Iran Protests

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Our interests are in conflict both with the interests of the Islamic Republic and with the anti-human policies of the U.S.–Israel. Trump, with threats and language of elimination and destruction against us, and the IRGC, with its indifference toward threats that concern our very survival—both, by devaluing our lives, demonstrate the alignment of their interests. The only remaining way to defend ourselves against these two sides of the same coin of ruin—Trump and the IRGC—is self-defense: all out protecting vital elements of survival, power plants, water … with the slogan: Down with the Islamic Republic / Yankee go home!

Abbas Goya As we feared, the war has escalated. The destruction and death are already devastating—but what’s even more shocking is seeing a group of misguided individuals flock to Washington to thank Trump. And on what day? The very day after millions across America shouted, “No King!” This is a blatant insult to the American people—a direct affront to them. That’s why these gatherings should not be happening in Washington at all. They belong in Tehran, where their "uncle Trump" drops bombs day and night. The worst among them is Reza Pahlavi, whose sole aim is to crown himself atop the corpses of the people, and held a "thank you Trump" speech at the CPAC on the very day of No King rallies. To these misguided individuals: gather, thank Trump, dance on the dead, shout whatever you want—but not in my name . To everyone else: we must not allow a tiny, misguided minority to claim our approval for war and displacements, to thank Trump for killing us, or to mock millions ...

On the eve of the Iranian New Year, security forces raided the homes of five teacher union activists and members of the Coordination Council of Iran’s Educational Trade Unions, seizing their communication devices and those of their families. On March 15, authorities targeted Mojtaba Goodarzi, a member of the Aligudarz Teachers’ Trade Association, and Manouchehr Aghabigi, a Kermanshah Teachers’ Trade Association member. Aghabigi was arrested, and his current whereabouts remain unknown. On March 18, intelligence officers raided the homes of Mohammad Habibi, spokesperson for the Coordination Council, Parvin Salimi, a board member of the Tehran Teachers’ Trade Association, and Masoud Zinalzadeh, confiscating personal devices without legal warrants or explanation. The Coordination Council condemned the raids, calling them illegal, inhumane, and a violation of teachers’ rights. The council demanded the immediate release of those detained and an end to harassment of union activists.

AI-generated videos and images are spreading faster than ever, directly tapping into viewers’ emotions. Even when obviously fake, these clips can go viral, turning complex ideas into instantly digestible visual stories. But the most effective content isn’t funny memes—it’s images pretending to show real battlefield events, often impossible to immediately verify. Tal Hagin, an information warfare analyst, has tracked hundreds of such posts on X, a platform flooded with war-related misinformation. Many of the videos claiming to depict Iranian attacks on Israel or Gulf countries are old footage, show events elsewhere, or are entirely AI-created. Since a real attack on Tel Aviv on February 28, nearly identical videos and images have been reposted daily, falsely presented as new. Hagin calls it a strategy built on a “kernel of truth” buried under a flood of lies. Social media amplifies the effect. Melanie Smith, an expert at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, notes that platforms fail to...

Abbas Goya- March 27, 2026 The above title was the headline of an article in Canada’s Globe and Mail -+ March 23, Tony Keller-- that succinctly expresses the stance of the U.S. ruling class--and the West in general--regarding the war.  Regardless of the United States’ initial objectives in starting the war, which have certainly changed, and despite the severe damage inflicted on the air and naval forces of the Islamic Republic, as well as the killing of Khamenei and several of Iran’s highest-ranking military and political officials, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and the IRGC’s missile strikes on Gulf countries have become Iran’s trump cards against the U.S. To the point that today the United States is faced with either retreat or escalation of the war to more violent levels. Trump’s farcical talk of “negotiations” with Iran can be seen in the 15-point and 5-point lists of demands from the two sides. The gap between these conflicting demands can only be measured in light-years...

Abbas Goya - March 23, 2026 Let us state the conclusion from the outset: this war is not over until its real objective is achieved. Not as the United States claims - where “victory” is defined as preventing the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons, nor the destruction of long-range missiles, nor the dismantling of drone factories. And not as the Islamic Republic claims - where “victory” is merely surviving the war. The truth must be stated plainly: for both sides, the real measure of victory is the containment and crushing of the uprising of the working masses.* The question is: have they succeeded? The answer will not be written on the battlefield, but in the streets and workplaces the day after. If the working masses - who have risen with the aim of seizing political power - are driven back into their homes, or if their struggle is diverted into alternatives aligned with U.S.-Israel interests, then it is the US-Israel-IRI who have won this war. But why is such a scenario p...

