Iran on the Brink?

Ashley Smith: What precipitated the current uprising in Iran? What kinds of people, classes, and social groups have joined the movement? Has it extended to Iran’s national minorities, especially the Kurds? What kinds of actions have people organized? Is it mainly demonstrations? Have workers taken strike action?

Houshang Sepehr: To answer your question, one must take into consideration two distinct factors, conjunctural factors and structural ones.

I’ll begin with the conjunctural factors that sparked this movement: the sharp fall of Iran’s currency, the Rial against the dollar, which further fueled already runaway inflation. That affected broad sections of society and pushed the situation to a boiling point. It went so far as to drive the bazaar merchants— who for decades were a pillar of the Islamic Republic and loyal to the clergy and the state—to protest.

In response to the downturn in business and the instability that makes any economic activity unpredictable, a segment of Tehran’s merchants went on strike and marched through the bazaar. These protests quickly spread to students at universities in Tehran and other major cities, triggering the closure of these institutions. In these cities, the working class staged demonstrations. Significantly, barely a day after the bazaar merchants went on strike, the regime retreated and granted all of their demands.

With that, the merchants called off their participation in the struggle. But workers continued because their grievances were deeper. One of those was anger at the government’s decision to end subsidies for fuel and many basic goods as well as its abolition of the preferential currency exchange rate for imported goods. These triggered a sudden rise in food prices, making it hard for people to afford to put food on the table.

However, this uprising has much deeper roots than these immediate causes. Structural factors, which have made life unbearable for large segments of the population, have played a major role in the emergence of this movement. The regime’s neoliberal policies have produced unimaginable levels of social inequality. Paltry wages bear no relation to the skyrocketing prices of basic necessities. Workers face extreme job insecurity. There is widespread unemployment. Everyone is experiencing social insecurity. And, when anyone dares speak out or protest, they face brutal state repression.

What was particularly striking at the outset of these protests was the prominent role played by people in smaller cities. They suffer greater economic deprivation. The protests gradually spread from these to the major cities. Given the geographic breadth of the protests across Iran, national minorities were also widely present. From Kurdistan to Baluchistan, people joined the nationwide protests. The protests were largely confined to demonstrations, which, prior to their bloody suppression, at times also led to clashes with the state’s forces of repression.

There were also strikes. These came out of a wave of job actions. Workers’ strikes and street demonstrations — along with those of other segments of the labor force — around trade-union and economic demands have been occurring on an almost daily basis across Iran. Just a few days before the bazaar merchants’ strike began, six thousand contract workers in the Assaluyeh oil and gas industries organized a major, historic action demanding the abolition of the contracting system.

Almost every sector of society has been in motion. For instance, in Tehran, while public demonstrations were taking place in several neighborhoods, retirees in other parts of the city continued to stage weekly street gatherings. As the movement grew, they joined the wider protests that engulfed the city.

AS:What are the main economic and political grievances that people express? Are there any unifying demands?

HS:This uprising was crushed with brutality before it could reach the stage of articulating “positive” demands. In this uprising, slogans rejecting the Islamic Republic and the existing order predominated from the outset. The people’s common and unifying demands were expressed in slogans such as “Death to the dictator,” “Death to Khamenei,” and “We do not want the Islamic Republic.”

Radio Zamaneh conducted a study of videos of demonstrations in the first six days of the uprising. They found that the above slogans accounted for 65 percent of the total. Economic demands, which had been the initial trigger of the protests, were limited to 14 percent. Slogans in support of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed monarch, such as “Long live the King” or “This is the final battle, the Pahlavi will return” made up 20 percent of the total.

Slogans calling for the monarchy cannot be considered demands. Many who chanted them did so out of the absence of a political alternative. They view the situation, in their own words, as a choice between the bad and the worse. This does not, of course, mean that there are no monarchist supporters among the protesters. There are. That said, we should also remember that various forces from the regime to elements of the opposition have used AI to doctor videos to advance their particular political aims.

But the most important point is that the slogans have been negative, not positive. People know what they’re against, not what they’re for. The uprising has therefore lacked a clear horizon and a concrete social and political alternative to the existing situation. It has remained confined to rejecting the status quo. Thus, the most common, unifying slogan was for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic with little sense of what to replace it with.

AS: What are the political groupings and class organizations trying to influence the direction of the struggle? Have any kinds of democratic formations developed to coordinate the protests and strikes? What are the main debates in the movement?

HS: The uprising was suppressed before it took organizational form with contending political alternatives. Of course, all existing political currents in the opposition have sought to influence the uprising, but not all of them have equal means to exert this influence. For example, mainstream Iranian social media abroad have sought to present the son of the deposed Shah as the instigator and leader of these protests and as the country’s future leader. Persian-language television channels such as Iran International and Manoto, which are largely funded by Israel, have highlighted his role. So have the BBC and other major international media outlets.

