There can be no doubt about the reactionary character of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since seizing power in 1979, it has strangled revolution in the name of “revolution”; crushed workers and toilers in the name of defending the “oppressed”; beaten, jailed, and humiliated women while imposing compulsory hijab⁽¹⁾ in the name of protecting “our culture”; and gagged society—banning speech, assembly, and organisation—in the name of fighting “abnormalities.” Not a single day has passed without this regime conspiring against the masses in general and against the working class in particular—whether through open terror, bloodshed, prisons, and executions, or through its parliament and its four-year electoral circus designed to manufacture consent.

And yet, the crimes of the Islamic Republic do not absolve its enemies. Not a single day has passed without the United States and Europe attempting to claw back the imperialist privileged position they enjoyed under the Shah’s dictatorship. Their methods are as predictable as they are cynical: direct military aggression⁽²⁾, sanctions that strangle ordinary working people, political interference, media manipulation, and the constant manoeuvring around protests and uprisings.⁽³⁾ Far from “liberating” anyone, these efforts have repeatedly strengthened the very regime they claim to oppose. The failure to bring Iran neatly back into the Western imperialist order has instead opened the door for other imperialist predators—Russia and China—to play the “Iran card” whenever it serves their own interests.

There can be no doubt, either, about the legitimacy of rebellion against the existing conditions. When people rise against poverty, repression, and humiliation, they are right to do so. But what must be met with absolute scepticism—and fought relentlessly—are the ready-made narratives that are imposed on these uprisings by the left and right wings of capital. These narratives are not neutral explanations: they are weapons. They are designed either to smother revolt at birth or to divert it into channels that serve ruling-class objectives.

By obsessively foregrounding secondary issues—real and painful as they may be—these forces conceal the root of the crisis: the crisis of capital itself. They work to erase the class content of the struggle and to bury the material foundations of mass anger beneath moralistic slogans, media spectacle, and manufactured symbolism. The most recent uprising in Iran has exposed this process in full view. Every reactionary faction—internal and external—has tried to hijack it, weaponise it, and steer it toward its own ends.

The regime’s barbaric repression is proof enough of the Iranian bourgeoisie’s terror of the masses. But the timing of the uprising and the way it unfolded raise serious questions. The pattern suggests not a purely organic eruption, but a calculated intelligence operation involving the CIA and Mossad: a deliberately engineered currency collapse used to ignite social unrest, followed by infiltration, provocation, and the insertion of violent elements to poison the movement and justify state repression. In this light, the idea that this uprising represents the thirteenth day of a war is not paranoia—it is a sober political assessment.⁽⁴⁾

Crises, the Murderous 30% Interest Rate, and Currency Manipulation

For more than two decades, high interest rates—sometimes reaching 40%—have scarcely provoked the opposition’s attention, let alone its outrage. In fact, both the opposition and large sections of the public have been trained to treat this catastrophe as “natural,” as if it were a law of physics rather than a deliberate instrument of class rule. The 30% interest rate is not an accident. It is not “mismanagement.” It is organised theft—social murder carried out through banking policy.

To understand how this machinery was constructed, we must trace the development of the exchange rate regime. Between September 1980 and July 1988, during the eight years of the Iran–Iraq war, the market exchange rate increased sevenfold, while the official rate remained fixed (see table below). This was the period in which the Iranian bourgeoisie—under Mousavi as Prime Minister—adopted a state-ownership model resembling the Soviet-style command structure. But this model was never about social justice. It was a wartime mechanism of survival, rationing, and control.

Exchange rate for the toman against the US dollar. The rial is the official, higher-denominator currency and the toman is the informal, lower-denominator unit used in daily life to simplify prices. 1 Toman = 10 Rials

With the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the triumphalist propaganda of the “end of history,” the newly consolidated Iranian bourgeoisie—under Khamenei as President—gradually understood a brutal truth: if it wanted to survive after being shaken by the Revolution and the Eight Years’ War, it had to return to its oldest methods of domination. It revived every traditional trick of exploitation and fused them with the emerging rule of finance capital—turning crisis itself into a business model.

As the market exchange rate spiralled upward—driven not only by internal decay but also by hostile pressures and manipulation from abroad—the state found itself increasingly unable to control the process. So it embraced the logic of surrender dressed up as strategy: “If you can’t beat it, join it.” Currency speculation was no longer a criminal side-effect. It became a cornerstone of official economic policy.

