Republished from the UK socialist website Left Horizons
Iran: the spark of revolution?
By: Umar Shahid
History teaches that revolutions erupt not when oppression is at its peak, but when the ruling power reveals its brittleness. For Iranians, that moment is now. Following a devastating 12-day war with Israel that shattered the myth of an impregnable regime, and facing an economy in freefall, the state is at its most vulnerable.
The start of 2026 proved to be turbulent times for the Iranian regime hit by fresh protests. This time traders and merchants were playing a major role, although it has been joined by workers, youth and students. The protests ignited in December, when the Iranian rial hit a record low of approximately 1.45 million to the US dollar.
Spiralling inflation (nearly 50%), soaring food prices, and severe energy shortages including water and electricity cuts, initially drew shopkeepers and merchants from Tehran’s Grand Bazaar into the streets. Their demands were a for a stable exchange rate, inflation control, predictable economic activities and the prevention of losses caused by market fluctuations were overtaken by wider demands.
Initially, contrary to usual practice of concealing protests, the government media outlets covered these gatherings, while blurring the faces of protestors, calling them “just protests”. This has been done by the same regime which always attributes the protests of the working class to rioters and conspiracies.
The reason for this is clear, these markets and bazaars have traditionally been considered one of the regime’s main social bases, but no longer. As these lines are being written, protests are spreading to multiple universities.
Students from Tehran University, Sharif University of Technology, Khajeh Nasir Toosi University, Shahid Beheshti University, Amirkabir University, Tabataba’i University, Isfahan University of Technology and Yazd University have joined in the protests which have spread to different parts of Iran.
Conflicting interests
At their core, these are two very different kinds of unrest. The shopkeepers and small business owners were frustrated by the economic crisis, but their goal is not to overthrow the system but to save it. They needed ‘stability’ to survive and earn profits.
The protesting workers, on the other hand, are calling for a fundamental change to the system itself. In the current situation, when the majority of people are bowing their backs under the pressure on their livelihoods, the protest of the bazaars becomes part of the general cry against the ruling neoliberal, rentier, and corrupt economy.
On the other hand, we should not fall into illusions. The interests of the bazaars are not necessarily aligned with those of the workers and the lower classes. We have seen how the mobilisation of the ‘guilds’ affiliated with the government tried to control and limit the path of the protest.
The working class will get no benefit from siding with any factions that aim to restore the capitalist system. As soon as this layer of the better-off middle class achieves its own interests, it will betray the people’s movement and once again compromise with the state.
Historically, we saw the same thing in the 1979 revolution. Even though there were reports of clashes, the merchants’ protest is more of a controlled, specific warning to the government. Their message was essentially, “Fix this, or we’re going under.” It was less a revolution and more a ‘wake-up call’ from a group that usually supports the state.
The government’s reaction proved this. They quickly fired the head of the Central Bank and had the Revolutionary Guards step in to calm the markets—they were making adjustments, not facing down an existential threat. This was unlike the earlier uprisings that directly challenged the regime’s foundation. The 2004 protest wanted better management within the existing rules, though that could change if their demands keep getting ignored.
Internal contradictions within the regime
The internal contradictions of the Iranian ruling state are at their peak. On one hand, President Masoud Pezeshkian says that the Interior Minister should listen to the protesters’ demands. On the other hand, institutions affiliated with the Supreme Leader (such as Tasnim) and other circles are labelling the public protests as a ‘conspiracy by enemies.’
This contradiction is a sign that a deep rift has formed in the ruling class alliance. However, this exists only because different segments of the ruling elite are strategising on how to preserve their own power. Their real goal is to maintain the capitalist system based on the exploitation of the working class.
Not every protest is the same; its meaning and purpose are determined by the interests of the classes involved. To understand the current protests, it is necessary to analyse some past protests in this context:
- The 2017 workers’ and 2019 protests were an expression of the anger of the working class and the most deprived, which started with basic economic demands and escalated to calls for the complete overthrow of the Islamic Republic system. These movements were fundamentally progressive and revolutionary.
- The 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement was essentially a struggle by women and youth for individual freedoms and gender equality. Its biggest weakness was the lack of organised links with the working class, which limited its impact. Furthermore, it faced the risk of being hijacked by right-wing political groups (including monarchists).
- The 2025 protests were initiated by merchants and shopkeepers, primarily demanding economic stability for their businesses within the existing capitalist system. Although these protests are also against the government, their goal is not to overthrow the system but to seek reforms within it. Therefore, their purpose and class basis are fundamentally different from the workers’ protests.
- This initial protest has developed widely across Iran and has included far wider layers of workers, women and youth.
Protest movements have to be examined on the basis of which class interests are represented. A mere protest does not automatically qualify as progressive or revolutionary. The western media often paints any Iranian protest as the spark of a coming revolution, while some opposition groups, even on the left, get swept up in the moment without really looking at the class-basis of the struggle and the need for a working class strategy.
Despite all the differences within ruling elite, it is clear that they would be united in cracking down against protests by workers to preserve the capitalist system and authoritarianism. Yet the ruling clique are completely incapable of running the country.
Below the surface – and increasingly now rising to the surface – there is the thunderous voice of the Iranian masse,s echoing through the alleyways and rooftops. This opposition voice is a seething indictment of this decaying theocratic-bourgeois state.
The workers are trapped between the anvil of a draconian regime and the hammer of a catastrophic economic crisis. It is a crisis not of their making, but born from the rotten core of capitalist plunder and imperialist subjugation.
Yet, within this immense suffering lies the seed of it’s the regime’s destruction. The yearning for freedom is not an abstract wish, but a material force forged in the factories, the classrooms, and impoverished homes. Every protest, from the guild’s warning to the worker’s revolt, is a link in the great chain of history being pulled taut.
No betterment without smashing the state machinery
The regime has maneuvered by sacking ministers, deploying its Guards, but these are desperate attempts to rearrange the deck chairs on a sinking ship. The working class, the youth, and the oppressed women of Iran are the gravediggers of the old order.
Their struggle for bread, for dignity, for life itself, is inherently a political struggle for power. There can be no real “betterment” without the revolutionary overthrow of the entire oppressive edifice—without smashing the state machinery of the mullahs and the capitalists who prop them up.
In this perspective an important question emerges, is it possible to build an independent, class-based alternative in Iran that neither accepts the current authoritarian regime nor becomes a tool of any foreign belligerent power?
The answer to this question is yes, because the Iranian working class has potential to overthrow this regime. However, it is only possible through the organised power of the working class, pulling along other oppressed layers of society.
A leadership within the workers’ movement is all the more necessary with the threats of military attacks from the USA – attacks which are not aimed at establishing ‘democracy’ but are to divert attention from domestic US crises and to facilitate the right-wing opposition in Iran. Such threats coming from Trump have not underminedthe mullah’s regime, but actually serve to strengthen it, by turning Iranian workers’ attention away from corruption at home to the threat from US imperialism.
Genuine revolutionary change is only possible when, under the leadership of the working class, the movement of workers, the deprived, women, and other oppressed groups unite under an organised, class-conscious programme that guarantees political freedom, social justice, and national sovereignty
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