 I watched a video from a YouTube meeting of leaders of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran-WPI about the war, and it had some interesting points. I want to address it. For example, Hamid Taqvaee at one point argued that this war is very different from other wars. One side of this war is a regime that killed tens of thousands of its own people within 48 hours. In this very war, they killed someone who was the architect of that massacre. If Khamenei hadn’t been there, given the internal divisions within the regime, organizing such a massacre would not have been possible. Asghar Karimi said that we are completely opposed to nuclear weapons. But it matters a lot who possesses nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Israel also have nuclear weapons, but no government in the world has called for the destruction of another country. Kazem Nikkhah made a similar point, saying that the Islamic Republic having nuclear weapons is different because it killed tens of thousands in 48 hours. Others also hav...

Abbas Goya After Trump, Netanyahu, and the European Union refrained from supporting Reza Pahlavi as an alternative to the Islamic Republic, other warmongering currents seized the opportunity and quickly joined the registration line for U.S. options. Currently, this line includes: the Transitional Government of Reza Pahlavi | the MEK's Provisional Government | the Congress of Iranian Freedom (Iran Freedom Congress)| the Widespread Network of Women Life Freedom.

The mindset that, during the era of guerrilla movements in Iran, sought to suspend joy with the slogan “Our holiday will be the day when no trace of oppression remains,” has resurfaced this year—after the mass killings of January and amid the ongoing devastations of war—with even greater force and intensity. The prohibition of joy has nothing to do with communism; rather, it is rooted in a deeply religious, ascetic worldview. We have seen this logic clearly in the Islamic Republic—especially during the Iran–Iraq War and in the ongoing conflict with US-Israel: “We have given martyrs—Chaharshanbe Suri is forbidden,” “Postpone weddings until after the war,” “Do not celebrate birthdays,” “The families of the martyrs are in mourning, so, tighten your hijab,” “Do not laugh loudly; it adds salt to their wounds.” In short: joy is suspended, vitality suppressed, adornment prohibited; in a word, life itself is put on hold. Today, this same mindset is being reproduced, regrettably, even by some w...

From a Marxist perspective, power is defined as the ability to control the means of production. In political terms, it refers to the capacity to lead and regulate the actions and decisions of a society or state. Legitimacy—understood as the acceptance of a power structure’s rightfulness—stands in inverse relation to the use of coercion: the more legitimate a government is, the less it must rely on force to maintain control. By the same logic, the power of the working class is rooted, first and foremost, in its ability to exert control over the process of production. Politically, as the influence and leadership of the working class expand within society, so too does its capacity to resist the coercive mechanisms of the state. Since the state itself is a highly organized and unified apparatus, the ability of workers to assert their will depends directly on their own level of organization. Restating these seemingly self-evident points is important. It reminds us that even where interests ...

  Abbas Goya — March 16, 2026 We now know that contrary to the mistaken assessment of the United States and Israel, the Islamic Republic did not collapse following Khamenei’s death. That assessment viewed the Islamic Republic as a collection of rival factions held together solely by the “glue” of Khamenei. Accordingly, his removal was expected to create an un-fillable power vacuum. The prevailing assumption was that, after his sudden death, competing factions would enter into a violent conflict for power. The United States, by backing a “moderate” faction, would then tip the balance in its favor; the Revolutionary Guards would submit to a “clerical leader”; and ultimately, the U.S. and Israel would coexist comfortably with a tamed Islamic Republic. It must be acknowledged that this assessment was not limited to the governments of the United States and Israel. Sections of both the right and left opposition to the Islamic Republic—broadly speaking, bourgeois forces—shared a similar u...

Abbas Goya – March 2026 Introduction The outbreak of the Iran–Iraq war became a pretext for rolling back the gains workers had achieved from the 1979 revolution. During the war, wages gradually declined, eventually falling even below their 1979 level. The current war of the United States, Israel, and the Islamic Republic against workers must not be allowed to become another excuse for fixing wages at several times below the poverty line. What Determines Workers’ Wages? For centuries, this question has been at the center of the conflict between labor and capital. Economists often try to answer it with formulas and calculations, but in reality wages are determined by something much simpler: power . Where workers are organized and capable of collective action, wages rise. Where they are weak or unorganized, wages fall toward the level of bare subsistence. The concept of the minimum wage is the dominant capitalist framework for determining wages. Unfortunately, even many socialist labor a...

