CVO TALK -- for a revolutionary workers movement!

From the Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice list, Nov. 3, 2022:

A month of heroic struggle
against the Iranian theocratic dictatorship!

by Joseph Green, Detroit Workers’ Voice

It’s been a month and a half since the Iranian regime arrested, tortured, and murdered Mahsa Amini (Jina) in mid-September for wearing a hijab too loosely. Since then protests have broken out all over Iran. The police and security forces have killed over 230 protesters; over 2,000 people have been arrested; but the movement is still going strong. The government has tried to silence news of the demonstrations, carried out internet blackouts, and arrested journalists, but the discontent has spread across the country. The regime’s “Revolutionary Guards” declared that October 29 would be the last day of protests, and the protests continued. Large numbers of women have taken to the streets; many men have supported them; students at universities and schools have protested; strikes have taken place, including some in the important oil industry; the slogan “death to the dictator” becomes ever more popular; and the people have displayed incredible courage and heroism.

Why has there been such a major outbreak over the issue of the compulsory wearing of the hijab? It is because this affects the freedom of women, their dignity and self-respect. It is not just important in itself, but is a symbol of all the restrictions on women. But also, there have been struggles on one issue after another in Iran, especially in the last five years. There is such wide discontent in Iran that any outrage can start a series of nationwide protests that, whatever their starting point, ends up with slogans denouncing the regime itself.

Thus there was a wave of protest between December 2017 and early 2018 against the economic policies of the regime, but also because Vida Movahed waved her hijab on a stick in the middle of Tehran, inspiring a wave of protests against the hijab that has continued on and off until now. Then a year of general strikes and protests lasted from mid-2018 to mid-2019, including actions by shopkeepers, teachers, truckers, and others. It was followed by Bloody Aban (November) 2019, which was sparked by major increases in fuel prices on November 15. Protests immediately broke out in 100 cities across Iran; 1,500 demonstrators were killed by the regime; hundreds of banks and government facilities were attacked; and symbols of the regime were burned. Although the main uprising was put down in several days, waves of protest in solidarity with the uprising kept breaking out in Iran until mid-2020.

Soon, however, in June and July 2021, another strike wave broke out in Iran, largely in the petrochemical industry. And most recently, since September 16 this year, there is the new round of protests which has again illustrated the widespread anger with the regime as a whole. Among the popular slogans are “Women, life, freedom” and “Iran has become a detention center”.

Year after year, again and again, these protests have been met by bloody repression, and the theocratic regime has sought to hide the news of what is going on. Again and again these protests, whatever their starting point, have led to slogans against the regime. It is a struggle for freedom that has persisted in incredibly difficult conditions. Its victory would a major step forward in the struggle of the Iranian masses for a better life, and would create conditions for the development of the political life and organization of the working class. And it would likely inspire struggles for democratic freedom and against theocracy elsewhere in the region and the world.

Solidarity with the heroic women and protesters in Iran! Death to the dictatorship! Freedom for the working masses of Iran! <>

https://www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-221103.html

I know little about Iranian history but I thought this article was worth reading. It does not say support the revolution, but it has description of the history since before 1978.

https://portside.org/2026-02-22/trumps- ... dium=email

Siyâvash Shahabi's introduction the Jacobin article on Facebook:

The real anti-war politics starts by taking internal forces seriously, not by turning people into a crisis management problem. If you truly oppose war, you have to accept that the question is not just “attack or no attack.”

The real question is how a society can break out of repeated cycles of defeat when the repressive state is still united, its security forces are still solid, and every wave of protest is pushed back with a heavy price.

Warning about war, without understanding this structure, becomes just a general recommendation. It creates no responsibility for those who helped create the deadlock in the first place.

Even worse, in this self-centered narrative, parts of the Western left often play the role of a low-cost critic. On one hand, they use anti-imperialist language about the “region.” On the other hand, they repeat the old cliché that people there only react, and that every movement is either a foreign project or a blind explosion.

The same theoretical mistake appears again: moral voluntarism at the level of analysis. They think that if they take the right moral position, political reality will also move in the right direction. But politics follows power structures: unity or division at the top, capacity for organization at the bottom, and the relationship between the two.

In today’s Iran, “the regime” is not just a government. It is a ruling class that has tied together the economy, security forces, media, and networks of corruption. Its military is not a neutral tool to “protect the law.” It is one of the main beneficiaries of the current system.

This means that change from outside is not only dangerous; it almost always shapes the result. With war and intervention, the issue shifts from “freedom and justice” to “managing a new order.” In such moments, ready and controllable options rise to the top: monarchism as nostalgia for order, or a military coup as a survival strategy. Both scenarios push real social forces out of the field from the beginning.

It may be true that “the left in Iran has no chance of taking power” in an electoral or governmental sense. But that same left refuses to let the crisis be solved simply by changing faces. And for exactly that reason, it is attacked equally by Islamists, by the Pahlavi camp, and by the wider Zionist-imperialist propaganda machine. Because it reminds everyone that the real issue is the structure of power and wealth.

This is the point the West usually does not see, or does not want to see: any real change in Iran, even if it does not immediately turn into state power, can shift leftist politics at the international level. Iran is not a marginal laboratory. Because of its place in the energy economy, in the regional security order, and in the history of social movements, what happens there matters.

If a radical discourse of freedom and equality becomes politically alive again in such a society, it will not stay a domestic issue. It will affect the global left too.

It will force it to move beyond academic comfort and media games, and to face hard questions again: What does real organization mean? How does state power actually break? And what is the relationship between anti-imperialism and anti-authoritarianism when people in the same country experience both at the same time?

++ It’s ridiculous that everyone can talk about Iran except Iranians themselves. Especially when they deliberately erase the organized activists, the people who are actually involved in the protests. This is not left with a class and anti-colonial view. This is a colonial/imperial mindset that simply refuses to see the other side as a real subject.

++ I had already asked this before. If you are in contact with the editors or people at Jacobin, please pass this message on to them.

Frank: Do you have the reference to the Jacobin article?

It's the Portside interview that Tim posted and can also be found at https://jacobin.com/2026/02/protests-re ... tervention.