cited figures of at least 12,000 possible deaths). The security forces do not shy away from storming even hospitals. The internet in the country is periodically shut down completely to isolate protesters from the outside world and, under the cover of internet blackouts, complete the massacre.
At the same time, there is a growing danger of direct military intervention by the United States and Israel, which may try to use the crisis to strike Iran in order to strengthen their positions in West Asia. Such a scenario of yet another irresponsible imperialist adventure carries the risk of civil war, an even more rapid increase in the number of deaths and further destabilization of the region, in particular an even more catastrophic situation for the populations of Palestine and Kurdistan. Trump is already presenting himself as an uninvited ‘defender’ of the victims of the Iranian regime, which is only being used by local propaganda against the protesters. This is all the more cynical given that he and his administration, like their Iranian counterparts, brand protesters as ‘terrorists’ and justify the killing of civilians (such as Rene Goode, who was shot by an ICE stormtrooper in Minneapolis).
Iranian protesters may find themselves caught between two fires: the theocratic dictatorship within the country and the imperialist interests of the US and Israel outside, not to mention competition for oil and resources among their closest (also anti-democratic) neighbors, such as Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait. When the far-right governments of Iran, the US and Israel are trying to make the Iranian people hostages to their games, the international left should help them assert their own agency and independence, especially while our enemies are seeking to exploit the mood to stir up anti-Muslim xenophobia or to pit support for Iranian protesters against solidarity with the victims of genocide in the Gaza Strip or war in Sudan.
Under these circumstances, the position of some circles that appeal to so-called ‘anti-imperialism’ but at the same time reject the internationalist and class perspective, replacing it with geopolitical interpretations, attracts attention. In particular, this refers to groups that previously welcomed Russia's actions against Ukraine and now show no solidarity with the Iranian labour movement, but instead tend to justify or support the current clerical regime, which is linked to local economic elites and responsible for large-scale repression against left-wing organizations.
Some representatives of these circles interpret the mass social protests primarily as the result of external interference, appealing to the activities of foreign special services. At the same time, even the current President of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, was forced to admit that the causes of public discontent are internal and related to the policies of the authorities themselves.
For democracy and liberation, not a new dictatorship
The Social Movement in Ukraine calls on the international left to show solidarity with Iranian protesters and to establish ties with workers' collectives and revolutionary students in Iran. This is not about supporting the restoration of a defunct monarchy promoted by external forces, but about fighting for the genuine democratic development of the country, which is what the oppressed and hungry people of Iran are striving for.
Iran does not need a new ‘strong ruler,’ but rather the elimination of the theocratic state, reconstruction based on self-organization, the emancipation of women and minorities, freedom for trade unions and political organizations, and decent living conditions for workers and peasants. The future of Iran should be decided not by ayatollahs, not by generals of the Revolutionary Guard, not by self-proclaimed swindlers, and not by foreign imperialists, but by the Iranian people themselves.
Today, the streets of Iranian cities have become an arena for the struggle for bread, freedom, and dignity. Its outcome will determine not only the fate of Iran, but also the balance of power throughout Western Asia.
Solidarity with the rebels is solidarity with all the oppressed!