What is happening in Iran today is not the product of a singular moment of economic crisis or a temporary political tension. When the statements presented below are read together, they clearly remind us that this process constitutes a line of rebellion stretching over many years—one that returns each time it is suppressed and that, on every occasion, draws in new social layers. The high cost of living, the erosion of wages, repression, and humiliation are not problems of today alone; even if we take the shortest possible timeframe, they emerge as the common ground of the past fifteen years.
This compilation seeks to make the current moment of uprising in Iran intelligible through four different statements that speak directly from within this process. Written by the workers’ movement, left and socialist forces, retirees, students, and various social groups, these texts should not be read as isolated or disconnected calls, but rather as different faces of the same historical crisis.
All power to the councils!
(The text included in this section is a statement issued on January 11, 2026, by the Arak Workers’ Councils, formed by industrial workers in Arak. The statement declares that the strike has gone beyond demands over wages and is now directly addressing the question of power and governance.)
“To the workers of Markazi Province, to our comrades in Khuzestan, and to all the people of Iran.”
For decades, our demands for bread have been answered with bullets, and our demands for dignity with prison. But today, the silence has come to an end. We, the workers of Arak’s factories, declare the following:
Workplace control: From now on, the management of the Machine Manufacturing Company, AzarAb, and Wagon Pars factories will be in the hands of workers’ councils elected by the workers themselves. We no longer recognize managers appointed by the state or the regime’s puppet unions.
Connection with the community: Our strike is no longer about wages. We call on the citizens of Arak to form neighborhood councils to manage security and logistics. Our factories are your protection.
Defense of soldiers: We call on our brothers in the army: do not become the killers of your own fathers. If you stand with us, our councils will guarantee the safety of you and your families.
Ultimatum to the regime: Any attempt to forcibly enter the industrial complexes or to arrest our representatives will be considered a declaration of war against the entire city. If a single drop of workers’ blood is spilled, the flames of uprising will leave no trace of power behind.
We are not here only because of unpaid wages. We are here to decide how this factory and this country must be run. The era of employers and clerics has come to an end.
All power to the councils!
Defending the Workers’ Movement and Socialism Is an Urgent Necessity
(The text included in this section was written by labor activist Reza Shahabi, a member of the Syndicate of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company. Dated January 4, 2026, the statement draws attention to the urgent necessity of a class-based defense in the face of attacks on the workers’ movement, the left, and socialism.)
At a time when the workers’ movement, the left, and socialism are under an organized assault by the right, fascist forces, and warmongers, class-based defense is not merely a conscious choice but an immediate responsibility.
Following the publication of my recent note (on Instagram), I have received numerous responses and reflections from fellow workers, social activists, and comrades from different backgrounds. A large portion of this feedback has emphasized the importance of the central aim of my note—namely, the necessity of defending the independent workers’ movement, the left and socialism, and freedom- and equality-seeking movements under current conditions. These are conditions in which such movements are increasingly subjected to deliberate attacks, distortion, and sabotage by right-wing, fascist, and monarchist currents—attacks that are often accompanied by overt or implicit support for the military actions of the United States and Israel. As the recent example of the U.S. military attack on Venezuela illustrates, confronting these warmongering, anti-worker, and fascist forces constitutes a vital and urgent component of the class struggle.
Alongside these responses, I have also received critiques from some dear colleagues and from concerned labour and student activists with diverse orientations and backgrounds. Disagreement and critical engagement are a natural and necessary part of the existence of the workers’ and socialist movement, and when pursued in a spirit of collective reflection and clarification, they can contribute to deepening debate. However, criticism that ignores the context and purpose of the text, whether intentionally or not, misdirects its aim and, rather than strengthening dialogue and comradely exchange, undermines the possibility of constructive and meaningful engagement.
It should be clear that my brief note was neither a theoretical manifesto on socialism nor an attempt to synthesize debates concerning political organization, class formation, or the strategic horizons of the workers’ movement. As an anti-capitalist worker and a defender of socialism, I have articulated my views and critiques over many years of practical struggle, in different contexts and forms, and I will continue to do so.
