New protest actions are now taking place almost every day in Iran, confronting attempts by the reactionary regime there to make working people pay for the deepening capitalist crisis and its foreign wars. Retirees, nurses, taxi drivers and textile workers increasingly taking to the streets to oppose layoffs, demand higher wages in the face of skyrocketing prices, or simply to get unpaid wages, have also been taking up broader questions.
“Leave Lebanon alone; do something about us,” was one of the chants by dozens of retirees at their weekly protest June 21 outside the Social Security office in Shush, Khuzestan province. Another was, “A retiree’s refrigerator is emptier than ever before.”
“The wealth produced by us, the workers, has been plundered,” the organization of retired workers from the Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane Workers Union, said in their call for the action. “We want neither war nor bloodshed. We want prosperity and a secure future.”
Retirees in Rasht, Gilan province, also raised opposition to Tehran’s intervention for Hezbollah in Lebanon at their protest the same day. “In the shadow of a devastating war — which has been a ‘blessing’ for the ruthless capitalists in power — the working class has been crushed beneath its gears, both yesterday and today.”
The capitalist economic and social crisis in Iran is exacerbated by U.S.-imposed sanctions and the impact of the wars with Washington and Israel.
To expose the regime’s use of working people as cannon fodder, Eterazebazar, an internet site connected to merchants in Tehran’s bazaar, posted a flyer June 24 put out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to recruit volunteers to join Hezbollah combatants in Lebanon, along with a note from a soldier. The flyer said that “committed and dedicated individuals” could earn $1,000 a month if they signed up.
“Yesterday I received my service pay; it’s an amount that doesn’t even cover one week of living expenses,” the soldier wrote. “Today I was looking at recruitment advertisements for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and I said to myself, how is it possible that a young man serving his country is under such severe financial pressure, yet they pay such high salaries for Hezbollah?”
Eterazebazar posted a video June 30 of someone scavenging for food at a garbage dump in Lorestan province. He held up a similar recruitment flyer. “When our own people are facing so many hardships,” he asked, “why should money and resources be spent on Lebanon and Hezbollah?”