 Coordinating Council of Teachers' Trade Unions (CCITTA) @CoordinatingA #Exclusive 🔴 Field Report from the Capital; Ten Days After the Start of the War Tehran under Siege: Crushing Inflation, War Conditions, and the Helplessness of Its Citizens It has been ten days since Tehran, the city that never sleeps, has fallen into an unsettling silence. The streets are emptier than ever, and the shop shutters are down. Here, life and the economy no longer function; the only concern is surviving until tomorrow morning. In days when anxious people need safety and shelter more than anything, the face of the city has strangely turned military-like. In the main squares and crossroads, vehicles for repression and the heavy barrels of machine guns are on display. The numerous checkpoints across the province cast a heavy shadow of fear over the few tired and anxious passersby. It seems that before we worry about the sky, we must be afraid of the streets of our own city. Under this volatile sky, an...

  Abbas Goya - March 3, 2026 If we replace the formula "U.S versus the Islamic Republic” with "U.S and the Islamic Republic versus the workers,” access to the full truth becomes possible. In Iran’s political lexicon, the phrase “Guadeloupe Conference” signifies the engineering of a transfer of power over from Shah to Khomeini by the United States. Replacing the Shah with Khomeini meant that US's alternative to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) itself. If we trace the love–hate relationship between the U.S and the IRI over the past 47 years, no fundamental change is visible. The same Jimmy Carter who eased Mohammad Reza Pahlavi out of Iran and extended support to Khomeini later lost the presidency to Ronald Reagan over the hostage crisis. The same Islamic Republic that made “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” central to its identity, cooperated with both Israel and America during the Reagan era.  Around seven years ago, “ The U.S.–Iran skirm...

Abbas Goya - March 1, 2026 In addition to the three components previously outlined in "A Socialist Position on the War ” — namely, the support of a section of society for a U.S.–Israel attack on Iran, the so-called Twelve-Day War, and the January uprising — one must point to another catalyst that has played a decisive role both in the Twelve-Day War and in the formation of the current military offensive: Trumpism. Trumpism is not a predetermined doctrine; rather, it is Trump’s method of governing and a set of spontaneous practices within the framework of ultra-right politics. They do not belong to the conventional methods of either the Democratic or Republican parties. The constituent elements of Trumpism are not even pre-defined for Trump himself. Its defining features, however, include “deal-making” in place of diplomacy, bluffing and lying to a pathological degree, threats, impulsive, and unpredictable conduct. Such behavior may be ordinary and routine in the marketplace of bus...

Abbas Goya - February 27, 2026 War propaganda by the United States and Iran in the current period does not differ in any meaningful way from similar episodes over the past two decades. The positions adopted by most political organizations, so far as I have examined them, are likewise largely the same as those they took in earlier confrontations. Broadly speaking, three main approaches can be distinguished: 1. Supporters of War One spectrum -- composed of monarchists, the MEK, republicans, pro-Western liberals & social democrats, and sections of Kurdish nationalist forces -- openly defends the prospect of “war.” These currents advocate “regime change” from above, without relying on the direct and organized power of the people themselves. The Worker-Communist Party of Iran (WPI) adopts essentially the same position, albeit expressed in different terminology under the banner of the “overthrow movement.” It evaluates military action positively, on the condition that U.S. and Israeli st...

Abbas Goya - February 24, 2026 I'm not sure, as some on the left claim, that the right-wing has put all their eggs in the basket of "people's desperation" to use it as an excuse for their agenda, namely, military intervention by Israel and the U.S. Iran International, on January 23, quoted Reza Pahlavi as saying, "The regime is desperate and is trying to buy time." On the other hand, the BBC reported on February 15 that "Prince Reza Pahlavi, referring to the desperation of the people in the face of severe repression, believes the only way to help is to weaken the Islamic Republic's repression machine (the IRGC and military forces)." So who is desperate, the regime or the people? Instead of interpreting this subjectively, let’s look at the facts. Gatherings of over 150,000 people in three cities—Toronto (50,000 people), Munich (60,000), and Los Angeles (40,000)—were remarkable and significant. (The governments of Canada, Germany, and the U.S. fa...

