Iran Protests

 Abbas Goya Note: What follows is an excerpt from a discussion among socialist activists regarding the January uprising. If we analyze the wage earners who rose up in the January uprising solely through a narrow, interest-based lens within the workers' socialist framework, their presumed long-term objective would be the establishment of a socialist state through the political expropriation of capitalism. Yet when we examine the actual composition of the population, the slogans raised, and the immediate unfolding of events, this claim appears excessively imaginative and far removed from reality. And indeed, it is. What bridges the gap between imagination and reality is not spontaneity but the subjective political factor: political activists, both as individuals and as organized forces. Politics is their terrain — and it is not the exclusive domain of socialists. It is no secret that Western ruling classes, through coercion, and manipulation, attempt to install their preferred altern...

After forty-seven years of living under an inefficient, corrupt, and violent system of governance, the people of Iran—still reeling from deep collective trauma—have once again taken to the streets to reclaim their fundamental rights to life and human dignity. As in the past, the state’s response has been bullets, repression, and unrestrained cruelty. Nearly half a century into its rule, the Islamic Republic remains incapable of meaningful dialogue with its people. Its only tools are hollow slogans and propaganda. Once again, the authorities attempt to conceal the shame of these crimes through familiar narratives of “foreign interference”—a worn-out and failed tactic used since the 1980s. These claims no longer convince even the regime’s remaining supporters. In less than a single week, one of the bloodiest episodes of repression in Iran’s contemporary history has unfolded. Thousands of women, men, and children have been killed, and many thousands more have been arrested and are now bei...

 Nasser Asgary With its open and unrestrained repression on January 8 and 9, the Islamic Republic has effectively demonstrated that it has reached a historical dead end. It no longer possesses any means of survival other than mass violence. This level of brutality is not merely an expression of strength; it is an admission of political impotence and an official declaration of systemic bankruptcy. Can Iranian society—or global public opinion—accept the continued rule of a system whose logic and mode of governance belong to an anachronistic pre-modern world fourteen centuries old, and which has survived into the twenty-first century only through repression? The answer is no. Iranian society, in my view, is preparing for a final, nationwide confrontation—a struggle to determine the ultimate fate of a structure that seeks survival through bloodshed. Leadership All forces that today seek revolutionary change—across the political spectrum, including those who look toward foreign interven...

To those on the Left who speak fluently of genocide, apartheid, and colonial domination, this letter is addressed to you. There is a spectacle unfolding within segments of the self-proclaimed radical Left that would be laughable were it not so morally disfiguring. With righteous fury, you denounce the siege of Gaza, the expansion of West Bank settlements, and the normalization of far-Right ethnonationalism. These condemnations are justified. Yet when that same analytical machinery encounters the Islamic Republic of Iran, a clerical state consolidated through mass executions, sustained by routine imprisonment and torture, and enforced through gender apartheid and religious policing, the machinery suddenly stalls. What follows is evasion masquerading as sophistication. Your failure is epistemological. It reveals a mode of analysis in which power is condemned only when it wears the recognizable insignia of Western Empire. Domination exercised by non-Western actors is treated as theoretica...

  BBC News Persian  Stories of the Victims of the January 2026 Protests 27 January 2026 The protests that swept Iran in January 2026 were marked by an unprecedented and widespread use of lethal force by the Islamic Republic. Numerous reports indicate that security forces deliberately targeted protesters with live ammunition, resulting in the deaths of thousands across cities nationwide. Severe internet shutdowns, restrictions on international phone calls, and threats against the families and friends of those killed have made it extremely difficult to document these cases. Despite these obstacles, the BBC’s fact-finding team has been able to confirm and collect testimonies from a limited number of families. This report tells the stories of protesters who left home and never returned. Through the voices of their loved ones, it recounts their final moments, their dreams, their hobbies, and the reasons that drove them to the streets — from a father who joined the protests ...

Statement by the Syndicate of Bus Drivers of Tehran and Suburbs  Condemning the Massacre of Protesters Once again, the oppressed people of our country are mourning their children. This time, the killing of protesters opposing the economic and social policies of the Islamic Republic has been broader in scale and more horrific than the street killings of the 1980s, as well as the crimes committed in January 2017, November 2019, and September 2022. The profound shock that has gripped society does not stem from surprise—we have long known the brutality and savagery of the regime’s repressive forces—but from the rulers’ decision, taken without hesitation or restraint, to massacre thousands of the children of this land. This crime marks the definitive end of any remaining hope for reform within the regime, even for the most optimistic and deluded. Once again, the regime has demonstrated its utter disregard for the lives of the people and their children. How can such mass killings be carr...

Abbas Goya As Donald Trump stated, the United States has moved a “huge fleet” toward Iran. The reason for this escalation is not, as often claimed, a response to the killing of protesters by the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) or to promote regime change. Rather, it is a response to a far more dangerous threat for both Washington and Tehran: the uncontrollable uprising of the hungry and the dispossessed.   To understand the current confrontation, one must examine the political and social developments of the past few years. Despite the brutal suppression of the 2022 protests—sparked by the killing of Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating mandatory hijab laws—the Islamic Republic was nonetheless forced into retreat. Through the sheer power of mass resistance, the enforcement of compulsory hijab effectively collapsed, and women’s freedom of clothing became a de facto reality in many public spaces. This victory transformed the political climate. Over the past three years, Iran’s streets h...

 Abbas Goya ·      According to the Gaza Health Ministry, from October 7, 2023, until the ceasefire that led to the hostage exchange, approximately 71,000 people were killed in Israeli attacks over nearly two years—an average of about 95 deaths per day. The highest reported death toll occurred on March 18, 2024, when the Gaza Health Ministry announced that around 400 people were killed in a single day.   ·         As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME. So many people were slaughtered by Iranian security services on that Thursday and Friday.   ·         Israeli and Iranian rulers are equally brutal.   The silence of pro-Islamist leftists in the West amounts to tacit support for the genocide perpetrated by Iran ’s rulers!

Abbas Goya Between IRI Massacres and U.S. Militarization:The Current State of the Workers’ socialist Movement in Iran Abbas Goya – January 25, 2026 Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has been a central site of a powerful anti-government socialist movement. Until the brutal repression of June 20, 1981, this movement was openly and widely active in factories and neighborhoods, schools and universities, public spaces, and the streets. Following the repression of 1981, socialist activity continued along three main paths. First, political activists retreated to Kurdistan in the face of IRI’s massive crackdown and subsequent tens of thousands of executions. Its radical tendency formed a communist party, and in its defense, joined the existing guerrilla warfare against the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) in Kurdistan. The worker-socialist tendency however criticized and dismissed guerrilla warfare from within. They eventually retreated to the Western countries where they established political org...

Abbas Goya - July 2019 Although the following text belongs to an earlier moment, its historical background and analytical framework may still resonate with non-Farsi readers and shed light on what is unfolding today Introduction The current conflict between the United States and the Iranian government has once again escalated into full-scale war propaganda. Both states openly claim that the “option of war” or “military attack” remains on the table, while simultaneously emphasizing—often rhetorically—the desirability of de-escalation. The United States call on Iran to return to the negotiating table and at the same time deploys its war fleets to assert leverage. Iran , for its part, declares that it is unwilling to negotiate for the time being, instead attempting to buy time through provocations such as attacks on oil tankers or hostage-taking, so as to enter negotiations from what it perceives as a position of strength. What is unfolding is yet another episode in the forty-yea...