Iran Protests

 Abbas Goya - April 17, 2026 Behrooz Farahani:“They [the Islamic Republic] should revive the same previous complexes with the same trades that existed in them. A war economy situation should be declared, and the government should roll up its sleeves, and this will, in fact, rejuvenate the existing constructions and the infrastructure that has been destroyed. How can Iran possibly stand on its own feet without petrochemicals, without the Mobarakeh steel plants, and without companies producing urea and chemical fertilizers?” Response: Yes, it is possible, Farahani, Mr advisor to the Islamic Republic. Workers in Iran, despite the very existence of oil, petrochemicals, Mobarakeh steel, and fertilizer industries, have been driven into poverty. Today, many of them live far below the poverty line; grave-sleeping, street-sleeping, car-sleeping, homelessness, and marginalization have become their reality. What can keep workers on their feet is neither the reconstruction of production sector...

 Abbas Goya - April 17, 2026 If the Achilles’ heel of the 1979 revolution was the absence of an independent socialist party—free from the influence of the Soviet Union or China—then the revolutionary uprisings of the past decade in Iran have been suffocated by the complete absence of such a party. The uprisings of 2017, 2019, and 2022 came and went without even a single genuine step toward forming a working-class party. The result? Nothing. Absolute zero. Even worse, these uprisings failed not only to attract a new generation of workers to socialism, but even existing organizations have weakened, lost momentum, and retreated. This is not merely an objective setback—it is a political dead end. Why? The answer is clear: two reactionary Tudehist tendencies have weighed down every communist effort like lead. The first is a direct continuation of the anti-worker tradition of the Tudeh Party and its offshoots; the second is a so-called “new” variant, no less degenerate: a worker-averse t...

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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...