Iran has been gripped since December 28 by a massive uprising against the country’s clerical dictatorship. The government has cut off the internet for many days now so much about the present situation remains unknown, but some reports and videos of ongoing protests in the streets, as well as of deadly repression, continue to evade the state’s censorship and reach the outside world.
The background to the protests is the worsening economic crisis in which the masses face an increasingly desperate struggle to survive – the rate of inflation has risen to over 40% with the cost of food increasing by over 60% in just the last year. So popular anger had been building for some time, and when the country’s currency suffered another catastrophic loss in late December, it proved to be the spark that ignited an inferno.
The uprising began when the traditionally conservative shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar shut their doors in protests. They were quickly joined by university students and soon the working-class and poor masses were in revolt across the country – 614 different protests have been recorded in 187 cities and towns in all the country’s 31 provinces.
Harsh economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States have certainly contributed greatly to the economic crisis. They are an imperialist weapon of war against the Iranian people that all socialists and supporters of democracy must oppose. But the country’s clerical rulers and their cronies have contributed massively to the crisis. To intensify the exploitation of the working class they have, for example, privatized many industries once owned by the state and they repress unions harshly. They have also wasted billions on reactionary adventures – their effort to keep the mass-murderer Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria alone cost the country a minimum US$30 billion along with countless lives.
Importantly, Iranians understand that the imperialist U.S. and Israel are not solely responsible for their suffering and that the clerical dictatorship and its capitalist profiteering share the blame. When the dictatorship’s own Ministry of Culture conducted a nationwide survey of the “Values and Attitudes of Iranians” in 2023, 78% of respondents agreed that “In our society, the rich get richer every day, and the poor get poorer.”
Furthermore, the masses’ understanding of their rulers’ responsibility for the economic crisis has combined with the dictatorship’s foreign policy and military debacles to produce a terrible crisis of legitimacy for the regime. Iran’s rulers spent years bragging about the power of their military but when Israel launched its genocidal war on the Palestinian people and then its onslaught against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Tehran held back from anything more than symbolic responses. And when Tel Aviv and Washington turned to striking against Iran directly, the results were humiliating for the clerical dictatorship. Israeli and U.S. military forces penetrated the country’s defenses with ease, killing much of its top leadership as well as bombing the infrastructure of its nuclear program.
Thus Iran’s ruling class and the masses they oppress both confront a political crisis they are desperate to escape and now the uprising of protest has created a classic revolutionary situation. As Lenin famously wrote:
“What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the “upper classes”, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to want” to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unable” to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in “peace time”, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the “upper classes” themselves into independent historical action.”
But as Lenin stressed “not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.” For a revolution to develop and succeed, a political leadership is necessary that can show the masses the way to victory.
The political and economic crisis in Iran that we have described makes clear that the masses need a leadership that recognizes that to defend the people of Iran, all of their oppressors must be defeated – not only must Iran’s clerical dictatorship be overthrown, but Iran’s mass struggles must become a part of the global struggle to defeat capitalism’s ‘great powers’ and especially the United States and its Zionist-state ally who are Iran’s most immediate oppressors. And the only type of leadership that can rise to meet this challenge is an internationalist revolutionary-socialist party of the working class.
In this context, and with the Iranian dictatorship and its stooges claiming the popular uprising of protest is nothing but a plot by Western imperialism, we recommend reading the following statement by The Workers' Syndicate of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company.
The Tehran bus drivers’ syndicate has organized many struggles in the interests of the Iranian working class, and its leaders continue to pay a high price at the hands of the regime in terms of imprisonment and torture. Furthermore, it has a long history of opposing imperialism, not only condemning the Israeli/U.S. attack on their nation, but also issuing statements denouncing the Zionist genocide in Gaza, for example, and opposing the recent U.S. attack on Venezuela and abduction of its president.
At a time when the Iranian masses are being slandered as agents of imperialism and their struggles denounced as a Western conspiracy, it is especially important to draw attention to such authentic voices of the Iranian working class.
The following statement by the Workers’ Syndicate of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company was first published on January 7, the day before the Iranian dictatorship cut off the internet, and no further statements by the syndicate have been able to appear on the internet. As a result, its reference to the numbers of protesters killed by the government is, in particular, out of date – the government in Tehran itself now admits that thousands have been killed (while blaming the U.S. and Israel, of course) and the death toll may be far higher.
(Originally published at: t.me/s/vahedsyndica)
Protests and popular strikes in various cities across the country have entered their 11th day. Despite the heightened security situation, the heavy presence of law enforcement and security forces, and violent clashes, the scope of the protests remains broad and diverse. According to reports, at least 174 locations in 60 cities across 25 provinces have witnessed protests during this period, and hundreds of protesters have been arrested. Unfortunately, at least 35 protesting citizens, including children, have lost their lives during the same period.
From January 2018 to November 2019 and September 2022, the oppressed people of Iran have repeatedly demonstrated their inability to withstand the prevailing economic-political relations and structures based on exploitation and inequality. These movements were formed not to return to the past, but to build a future free from the domination of capital, based on freedom, equality, social justice, and human dignity.
While expressing solidarity with the popular struggles against poverty, unemployment, discrimination and oppression, we explicitly declare our opposition to any return to a past dominated by inequality, corruption and injustice. We believe that true liberation is only possible through the conscious and organized leadership and participation of the working class and oppressed people, not through the reproduction of old and authoritarian forms of power. In the meantime, workers, teachers, retirees, nurses, students, women and especially youth, despite widespread repression, arrests, dismissals and livelihood pressures, continue to be at the forefront of these struggles, and the Workers' Syndicate of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company emphasizes the need for continued independent, conscious and organized protests.
We have said many times and we repeat it again: The path to liberation for workers and toilers lies not through the path of imposing leaders from above the people, nor through reliance on foreign powers, nor through factions within the government, but through the path of unity, solidarity, and the creation of independent organizations in the workplace and at the national level. We must not allow ourselves to once again become victims of the power games and interests of the ruling classes.
The Syndicate also strongly condemns any propaganda, justification or support for military intervention by foreign governments, including the US and Israel. Such interventions not only lead to the destruction of civil society and the killing of people, but also provide another excuse for the continuation of violence and repression by the government. Past experiences have shown that Western domineering governments do not place the slightest value on the freedom, livelihood and rights of the Iranian people.
We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all detainees and emphasize the need to identify and prosecute those who ordered and carried out the killings.