During the 12-day war between Israel and the Jew-hating regime in Tehran, weekly protests in Iran by retirees and other struggles by workers were largely put on hold. Since the war ended June 24, new protests have broken out, despite the reactionary regime’s arrest of hundreds, accusing them of being Israeli agents or supporters.
Yadollah Elmi, head of the Bakers Union, and 10 other bakers in Saqqez in Kurdistan province were arrested July 2 after going on strike to protest the increase in the cost of flour, rent, water, electricity, salt, insurance premiums and gas, as well as fines imposed by the government’s price control arm, reported the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights.
The same day 400 workers at the Arak Aluminum Factory went on strike, demanding payment of outstanding production bonuses and rice rations and the reinstatement of several fired workers.
Hundreds of men and women joined a protest and funeral march in Hamedan province July 3 for Mehdi Abaei and Alireza Karbasi, two young men killed by Basij forces two days before.
Friends report that the two, and one other who was wounded in the attack, were on a nature trip when they were accosted by the Basij thugs, who claimed they were spying for Israel and opened fire. The Basij is a hated paramilitary group set up by the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It has been at the forefront of the regime’s attacks on protesters.
“Our enemy is right here; they lie when they say it’s America,” protesters chanted.
On July 1, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps killed one woman and wounded 11 others in the village of Gonich in Sistan-Bauchistan province. The regime’s Tasnim News Agency claimed the Revoutionary Guard forces were pursuing “mercenary elements of the Zionist regime” when “locals” did not “pay attention to warnings by officers and were injured.”
A video shows regime thugs firing on Baluch women and children who were protesting their presence in the village. On July 4 some women responded with protests outside the government headquarters in nearby Khash, writing on the building wall, “We neither forgive nor forget.”
The Baluchis are one of Iran’s many oppressed nationalities with a long history of standing up to the regime’s repressive measures.
As part of cracking down on working people, the government has deported hundreds of thousands of Afghan immigrants, seeking both to use them as scapegoats for the deepening economic crisis and accusing them of being Israeli agents. Some 4 million Afghans who fled Taliban rule live in Iran.
The Coordinating Council of Teachers Unions, the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Workers Union, the Retired Workers of Khuzestan, and Baluch organizations are among those who have condemned the expulsions.
“We, the people of Iran and Afghanistan, and all the oppressed peoples of the Middle East, are a single body under the boot of local, regional, and global powers. We must stand together, united in solidarity, to end the hell that reigns in our countries and across the region,” the Free Union of Iranian Workers said in a July 2 statement.
The regime’s attempts to shore up its power in the wake of the losses it suffered in the war are only getting traction from diehard supporters, despite its attempt to mobilize its broader forces to back its claim of a victory against Israel.
The Free Union of Iranian Workers posted a video of a woman whose son died during the clash with Israel, damning the bellicose course of the rulers in Tehran. “Courage is this grieving mother, whose young son was martyred, but she cries out, ‘Enough with the war’ and wishes for peace,” noted the Free Union, and “she doesn’t want another mother’s door to be marked by mourning.”