The Israeli-backed media and international broadcasters have enormous funds, operate around the clock, and can influence people. Other opposition political formations — from the Left to republicans, nationalists, the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK),and others — also attempt, through their more limited media platforms, to steer the protests in the direction they favor. But their reach remains very constrained.

Republican and nationalist organizations emphasize opposing the restoration of the monarchy, stress the necessity of national independence, and opposing imperialist intervention. Progressive forces in all their diversity oppose the monarchists, which are far-right, support the U.S. and Israel, and call for their intervention. Abroad, they challenge the influence of MEK, which collaborates with Western imperialists.

Left-wing organizations focus primarily on the nature of the future political system. Some insist on parliamentary democracy, while others advocate council (soviet) democracy. There are disagreements between them not only over the future form of Iranian society, but also over how to conduct the struggle itself. Some argue for peaceful methods, while others advocate confronting state repression with force up to and including armed struggle.

Most of these debates are carried on outside the country. Inside, we (partly due to the internet blackout since January 8) have little sense of the debates. However, it is natural to assume that all these currents are vying for organizational and political influence, even if they are still in embryonic form.

AS:How does this uprising compare to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement? How does it compare to the Green Movement? Is there continuity between the current uprising and previous ones? What lessons, if any, have people drawn and put into action today?

HS:The continuity between the current uprising and previous uprisings (at least over the past eight years) lies primarily in the structural causes that led to all of them— the expansion of inequality, poverty, the difficulty of making a living, despotism, and the repression of individual and social freedom.

The main difference between the current uprising and “Woman, Life, Freedom” in 2022 and “Bread, Work, Freedom” in 2018 is the absence of positive slogans and demands. These two earlier uprisings had clear slogans and demands. The one in 2022 was focused on demands for women’s liberation, targeting the patriarchal, theocratic character of the government and agitating for individual freedom and lifestyle choices. The one in 2018 focused on economic demands. Today’s uprising is like the one in 2018, protesting against the deterioration of economic conditions.

In the 2022 uprising, although all social strata—except the large bourgeoisie—participated widely, including workers, wage earners, and the working masses, the leadership of the movement was primarily in the hands of the young urban middle class. In the current uprising, while all social classes are present (including parts of the bourgeoisie, such as the bazaar’s  merchants), the working class and laboring people are more prominent. The participation today of small towns and rural villages also distinguishes it from previous uprisings. Despite these differences, the common feature of all these uprisings is the demand to get rid of the Islamic Republic regime in its entirety.

These recent uprisings are different from the 2009 Green Movement. It began with the slogan “Where is my vote?” that challenged the regime’s totalitarian tendencies and sought reform, not the overthrow of the regime. Factions of the system’s establishment were present in and partially led the movement. By contrast, in the recent movement, no part of the establishment has broken with the regime.

AS:How has the regime responded? What is it likely to do in the face of such a widespread uprising? Does it still retain bases of support? What are the class and social bases of that support? Can the regime mobilize them in defense of its rule?

HS:This uprising has faced the harshest repression the regime has employed in its 47-year history, only comparable with the bloody repression of the Kurds in the early 1980s. The scale and forms of this violence and massacre are so extreme that they leave little room for any other action. Even after the slaughter of thousands of people, the regime continues to arrest people in large numbers.

Naturally, the government can rely on its institutional structures like the military forces such as Army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the Basij, its paramilitary Islamist militia. It also has a base of support among social strata that depend on it economically. These include managers and bourgeois elements tied to the regime through foundations as well as the financial and commercial institutions of the Revolutionary Guards and religious centers. The military forces of repression (the Basij and the IRGC) were created to defend the regime and continue to serve this purpose. It is estimated that this support includes roughly ten percent of the population.

AS:What about the loyalty of sections of the regime? Are there any splits? Any divisions between the military brass and rank and file soldiers? Are there any establishment forces capable of tilting toward sympathy to co-opt and neutralize the struggle? Or is the regime united in repression of the protests?

HS:So far, no rift has been observed within the regime. Even within the military forces, there has been no defiance of orders among its lower ranks. It should be noted that in the recent repression, in addition to the Basij and the IRGC, regular law enforcement and police forces were also involved. There is no force within the ruling system that sympathizes with the protests. None are trying to absorb or channel the movement. The huge state apparatus remains intact, and the regime is united as a whole in suppressing the movement at any cost.

AS:What impact have external players like the U.S., Israel, and monarchists grouped around the Shah’s son had on the movement? How do the various layers involved in the struggle view these states and especially the monarchists? What do activists think of Trump’s threats to intervene?

HS:With the internet cut off, it is not possible to answer this question precisely. However, it seems that the boasts of the former Shah’s son and Trump’s threats toward the regime have been believed to some extent by a portion of the protesters. The calls by the Pahlavi family and Trump’s encouragement to confront the forces of repression have had some effect, but the failure of Trump’s threats to materialize—especially after the brutal suppression—has left part of the population disillusioned. Given the horrific repression and the absence of any organized opposition within the country, it is not surprising that some pinned their hopes on Trump.

