What Next in Iran? Over 6,000 have been confirmed dead following government crackdowns on protests in Iran. Some estimates put the death toll higher, between 22,000 or over 30,000. The latest wave of protests in Iran started with the bazaaris and spread to other sections of society and to most major cities and towns in Iran. The US is now threatening to militarily intervene in Iran in response to the repression and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a clerical fascist regime that brutally represses women, LGBT+ people, workers, national minorities and refugees The regime came to power following the 1978-9 revolt which ousted the Pahlavi monarchy. That revolution was originally led by students, women, workers and left-wing intelligentsia but was outorganised by the network of Islamic clerics and institutions around the Ayatollah Khomeini. Since 1979, there have been protests and revolts every few years against the regime followed by brutal state repression. Despite the state ban on independent unions, workers in nearly every industry have formed associations or taken industrial action, particularly in oil, sugarcane production, healthcare, education, transport and logistics. Media blackouts, repression, and the underground nature of any resistance to the regime make it hard to know what the positive demands from the left in Iran are. The protests by Iranians in the diaspora have largely been hegemonised by monarchists who demand US intervention to kickout the regime and replace it with the Shah’s son. The left in the West has largely been silent on the question of Iran or have tended to emphasise their opposition to Western intervention rather than proposing links with the dissident left in Iran. The worst examples on the left have seen groups and figures reproducing propaganda circulated by the Islamic Republic. How can we best support and make links with the Iranian working-class on the ground opposing the brutal regime? How do Iranians best avoid a reinstatement of the monarchy and US intervention in the country? Join Bristol Alliance for Workers’ Liberty to discuss these questions. These meetings are open to all. Discussion and disagreement encouraged.

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