This system served two key forces perfectly:

1. The state, which used the currency mechanism to justify and maintain extreme interest rates, patch together budgets effectively denominated in dollars, and finance subsidies for essential goods—medicine, basic foodstuffs, meat, and more—subsidies that functioned less as “welfare” than as a tool for preventing social explosion. This arrangement allowed successive governments to stage theatrical “reforms” and brand routine financial adjustments as bold radical policy—Ahmadinejad’s so-called “windfall” being one example of such propaganda theatre.⁽⁵⁾
2. The private sector, which exploited the chaos as an open invitation to plunder: land-grabbing, sea-grabbing, forest-grabbing, mountain-grabbing—an orgy of corruption and dispossession on a scale unprecedented in Iran’s modern history.

This entire process unfolded in tandem with a deeper crisis in the capitalist heartlands themselves. As global capitalism increasingly turned to a paper economy—built on “magical” financial products and speculative manipulation—the crude, peripheral version of this same logic was exported and imposed on countries like Iran. Under sanctions and financial pressure, a chaotic multi-rate currency system emerged, institutionalised and normalised by the Central Bank: The Central Bank negotiated separate exchange rates, multiple access points, with Sulaymaniyah, Herat, Sena, Nima and others.

This was not a technical policy mistake. It was a class strategy. Over time, these overlapping dollar channels and officially sanctioned price distortions created the perfect breeding ground for oligarchs, mafias, and shadow networks—an economic architecture designed for theft, for speculation, for the enrichment of a few, and the immiseration of the many. It is an architecture which is constantly being updated and now includes speculation via bit coins, including ‘Tether coin’ championed by Nigel Farage who seems to have no qualms about bolstering the existing set-up in Iran.⁽⁶⁾

Some of these mafias are better known and are more widely discussed in public and media discourse (currency, football, sugar, rice, and oil) and some are less well known (paper, gold, drugs, land, medicine, meat, saffron, college entrance exams, corn, automobiles, and antiques).⁽⁷⁾

Thus, while both the state and the private sector plunged headlong into an orgy of plunder, it was—as always—the working class that was forced to pay the price. The punishing 30 percent interest rate, along with its cascading consequences, was imposed directly on workers’ lives: wages, housing, and their very survival. The result was not stability, but an unbroken chain of riots, protests, and uprisings stretching across the past two decades—each one an indictment of an economic order built on systematic dispossession.

Yet the brutality of the Iranian regime has long been presented—both inside and outside Iran—as if it were primarily cultural or political in nature. The spotlight has been fixed on dress codes, censorship, and overt repression, while the murderous economic foundations of the system were quietly ignored or deliberately obscured. For years, economic violence—the slow destruction of livelihoods through inflation, debt, and usury—was treated as secondary, technical, or unavoidable.

Now, as inter-imperialist rivalries sharpen and approach a decisive phase, and as reactionary capitalist forces—domestic and international alike—line up against one another, renewed efforts are under-way to divert attention from the real source of the crisis. Confusion is being promoted, scapegoats are being named, and responsibility is being deflected.

Some hard-line analysts within the regime now claim that, in its efforts to bypass sanctions and keep the economy running, the Islamic Republic has “raised snakes in its sleeve”—networks of profiteers and speculators that have since grown into dragons and seized control of the country’s fate. But this is not a tragic mistake or an unforeseen consequence. These “snakes” were not smuggled in by accident. They were deliberately cultivated, protected, and empowered by the state itself. What we are witnessing today is not the loss of control by the Islamic Republic, but the logical outcome of an economic system designed from the outset to rule through incompetence, speculation, corruption, and class war.

While President Masoud Pezeshkian said last month that the country’s foreign currency reserves have been exhausted and that the country is “short of one billion dollars,” a member of parliament responded that “from 2018 until the first four months of this year, Iran’s non-oil exports amounted to 270 billion dollars, and 95 billion dollars of it has not returned to the country.”⁽⁸⁾

There can be no doubt whatsoever about the shared responsibility of the criminal Islamic Republic and the so-called great powers in the massacre of thousands during this uprising. Each has played its role—whether through direct repression, economic warfare, political manipulation, or strategic silence. Any support for these forces, under any pretext and in any form, amounts to nothing less than complicity in mass slaughter. To follow their policies—whether in the name of “stability,” “reform,” or “liberation”—is to march workers and toilers straight into defeat, repression, and the slaughterhouse of imperialist and capitalist interests.

