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Right before the new year, a revolt broke out in Iran. The country has seen some of the most important mass mobilizations in recent years — by some estimates, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest the Khamenei regime, particularly in response to inflation. Protesters have been met with intense repression, with thousands killed, and far more injured and arrested.
The uprising comes on the heels of years of protest waves from 2017 to now, including the 2022 mobilizations against the murder of Mahsa Amini. Imperialism is also a key piece of this context. The Iranian economy has been decimated for years by crushing sanctions — imposed by both the U.S. and European countries alike — which have been devastating for the working class. President Trump has intensified these attacks on Iran, but they’ve been sustained through bipartisan consensus and international alliances: Democrats, too, have pursued these devastating strategies to “pressure” the country.
Trump, for his part, is couching his threats against Iran as being about “human rights” and “democracy.” In reality, as we have explained, “the U.S. is motivated by imperialist interests rooted in Iran’s strategic weight as a resource-rich regional adversary within a period of U.S. decline and increasing inter-imperialist rivalries.”
This aggressive stance isn’t limited to Iran or the Middle East. As we discussed on our last podcast episode, Trump is also waging an offensive against Latin America, particularly Venezuela. And here in the United States, the same repressive apparatus is being used to discipline immigrants and social movements — like the recent murder of Renee Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis.
So, what’s the way forward for Iran?
The current Iranian regime isn’t an innocent target of imperialism — it’s a ruling-class force trying to preserve its own power. President Masoud Pezeshkian has imposed austerity measures and brutally repressed the Iranian working class. Restoring Reza Pahlavi, backed by Trump and other imperialist powers, would only mean total subordination to imperialism, plunder of Iran’s resources, and exploitation of the Iranian working class.
Instead of liberal reforms from above or regime change imposed from the outside, the Iranian working class must play a central role. It can intervene, organized and independently, against both the current regime and imperialism. Using tools of the working class, like a political general strike, it can bring down the regime and avert the restoration of a puppet monarchy.
A victory for the Iranian working class would reverberate across the region, including in places like Palestine, and it could be the foundation of genuine democracy, inseparable from the socialist reorganization of society.
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The post #AllThatsLeftPod: The Struggle Against State Repression and Imperialism in Iran appeared first on Left Voice.
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