IWU-FI
On November 15, an impressive popular uprising broke out in Iran. A 300% increase in the price of gasoline and a greater restriction on the rationing of fuel at subsidized prices has triggered the protests, which have spread to more than a hundred cities, including several areas of the capital, Tehran. Popular slogans reject the increase in poverty associated with gasolina price adjustment and also question the regime, calling for «Death to the dictator» and «Down with the government. More than one hundred bank offices have been burned, as well as dozens of shops and two seminars, linked to the theocratic regime. The demonstrators have also incinerated posters of Ayatollah Khamenei and participated in thousands of roadblocks in various parts of the country.
The protests also cover the areas of Arab and Kurdish majority, where to the general political oppression is added national oppression and conditions of greater poverty and marginality.
The criminal response of the dictatorship has consisted in attacking the demonstrators from the ground and air, with bullets, tear gas bombs, even shooting from helicopters. When the demonstrators have used their vehicles to block the streets, the repressors have vandalized them. It is estimated that the Iranian regime has killed around two hundred people, injuring and arresting thousands. The internet has been almost completely cut off to prevent the flow of information, while the government accuses the protesters of being agents of foreign powers. There are reports of missing persons. The crisis has even impacted the parliament, where some deputies have resigned.
President Rouhani, considered a representative of reformists and moderates of the regime, has more than demonstrated the brutality of all wings of the regime. It is already the second uprising during his government. Between December 2017 and January 2018, huge demonstrations triggered by the worsening of the economic crisis, and demanding an end to Iranian military intervention in Syria, were also brutally repressed, as were women’s protests against the compulsory wearing of the veil.
Recent protests in Lebanon, where Hezbollah’s pro-Iranian militia co-governs, and in Iraq, have challenged the dominance of Iranian theocracy in those countries. In Iraq the rebellion has been harshly repressed by the pro-Iranian government, leaving more than 330 dead. The economic crisis is not only explained by Iran’s excessive military spending, given its intervention in support of the fascist dictatorship of Assad in Syria and in Yemen, as well as its support for the reactionary Iraqi government. The Iranian economy is also under the impact of Yankee sanctions since last year, as part of Trump’s diplomatic and economic aggression after the rupture of the nuclear agreements, fundamentally impacting the working people. Rejecting U.S. sanctions, we nevertheless reaffirm that the main responsible for the hardships of the Iranian people is the theocratic Iranian bourgeois regime, which governs in the service of national and foreign capitalists, putting all the burden of the crisis on the people to sustain their aspirations for regional domination through reactionary military interventions.
All support for the uprising of the Iranian people! Stop the repression! Down with the dictatorship of the Ayatollahs! No to the austerity measures! Let the Iranian people decide their own destiny without imperialist interference!
