The Current State of the Workers’ socialist Movement in Iran

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 organizations. Throughout this period, the organized socialists kept the banner of workers’ socialism alive, exposing and confronting the IRI wherever they operated.

Second, the workers’ movement inside Iran faced far harsher conditions. Workers’ councils were dismantled; activists were arrested, forced into exile, or killed. Independent organization and strikes were banned, while multiple surveillance mechanisms—including Islamic labor councils—were imposed to maintain fear and control in workplaces. Job security was eliminated, blank contracts became widespread, historical minimum wage increases approved in 1979–1980 were revoked, and working conditions deteriorated sharply. Despite these repressive police-state conditions, on the ground local leaders of the socialist movement managed to organize workers through public assemblies, organize International Workers’ Day commemorations, call for strikes over unpaid wages and demands for higher pay, and continued resistance to the IRI.

Third, the socialist movement expressed itself through broader social struggles: defending women’s equality and organizing March 8 (International Women’s Day), advocating for children’s rights through initiatives such as the Snowman Festival, and participating in student movements. These movements were particularly militant in Kurdistan, which never fully submitted to the IRI. Activists consistently upheld workers’ socialism stands through May Day events, protests, and strikes.

Beginning in late 2017, Iran witnessed the first public, direct, and immediate reemergence of an anti-capitalist socialist workers’ movement since the suppression of June 1981. This movement explicitly aims for political power via overthrow of the IRI and establishment of a socialist, council-based government. The socialist workers’ movement once again emerged as the central axis of all major political conflicts in Iran, including the confrontation between the U.S. and the IRI over the nuclear issue.

Because of the latent and actual power of this movement, Western governments—particularly the U.S.—do not seek the overthrow of the IRI. Indeed, they do not even desire serious destabilization of the regime. Rather than opposing the IRI, the U.S. and the West function as its class allies in confronting and suppressing the current socialist workers’ movement in Iran.

Up until June of last year, the IRI’s nuclear capacity constituted a red line for the West within its broader support for the deeply reactionary movement of political Islam—a movement whose rise and consolidation of power is significantly owed to the West.

The IRI’s brutal massacre of protesters on January 8–9 this year has provided the U.S. with a significant opportunity to try to contain the protests and pressure the IRI furthur for its transformation to a conventional (capitalist) state. Positioning itself as the “good cop” under the banner of restoring human rights, U.S. military mobilization strategy seeks to contain the workers’ movement in a country of nearly 90 million people—one that, as Fukuyama has observed, is marked by a “social revolution boiling beneath the surface.” This strategy which thus far relied on prolonged, corrosive economic sanctions is now aimed to alter the setup of rulers in Tehran, likely in favor of “moderate Islamists”. It must be emphasized that even without sanctions workers’ lives were already crushed under severe economic pressure of the IRI. Sanctions compounded this hardship in two ways. First, shortages of basic necessities drive astronomical price increases. By December 2025, inflation reached 50 percent. Medicine shortages have had potentially fatal consequences for patients. Second, the IRI exploits sanctions as a pretext to intensify its assault on workers’ most basic living conditions. Displaying shamelessness characteristic of the billionaire clerical elite, the IRI rulers even called for the legalization of forced labor. Workers are thus crushed from both sides: by the IRI’s exploitation on one hand and by the constraints imposed by U.S.-led economic sanctions on the other.

As it did in June of the previous year, the United States may once again pursue a limited military strike, this time with the objective of containing the revolutionary situation by reconfiguring the IRI, as the likelihood of the workers’ movement seizing power and overthrowing the Islamic Republic becomes ever more evident.

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