By Martin Suchanek

For weeks, the Iranian regime has been drowning the rebellion of the masses in blood. In numerous cities, Revolutionary Guards, militias and repressive forces have massacred demonstrating workers, young people, women and children, firing into crowds with machine guns.

According to the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper on 25 January, the human rights organisation HRANA spoke of 5,495 confirmed fatalities, including 5,149 demonstrators. At least 7,403 people were seriously injured. The organisation is also investigating 17,031 other suspected deaths. Even according to official figures from the Islamist regime, there were over 3,000 victims.

Counter-revolutionary terror intensified on 9 January when the internet and other communication channels were shut down for days. It is now estimated that up to 30,000 people were murdered in January 2026. At least 40,000 people have been arrested or abducted since the mass uprising began on 28 December 2025. Iranian leftists warn that Khamenei’s regime has begun systematically executing opposition activists in captivity.

Preliminary balance sheet

After two weeks of uprising against the reactionary Islamist dictatorship, the regime’s systematic terror and massacres have broken the mass movement for now. The Khamenei regime has survived the largest mass movement against its rule. For the time being.

The regime’s victory revealed its willingness to use any means, no matter how barbaric, to secure its rule and protect its interests, clientele and party supporters. On the surface, this appears to be strength, as the regime’s internal cohesion held. Not only did the Revolutionary Guards and the core of the state apparatus remain loyal, but the army did not fracture either. This enabled the regime to survive an onslaught by the masses, huge demonstrations, strikes and localised takeovers in some smaller cities.

However, this strength also reveals deep weakness. The Islamist regime’s social base has eroded and continues to erode. It can essentially only rely on the state apparatus and the direct instruments of the Islamist counter-revolution: the clergy and militias. It has virtually no social basis beyond this. On 28 December, traders in Tehran’s bazaar closed their shops (certainly not all voluntarily). Sections of the merchant bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, who had formed a social pillar of the regime for decades and who had opposed the movement after the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022/23, turned their backs on it.

The mass movement of 28 December shook the entire country, spreading like wildfire. Even though it started in the bazaar of Tehran, the working class was its real social carrier. Throughout 2025, the number of strikes and labour disputes grew due to price increases and falling or unpaid wages. To prevent a general strike, the regime closed numerous state-owned companies and universities at the beginning of the movement, making it difficult or impossible for people to gather. Nevertheless, in some cities, factory committees or even local workers’ councils were formed, some of which took control. Although this appeared spontaneous, it indicates that the Iranian working class has established illegal or semi-legal trade unions and company structures in recent years, as well as the beginnings of an underground network. This greatly favoured rapid spread.

The movement encompassed all parts of the country despite its brief duration—it was broken on 12/13 January, only around two weeks after it broke out. As in 2022/23, it unfolded particularly strongly in the Kurdish and Baloch regions, spreading to both urban and rural areas. In contrast to all movements of the last 20 years, demonstrators also defended themselves against repression, stormed police stations and took action against repression units in some clashes. This was not isolated; the phenomenon was evident in many cities. Young people in particular showed no fear of confronting the forces of the regime, fearing death less than continuing to live under conditions of oppression, exploitation and social decay.

Even though social issues played a major role at the beginning, the movement quickly developed into one directed against the entire regime of the Islamist republic. It raised the question of power, even if not all demonstrators were immediately aware of this.

One reason is the reactionary nature of the regime itself. As a Bonapartist, clerical dictatorship that encompasses all areas of society, the Iranian regime cannot tolerate any significant bourgeois-democratic space to mediate its rule. This means that every social movement, even every reform movement, necessarily comes into massive conflict with the regime or its most reactionary parts (Revolutionary Guards, the fascist Basij militia). Demands for equality, the fight against reactionary dress codes, and even economic distribution issues almost automatically become political issues that challenge the Islamist dictatorship and its monopoly on power.

Moreover, the means for economic integration of entire sections of the population are effectively exhausted. The Islamist regime itself emerged as a counter-revolutionary result of a genuine revolution against the tyranny of the Shah, supported by the working class and the masses. But because the masses lacked revolutionary leadership that could have led the revolution to victory, the Islamist counter-revolution was able to crush the labour movement and the Iranian left and establish its dictatorship. It seized control of the state apparatus and has relied on it ever since, along with the clergy and paramilitary forces such as the Revolutionary Guards and the fascist Basij militia. In total, there are millions of armed forces of the regime.

The Islamic Republic could also rely on central sections of the bourgeoisie—the Basaris, the commercial bourgeoisie in Tehran, and the petty-bourgeois strata attached to them. New layers of the bourgeoisie emerged from the apparatus of the Islamist state itself, closely linked to the regime and benefiting from it economically. For example, after the Iran-Iraq war, officer cadres of the Revolutionary Guards were deployed in the economy, taking on managerial functions or becoming capitalists themselves.

Finally, the counter-revolutionary regime could also rely on the lower, politically backward classes in urban and rural areas, the losers of the pro-Western capitalist “modernisation” under the Shah.

Economic background

Until around 2012, the regime—supported by foreign exchange earnings from the sale of oil and other raw materials on the world market—was able to satisfy the economic and social interests of this heterogeneous class base to some extent. Iran’s GDP grew by 5-8% per year between 2000 and 2012. At the same time, the semi-colonial structure of the Iranian economy, determined by the needs of the world market and imperialist finance capital, remained intact—as was essentially the case under the Shah. Similar to other oil states, Iran financed social programmes to integrate the poor from revenues on the world market. At the same time, the “excesses” of dependent capitalism—clientelism and nepotism—grew on this basis.