The specific purpose of that short text was to underscore the necessity for workers, oppressed and protesting people to stand alongside workers’, leftist, and socialist movements, as well as freedom- and equality-seeking movements, against a wave of reactionary slogans, campaigns, and degenerate discourses that seek to discredit the left and socialism within popular protests or to equate them with authoritarian forces—specifically the Islamic Republic. This includes violent and diversionary slogans such as “Death to the three corrupt: the cleric, the leftist, the Mojahed.” The intended audience of my text was the working class and people who, under intense economic and social pressure and relentless state repression, are simultaneously subjected to a barrage of propaganda from right-wing and authoritarian currents within the so-called opposition.
My remarks are also addressed to some of my dear and hardworking trade-union comrades who oppose what they call interference by leftist and socialist currents in independent workers’ organizations. We have discussed this issue many times and have consistently agreed that an independent workers’ organization must be transparently and decisively independent of all employers, managers, capitalists, and state institutions. That said, the anti-capitalist critique that the overwhelming majority of our coworkers—whether they identify as leftists or socialists or not—have arrived at through their lived experience and workplace struggles is fundamentally rooted in socialist principles. At the same time, this does not mean interference by specific groups or parties in the internal organizational affairs of independent workers’ organizations. The current weakened state of workers’ organizations in the country is primarily the result of ongoing repression, dismissals, threats, imprisonment, the all-encompassing brutality of the ruling capitalist system, and the absence of well-established traditions of mass workers’ organizations—not the influence of leftist or socialist tendencies.
It is clear that workers and labour activists may hold diverse political tendencies and party affiliations. Nevertheless, I believe that we can build independent workers’ organizations with an anti-capitalist and socialist orientation while, at the organizational and structural level, remaining independent of all political parties, based on a clear constitution and transparent decision-making mechanisms. Part of my previous note was directed precisely at this necessity: the direct, conscious, and organized intervention of workers and the oppressed in determining their own fate and in resisting capitalism and anti-worker, power-seeking forces. This emphasis is rooted in the lived experience of workers’ struggle and resistance to right-wing assaults—not in any illusion about the reformability of capitalism or in denying the necessity of left political parties.
Likewise, the emphasis on the “leadership and maximum participation of workers” refers to the direct, conscious, and organized involvement of workers and the oppressed in shaping their own destiny. It means that workers should not serve as the foot soldiers of other classes, but should be present—as a conscious class—as the determining force shaping the direction and horizon of social and class struggles, exercising a leading role. For me, this is a concept deeply rooted in the anti-capitalist and socialist tradition, oriented toward establishing social relations in which exploitation and oppression have been abolished. Moreover, for us anti-capitalist working-class activists, references to “justice,” “freedom,” and “equality” have always been understood in this same light. They have never been merely legal concepts confined to existing laws or to purely economic and trade-union struggles, but rather the direct product of collective struggle from below. Historical experience demonstrates that under relations of exploitation and wage slavery—whether in this establishment or in any other form of capitalism—no form of justice, freedom, or equality can be lasting unless these very relations are fundamentally eradicated.
It is evident that debates over the role of organizations, the necessity of organization, and the challenges facing the workers’ and socialist movement are essential and unavoidable—especially at the present moment. I hope that these discussions will continue within workers’ organizations and among emancipatory and socialist movements, in appropriate spaces and platforms, in a healthy, comradely, and forward-looking manner.
Long live the struggle against poverty, high prices and inflation! Forward to the revolution!
(This text is a call for solidarity with the Iranian people’s recent mass protests, published on December 31, 2025, by the Council for Cooperation of Iranian Left and Communist Forces (Shoraye Hamkary). The statement addresses the spread of street actions, state violence, and possible attempts at diversion.)
In recent days, a wave of mass protests has erupted in a number of Iranian cities. These protests, which began on Sunday, December 28, 2025, following an unprecedented rise in the value of the dollar and a sharp increase in prices, combined with a combination of protests by businessmen and people from Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, spread to Jomhuri Street in the early hours and then to other areas of Tehran. The current new wave of protests, which is rooted in the general dissatisfaction of the masses, the people’s livelihood difficulties, the skyrocketing inflation, and the meager wages and rights of workers and laborers, continued on Monday and Tuesday and has taken on wider dimensions by spreading to cities such as Isfahan, Mashhad, Karaj, Hamedan, Qeshm, Kish, Mallard, Mamasani, and Kerman.
