We declare our solidarity with the mass protests that have swept Iran in recent days. These are the latest in a cycle of protests that began with the Green movement of 2009-10 and embraced, most recently, the Women, Life, Freedom demonstrations of 2022. Today economic grievances and the political rejection of the Islamic Republican regime have fused. These protests are entirely justified by the denial of basic democratic freedoms and the growing material deprivation suffered by the mass of the population. We demand an end to the savage repression the protesters are suffering.

We refuse the temptation to view this movement solely through the lens of geopolitics. The Iranian regime presents itself as a steadfast opponent of US imperialism. At the same time, however, as it is shooting down thousands of demonstrators, the regime is seeking negotiations with the Trump administration. It has always striven to carve out a space for Iranian capitalism within the Middle East and globally.

Equally, however, the Iranian people cannot put any trust in the Islamic Republican regime’s geopolitical opponents. Military intervention and covert operations by the same US imperialism that has just brutally violated the Venezuelan people’s independence, and by the genocidal Israeli state will not bring liberation and democracy to the people of Iran. The US bears a heavy responsibility for the economic suffering of the Iranian people through the increasingly severe sanctions it has imposed on the country. It should be a warning that the Zionist entity is seeking to rehabilitate the heir apparent of the Pahlavi dynasty that ruled Iran so brutally till it was swept away by the 1978-9 Revolution. Trump and Netanyahu – Hands Off Iran!

The Islamic Republican regime wears the mantle of the Revolution, but it betrayed it, hollowing out democratic forms, driving women back into a subordinate role, and crushing the workers’ self-organisation central to the overthrow of the Shah. The protest movement can advance if takes up the real agenda of the Revolution – the liberation of workers, women, and all the oppressed peoples in Iran, both from dictatorship at home and from the US and its Zionist watchdog abroad.

Working-class organisation has still to recover from how it was crushed after the Revolution. But it is present in the current movement. This is shown by the position taken by the Tehran busworkers. The development of the protests into a broad-based movement for real democracy will depend on workers beginning to exert their power through mass strikes. Through this action they can rebuild their own organisations and increasingly play a leading role in the struggle, as they did in 1978-9.