AS:What do you say to those on the international Left that dismiss this uprising as just another “color revolution” triggered and manipulated by U.S. imperialism and its allies like Israel?

HS:First, this is a completely mass-based, independent, and genuine uprising, arising from the accumulated anger and exhausted patience of the people in response to all the social and political injustices. It is also an expression of profound opposition to the Islamic Republic, which has repressed the popular classes for nearly 50 years.

Second, those international left factions you mentioned are the “campists.” They reduce all politics to geopolitics and explain the protests almost entirely based on the positions taken by states from the U.S. to Israel and Iran. Since the U.S.or Israel seek to exploit the situation, campists judge the movement to be reactionary or manipulated. They see protesters as the conscious or unconscious instruments of imperialism.

In this view, the starting point is no longer the real people’s lives and their hardships—not inflation, not economic insecurity, not austerity, not repression, not despotism, not class struggle—but rather the games of alliances and rivalries between states. This perspective erases internal social contradictions and, in doing so, renders any possibility of self-organization and class autonomy impossible.

It is natural that imperialist powers seek to exploit the crises of their rivals or opponents for their own advantage. But this fact cannot serve as an excuse to deny the real material suffering and popular protest of people crushed under economic austerity, inflation, and repression. By reducing everything to geopolitics class-based critique is sidelined. Ultimately this approach can end up defending the worst repression under the banner of anti-imperialism.

The perspective described above—“campism” or “the anti-imperialism of fools”—stands in contrast to another strand of the Left that uncritically praises and sanctifies everything that happens in the streets. In this view, any popular anger is automatically considered progressive. Criticism of slogans or the prevailing direction of the movement is deemed impermissible; any critique is either labeled anti-movement or dismissed as elitist. Yet the street is never a neutral space; it is always a field of struggle.

There is no guarantee that the orientation of any social movement will always be emancipatory. When the Left and class-based politics are properly absent, other forces fill the vacuum. In such a situation, simplistic, nationalist, or reactionary monarchist discourses can hijack entirely legitimate social anger and struggle.

Ultimately, these two opposing interpretations respond to the same underlying issue: the absence of an organized, class-based political alternative. One restricts politics to the states; the other leaves it to the spontaneity of the streets. In both cases, the possibility for popular anger to be transformed into a conscious, collective project is lost.

This sorrowful situation is the product of a deeper crisis within the Iranian Left—a Left that has become disconnected from workplaces and the concrete realities of people’s lives. As a result, geopolitics and media take the place of on-the-ground work, since they are less costly and less risky. In this way, class-based politics retreats, leaving the field open to dominant narratives, whether those of the regime or of its reactionary opponents.

AS: What position do you think the international Left should adopt toward this uprising?

HS:In line with what was answered in the previous question, there is not the slightest doubt that the international Left must show absolute and unconditional solidarity and empathy with this uprising. Of course, such solidarity does not preclude criticism.

AS: The Middle East and North Africa and indeed much of the world have experienced waves of uprisings without mass democratic organization and without rooted left-wing parties and organizations. This has meant that the uprisings found themselves prone to being co-opted by reactionary forces or crushed by the state. How are Iranian radicals wrestling with these challenges?

HS: This is a valid point. Popular movements and uprisings that emerge from deep-seated grievances all demand an end to the existing oppression and hardships. They are united in rejecting and negating the status quo. However, they naturally differ over alternatives they propose and the means of pursuing them. In other words, these movements themselves are a site of political struggle.

As I noted above, in the absence of progressive political and social alternatives from the Left, such uprisings are either vulnerable to co-optation by reactionary forces or subject to repression and defeat. Iranian radicals must strive to lead these movements toward progressive alternatives and clarify how this can be done. Yet, due to the absence of organized leftist, class-based forces in the country, their efforts face significant obstacles and challenges.

AS :Where is this revolt headed? What impact will it have on regional and international politics?

HS: This uprising is in a state of flux. Many possibilities lie ahead. It may quickly rise again, or it may sink into a prolonged period of dormancy—especially given the unprecedented massacre it has suffered. At present, it has subsided due to this heavy repression.

If it succeeds, that is, if the Islamic regime is pushed back and imperialist schemes are neutralized, it would have a profound impact on the balance of power in favor of workers and all progressive social strata in the region and internationally. And it would deal a serious blow to political Islam in the world.

Moreover, it would serve as an example for other liberation movements across the region and the world. Unfortunately, under current conditions, we are far from this scenario. On the contrary, in the event of the movement’s failure, whether the Islamic Republic remains in power or an imperialist scenario prevails, the consequences would be catastrophic for the entire region and the world.

This piece first appeared in Tempest.

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