The rapid spread of popular protests from Tehran to other cities, along with slogans against Khamenei and the Islamic Republic, and the rapid support of students at Tehran and other universities in the country, reflects the pent-up anger and disgust of the working masses who are no longer willing to tolerate the crimes of the Islamic Republic. An authoritarian and reactionary regime that has suppressed the Iranian people for many years, imposed poverty and deprivation on them, and spent billions of dollars from the hard-earned money of workers and laborers on waging war, expanding its proxy forces, and nuclear facilities. A corrupt and oppressive regime that, despite all the poverty and misery it has imposed on the workers and laborers of Iran, has responded to society with unlimited repression and any protest movement with arrests, imprisonment, executions, and killings. As in the past two days, in order to disperse the protesting masses, it has thrown tear gas at them, surrounded universities, beaten protesters, and in some cases even shot them.
The growing protests of the Iranian masses in the past few days have clearly shown that not only have the killings, executions, imprisonments, and arrests of the past years not been able to stop the oppressed people from fighting to get rid of the poverty, misery, and discrimination imposed on them, but they have once again taken to the streets with slogans of “Death to the dictator,” “Death to the Islamic Republic,” and “Long live freedom,” turning the streets into their battlefield with the ruling reaction. More importantly, with the formation of a new wave of protests, the militant students of Tehran’s universities have also linked the university campuses to the street struggles of the people from the very first hours of the street protests by chanting slogans such as “no Pahlavi, no leader (supreme leader), democracy and equality,” “Women, Life, Freedom,” and “The student dies, but will not accept humiliation.”
Meanwhile, a few seemingly monarchist forces – perhaps security infiltrators – are trying to divide and disrupt the current protests of the Iranian people, as in 2022, by attending some of these gatherings and chanting slogans in favor of Reza Pahlavi. Therefore, it is necessary that women, youth, and progressive forces accelerate the current growing protests while rejecting and isolating these neo-fascist policies, along with exposing the fascist actions of Israel and the right-wing television channels such as “man-o-tou” and “Iran International” which spread deepfake videos by falsifying and dubbing videos of street protests. The masses of the Iranian people should also expand popular protests by joining the ranks of street struggles as much as possible, strengthen their struggle unity even more than before, and distance themselves from those who try to create division by infiltrating their struggle ranks.
More important than the street struggles of the working masses and the solidarity of the militant and freedom-loving students with their struggles in the past days is the formation and spread of labor strikes and their connection with the street struggles of the masses of the Iranian people. A rightful demand that the street movement and the student movement should demand from the Iranian working class in these decisive days. Undoubtedly, if the workers of Iran in these decisive days in factories and service institutions unify their scattered strikes, stop the wheel of production, and rise up united and unified to organize nationwide strikes, then surely this time it will be the workers, women, and the broad masses of the Iranian people who will celebrate the victory of the revolution on the ruins of the Islamic Republic.
Down with the Capitalist Regime of the Islamic Republic
Long Live Freedom, Long Live Socialism
Worker Organizations, Retirees, and Social Groups in Solidarity with the Popular Uprising
(This section contains a joint statement of solidarity published on January 3, 2026, by workers’ organizations, retirees, and various social groups (Retirees’ Union – Kermanshah Electricity and Metal Association – Don’t Execute! – Seekers of Justice – Contracted Oil Workers’ Protest Organizing Committee – Unofficial Oil Workers’ Protest Organizing Committee – Nurses’ Protest Coordination Committee – Voice of Iranian Women). The text outlines the ongoing process, seen as a continuation of the 2022 uprising, and presents the main demands.)
We stand at one of the most decisive moments in our contemporary history. What is unfolding today in the streets, strikes, and nationwide protests is a continuation of the 2022 uprising—an uprising that began with the slogan Woman_Life_Freedom and exposed institutionalized discrimination, systematic humiliation, naked repression, and structural poverty. This uprising made clear that society is no longer willing to continue living under this unjust order and its imposed conditions.
The stronghold of compulsory hijab has been breached, and we have declared that we will not tolerate sexual and gender apartheid. We have declared our revulsion toward superstition and our refusal to bargain away human dignity. When the response to our demands was bullets, prison, and execution, we stood firm and, with the cry of unity against poverty and corruption, declared that we will not relent until our unfinished revolution is victorious.
Today, in fidelity to that same pledge and covenant, we have taken to the streets and cry out: Freedom, Freedom, Freedom.