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Esmail Bakhshi Q: In the face of what capitalists and the state do, what body do workers have for discussion and decision-making, for organizing and responding? Esmail Bakhshi*: They have no [organizational] body at all. Whatever effort we made to form a powerful council in Haft Tappeh—so that from within Haft Tappeh we could raise many issues for all workers in Iran or represent their voice—were destroyed. Unions like the Haft Tappeh and the Vahed Syndicate [Tehran Bus Company Workers’ Union] were suppressed as much as possible; they were weakened and their members were imprisoned. We have no institution or body [of workers] to organize us, or where we can sit together and discuss, or that can represent the united and independent voice of all workers in Iran. We don’t have one, because we were not allowed to. Do you know why? Because workers make up the largest segment of Iran’s population. If we had such an organization, we could eas...

Abbas Goya- February 22, 2026 If we consider the main cause of the uprising of workers in Iran to lie in chronic poverty, widespread job insecurity, the absence of any prospect for a dignified life for youth, repression of freedoms, structural inequality, and gender apartheid, then it can be said that what is visible between the Islamic Republic of Iran and monarchist currents—beyond their rhetoric of love and hate—is a kind of strategic and class overlap. Monarchism is not merely a pressure group; it is a political project with a specific agenda. If, in their gatherings, there is no sign of a demand for the release of political prisoners, no promise—even a token one—of public welfare, nor any defense of equal rights, no promises of freedom, or the elimination of oppression, this absence is not accidental. Such demands have no place in their project. They have one clear objective and nothing more: the almost intact transfer of the Islamic Republic’s state apparatus—especially with all...

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Esmail Bakhshi*:  People are truly exhausted by the ruling establishment and the Islamic Republic. They say there is no way out, but I say there is. We should organize and take the power of labor away from the government. We haven’t tried this yet. They say we’ve tried every path. But we haven’t tried this one: without bloodshed, without violence. Do you understand? However, the country’s situation is such that people have become so desperate—first, because of the economic conditions; second, because of the unjust oppression by the Islamic Republic over issues like hijab, ideological matters, and many other unrelated topics that put pressure on people. Unfortunately, there are also groups that have sold illusions to the public. Many people say, “Let the United States and Israel strike—nothing could be darker than this.” I’m not judging whether that is right or wrong. I’m describing society as it is. People have doubts in their hear...

On the occasion of the 40th day marking the deaths of thousands of dear lives lost in January 2026 at the hands of the Islamic Republic, Danish trade unions and the Danish women’s community, while condemning the killing of the Iranian people by the regime and expressing solidarity with the people of Iran, have declared their sympathy and solidarity with the families of those killed and arrested and have called for the immediate release of all detainees. It should be noted that Amnesty International Denmark, women’s organizations, trade unions, and left-wing parties are organizing broad campaigns in various forms in support of the people of Iran. Among them, nine organizations—including Amnesty International, a trade union, a women’s organization, and socialist parties—organized a demonstration on January 25 in cooperation with the Women–Life–Freedom Committee in Denmark. So far, four trade unions and the Danish Women’s Society have issued statements to commemorate the 40th day of the f...

As international support for Iranian teachers and labor activists continues to grow, the Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF/FCE) has sent an official letter to the Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations expressing its solidarity with teachers, students, and union activists in Iran. The letter condemns the widespread violence and repression and emphasizes the strong support of Canada’s teaching community for Iranian teachers’ struggle for freedom, education, and democracy. The full text of the letter follows: February 11, 2026 Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations Subject: Standing in Solidarity with You Dear members, officials, and leaders of the Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, My name is Clint Johnston, President of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF/FCE), representing more than 370,000 teachers and education workers across all provinces and territories of Canada. I am writing to convey a message of support...

Abbas Goya When I first heard the news of the brutal killings on January 8 and 9, I involuntarily turned to the person beside me and said: “Anyone — even Trump — if he overthrows the Islamic Republic, I would not oppose it.” These words were spoken by someone who considers himself a staunch communist. I do not offer them as a justification. They were not a political position; they were an expression of personal despair — of utter desperation. For countless reasons already discussed, it is clear that in the foreseeable future no mass movement — without “external” backing or without a qualitative transformation in its forms of struggle — is capable of overthrowing the Islamic Republic. By “external” force, I do not mean foreign states, but the world’s socialists and workers. Such intervention would only become conceivable if workers and socialist activists in Iran could demonstrate that they are a viable force on the country’s political stage. I do not ignore Kurdistan in this equation. ...