Protests that began in Iran on 28 December and quickly spread across the country have been ongoing for two weeks. At least 65 people have been killed and more than 2,300 arrested in the last 13 days. It has been reported that protests have taken place in 180 cities across 31 provinces, at over 500 locations. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not content with merely attacking and killing the Iranian people. In parallel with these attacks, it resorts to widespread internet blackouts, propagating that “external forces” are behind the actions of the Iranian people, and wages a counter-revolutionary war through the media.
Despite these attacks by the reactionary Iranian regime, the people's actions, particularly night protests, neighbourhood meetings, and chanting slogans from rooftops, continue in many cities.
The actions of the Iranian people are not new. Over the last thirty years, there have been five major uprisings and many regional struggles for regime change. For example, alongside the politically-driven movements of 2006 and 2009, the urban protests that began in Mashhad in December 2016 quickly became politicised; in November 2018, the movement triggered by demonstrations against rising petrol prices and the cost of living rapidly became politicised; In September 2022, protests that began with Jina Mahsa Amini's murder turned into the ‘Jin Jiyan Azadi’ uprising.
The current actions began as protests by Tehran Bazaar merchants against economic conditions. Merchants went on strike to protest the rise of the dollar and the devaluation of the rial. However, this protest and strike quickly turned into a political movement. It then spread through student political protests and was subsequently adopted by urban workers (labourers and urban semi-proletarians, the unemployed, small business owners, etc.), transforming into a democratic political uprising. This political movement spread to many regions and cities, including Zahedan and parts of Kurdistan Province (Kermanshah and Ilam).
The main forms of struggle in large, medium, and small cities are strikes (in terms of demands, currently mostly trade union and economic) and street meetings and marches (political in nature), which are usually met with attacks by the Iranian regime's security forces and turn into street clashes.
The main slogans of the masses were ‘High prices are the scourge of the people’, ‘Poverty, corruption, high prices, we will continue until the revolution’, ‘Death to the dictator’, and ‘Death to Khamenei’. These slogans, which reveal the economic and political character of the uprising, are accompanied by slogans such as ‘Down with the despicable scoundrels,’ ‘Death to the Pasdaran,’ and ‘Death to the Besiç,’ directed against the regime's security forces, the Pasdaran, and the Besiç.
While the Islamic Republic of Iran regime brands and criminalises the Iranian people's just struggle as ‘the work of imperialists and Zionists,’ the imperialists and Zionists are propagating that ‘Shah supporters’ are behind the Iranian people's actions. This is a huge lie. At this stage, the primary enemies of the people are primarily Khamenei and the leaders of the Revolutionary Guards, the reactionary clerics in power, and the core cadre of the regime. These are predatory, thieving, embezzling, rent-seeking comprador bureaucratic capitalists and the owners of the country's key sectors, such as oil, petrochemicals, transport, etc., and large landowners. The people's other enemies are the imperialists, who currently have little influence.
The extremely justified and legitimate struggle of the Iranian people, of various nations, ethnicities, and beliefs, against the Islamic Republic regime has the power to create its own revolutionary and communist leadership. The legacy and rich historical accumulation of the class struggle waged for years by the working people, especially the Iranian working class, amply prove this fact.
We condemn the suppression of mass protests and the attacks on the people by the Islamic Republic of Iran regime!
We support the ongoing protests and just struggles of the workers, the labouring people, and other oppressed peoples in Iran!
Long live International Solidarity!
Communist Party of Turkey – Marxist Leninist
International Bureau
January 2026
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