Today we have come out not merely for bread, but for life; not merely for survival, but for human dignity, and for a humane future.
Runaway inflation has broken the backs of the majority of the people. Wages and salaries that fall far below the poverty line and the subsistence basket; predatory privatizations; rent-seeking; the existence of multiple mafias; repression, prison, and execution; and warmongering policies have pushed people’s lives to the brink of collapse. Society has reached a boiling point, and nationwide protests are the direct reflection of this critical condition.
Bazaar merchants (Bazaaris), as the barometer of this collapsing economy, have entered the field through their strikes.
Today’s protest is a protest against a parasitic billionaire class that has driven people’s lives into ruin. The issue is not merely the astronomical price of the dollar or inflation; the issue is the entire structure that tramples on our human dignity every day. It is this very condition that has brought everyone—from Generation Z to retirees who cry out daily, “Livelihood, dignity, our inalienable right”—into the streets.
Today we—workers, teachers, nurses, retirees, students, women, and all long-suffering people—take to the streets city by city and raise the cry for freedom and equality.
How long should we suffer from poverty? How long shall we endure this slavery? How long should we stay captivated in the grip of contractors and the water, electricity, and health mafias that, in alliance with power networks, grow fatter by the day while people’s lives are destroyed more each day?
How long prison, execution, hijab decrees, and repression patrols?
We have no quarrel with the peoples of the world, nor do we need nuclear enrichment or proxy forces. It is these policies that have broken the people’s backs.
We, the organizations and signatories of this statement, consider ourselves an inseparable part of this nationwide uprising and, in unison with the slogan Woman, Life, Freedom, declare our full support and solidarity with the ongoing struggles of the people for freedom, welfare, justice, and human dignity, and demand the following points:
- We stand united and resolute against state repression and killing, and we stand alongside the justice-seeking families of those who have lost their lives. Protest is our right. We will strive with all our strength for the freedom of all detainees of popular protests and all political prisoners, and we demand an “Iran without executions.”
- In support of nationwide strikes, together with our families we will bring gatherings to city centres and make the ranks of street protests ever stronger.
- Against attempts to sow division, we will unite our ranks with the slogans ‘Unity, Unity, Against Poverty and Corruption’ and ‘Death to the Dictator’, and, in unison with the people of Zahedan, we will shout: ‘Now is the time for unity; now is the time for revolution’.
- A seven-hundred-thousand-toman subsidy is no answer to poverty imposed by wages many times below the subsistence basket. Do not speak of an empty treasury. The astronomical budgets of repression forces, proxy forces, and inefficient religious institutions must be cut. The billions of dollars in wealth held by ayatollahs, the privileged offspring of officials, and ruling gangs must be returned to the people to be spent on people’s lives—reducing the costs of bread, gasoline, and more.
- We need no leader, and we reaffirm that our demand is to end a century of exploitation and despotism and to build a society in which a plundering minority does not decide people’s fate over their heads.
The resolute continuation of protests, the expansion of strikes, vigilance, and unity are the guarantees of our advance and the realization of our suppressed aspirations. We will continue on the path we have chosen with strength, and through our unity and solidarity we will put an end to this slavery, poverty, humiliation, and inequality.
As last words
When read together, these three statements make it clear that the uprising in Iran cannot be explained solely by today’s economic indicators. This social movement, which has taken different forms since 2009 and erupted again in 2017, 2019, and 2022, points to a historical contradiction that keeps reemerging whenever it is suppressed.
Therefore, the uprising in Iran cannot be understood through the geopolitical calculations of imperialists, nationalist clichés, or monarchist nostalgias. As the texts above clearly show, this movement draws its strength from its own social experience, its own poverty, and its own memory of oppression and resistance. This is precisely what cannot be extinguished.
The US and genocidal Israel are also intervening in this uprising and attempting to exploit the Iranian people’s rebellion to reshape Iran according to imperialist plans. While Pahlavi calls for US intervention, the Iranian state characterizes these actions as foreign interference and suppresses them. In response, the uprising, with the slogan “Neither Pahlavi nor the leader,” has shown that it cannot be reduced to these dynamics.
As seen in the call from the workers’ council in Arak, the uprising has begun to move beyond mere protest; it is starting to select a path that claims the right to govern.
The issue is to organize the indomitable uprising and turn it into a socialist revolution.