Against this blood-soaked reality, the slogan “Bread, Jobs, Freedom – Soviet Power!” raised by Haft Tepeh workers that we reported back in 2018 is not a utopian fantasy or a distant maximalist ideal.⁽⁹⁾ In the concrete conditions unfolding today—on the streets of Iran and across a world sliding toward war—it is the only realistic and practical alternative. It is the only path capable of breaking the cycle of repression, manipulation, and imperialist confrontation, and of putting an end to the barbarism that is advancing openly before our eyes.

Over the past two decades, the working class in Iran has demonstrated extraordinary resilience, courage, and resistance. Its struggles—often isolated, suppressed, and betrayed—have nonetheless laid the groundwork for something far greater. If the working class acts independently of all bourgeois factions and asserts an internationalist perspective, it can provide the initial momentum for the kind of organisation that alone can confront capital, prevent war, and open the road to genuine emancipation. This is not a distant aspiration. Nor is it only a message for the working class in Iran. For the working class everywhere self-organisation is an urgent historical necessity. At present the task for revolutionaries everywhere is to speed up and expand the process of political unification into a world party to propagate the only genuine working class programme: the overthrow of all states. No war but the class war!

Statement by Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company

Support for the People’s Just Struggle, Advancing Toward Real Freedom and Equality, Not a Return to the Past

Popular protests and strikes in various cities across the country have now entered their eleventh day. Despite the intensification of the security atmosphere, the heavy presence of police and security forces, and violent crackdowns, the scope of the protests remains broad and diverse. According to reports, during this period at least 174 locations in 60 cities across 25 provinces have witnessed protests, and hundreds of protesters have been arrested. Tragically, at least 35 protesting citizens, including children, have lost their lives during this time.⁽¹⁰⁾

From the protest in December 2017 (28 December 2017) to November 2019 (15 November 2019) and September 2022 (16 September 2022), the oppressed people of Iran have repeatedly taken to the streets to demonstrate that they will not tolerate the prevailing economic–political relations and structures based on exploitation and inequality. These movements have not emerged to return to the past, but to build a future free from the domination of capital—one based on freedom, equality, social justice, and human dignity.

While declaring our solidarity with the people’s struggles against poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and repression, we explicitly oppose any return to a past marked by inequality, corruption, and injustice. We believe that genuine liberation is only possible through the conscious, organised leadership and participation of the working class and oppressed people—not through the reproduction of outdated and authoritarian forms of power. In this struggle, workers, teachers, retirees, nurses, students, women, and especially youth, despite widespread repression, arrests, dismissals, and severe livelihood pressures, remain on the front lines. The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company emphasizes the necessity of continuing independent, conscious, and organised protests.

We have said this repeatedly and we say it again: the path to liberation for workers and labourers does not lie in manufacturing leaders above the heads of the people, nor in reliance on foreign powers, nor through factions within the ruling establishment. It lies in unity, solidarity, and the creation of independent organisations in workplaces and communities, and at the nationwide level. We must not allow ourselves to once again become victims of power struggles and the interests of the ruling classes.

The Syndicate also strongly condemns any propaganda, justification, or support for military intervention by foreign governments, including the United States and Israel. Such interventions not only lead to the destruction of civil society and the killing of people, but also provide yet another pretext for continued violence and repression by the ruling authorities. Past experiences have shown that Western imperialist governments place no value whatsoever on the freedom, livelihoods, or rights of the people of Iran.

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all detainees and emphasize the necessity of identifying and prosecuting those who ordered and carried out the killing of the people.

Long live freedom, equality, and class solidarity!

The solution for the labouring masses is unity and organisation!

Notes:

(1) Iran: On the Hijab as Labour Discipline, and the Slogan of "Woman, Life, Freedom"

(2) US/Iran Rivalry: What No War But the Class War Really Means

(3) Iran: Imperialist Rivalries and the Protest Movement of "Woman, Life, Freedom"

(4) These links provide some relevant information: instagram.com, wsj.com, jpost.com; and these two interviews we refer to for information only, to be taken with a grain of salt: x.com, x.com

(5) Austerity in Iran - The Working Class Face the Biggest Attacks Yet

(6) theguardian.com

(7) radiofarda.com

(8) bbc.com

(9) Iran: Workers' Strikes and Protests Continue and Workers' Strikes in Iran: This Time it is Different

(10) The dead now count in the thousands. lemonde.fr