After 2012, the economic situation changed fundamentally. The sanctions imposed by the USA and the EU hit the economy hard and have continued to do so ever since. GDP growth rates have hovered around 3% since then. Debt has become a constant problem due to a drop in foreign currency revenues, which the Iranian state tried to offset by devaluing the currency, leading to massive inflation. The prices of basic foodstuffs, energy and other necessary consumer goods have risen sharply. At the same time, real wages in the public sector and in large parts of industry and the service sector have stagnated or even fallen. This has led to impoverishment of large sections of society, including parts of the middle class and petty bourgeoisie.

The Islamist regime is thus caught in a structural economic crisis. On one hand, the regime’s economic base is shrinking. On the other, it cannot satisfy the needs and interests of its own social base, let alone those of the working class and the masses. The result is a deep legitimacy crisis. The regime can only maintain itself through repression and terror.

This economic crisis is also a central reason why the mass movement developed so quickly and encompassed all parts of the country. The working class and the masses were driven by desperation and the realisation that the regime offered no perspective for improvement. The movement was thus not only a political revolt against the Islamist dictatorship, but also a social revolt against impoverishment, exploitation and social decay.

However, the crisis of the Islamist regime also means that the question of power is posed. The regime cannot solve the economic and social crisis. It can only maintain itself through repression. But this also means that the masses will continue to rise up against it. The question is therefore not whether there will be a new movement against the regime, but when—and above all, under what leadership.

This is the central question facing the Iranian working class and the masses. The lack of revolutionary leadership is the main reason why the movement of December 2025/January 2026 was defeated. Without such leadership, the masses cannot overthrow the regime. They can shake it, but not bring it down. This was already the case with the revolution of 1978/79, which was betrayed by the Islamist counter-revolution. It was also the case with the movements of recent decades, including that of 2022/23 after the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini.

The lesson is clear: only a revolutionary party—like the Bolshevik Party in 1917—could lead the masses to victory.

Rival programmes

However, this crisis also represents a central reason why there is a real danger that reactionary pro-imperialist, bourgeois or monarchist forces could gain leading influence in the movement against the Islamist dictatorship.

In Iran itself, the movement against the regime has galvanised not only the proletarian and peasant masses, but also the petty bourgeoisie and even sections of the bourgeoisie. This is not a peculiarity, but characterises all major class struggles and even more so movements that raise the question of power. In these, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—whether they like it or not—fight for leadership.

The side of the Iranian bourgeoisie includes those sections dissatisfied with the regime—e.g. the Basaris. If their clash with the dictatorship was not merely an episode, they will involuntarily seek an alliance with the exiled bourgeoisie and with Western imperialism.

At the same time, the reactionary forces of the exile bourgeoisie are trying to present themselves as “true democrats” with the figurehead of the prince. They are using their relations with the USA and the EU powers and their wealth to spread their reactionary propaganda in Iran and to recruit allies in the country. So far, their actual organised social base is still small, but they will try to use the massacres of the Islamist regime in any case—if only to sell the purified rule of a new Shah as a lesser evil.

The USA, the EU powers and Israel are supporting this reactionary, bourgeois opposition. They are trying to turn the desperation of the Iranian masses in their favour, including with the threat of military intervention or the deployment of naval forces in the region. Even if Trump’s threats turned out to be empty, the movement in Iran is now at a crossroads.

In the short term, the Islamist regime can assert itself by drowning the movement in blood. But it is only a matter of a few years before the next internal crisis, the next mass movement, the next eruption breaks out. Economic and social stabilisation by the regime can be ruled out. The massacre of thousands of people has severed the bond between the regime and the population. Outside of state violence and state terror, the regime has hardly any means left to integrate parts of the population.

We must therefore expect and prepare for a new movement against the regime. We must learn two lessons from the struggles of the past decades. Firstly: the regime will not step down peacefully; it must be overthrown and smashed by a revolution. Secondly, the Iranian bourgeoisie may turn away from the regime, but it does not want liberation—it wants its own rule in alliance with Western imperialism. It is unable and unwilling to lead the masses to liberation.

The wage earners, the oppressed nations, the women are the main supporters of the movement, but the working class does not lead it politically.

This is only possible if the revolutionary forces in Iran themselves become aware of the character of the future revolution in the country. Should it be a purely democratic revolution that first creates bourgeois-democratic conditions, i.e. brings the bourgeoisie to power in a non-Islamist guise? Such a perspective would repeat in a different form the mistakes of the vast majority of the Iranian Stalinist and populist left, which assumed in 1979 that the Iranian revolution would have to confine itself to democratic tasks and bring the anti-imperialist, national bourgeoisie to power. The latter then conquered it under the leadership of the Ayatollah—and crushed the labour movement.

Relying on an alliance with the pseudo-democratic, monarchist and pro-imperialist bourgeoisie would mean repeating the same mistake, albeit with a different faction of the ruling class.

Revolution

The experience of the Iranian revolution (and indeed of all the major revolutions of the 20th and 21st centuries) shows that the democratic demands—in Iran in particular those for women’s equality and freedom, the right of nations to self-determination, independence from imperialism, the realisation of freedom and equality—are inextricably linked to the class question.

Real liberation is ultimately impossible for women (as well as poor peasants and peasant women and oppressed nationalities) within the framework of capitalism in Iran. Their oppression may at best take more elastic forms under a different form of bourgeois rule or a different elite (and even that is by no means certain).

Improving the situation of the masses—and especially women and the oppressed nations—is impossible without touching the profits, wealth, privileges and private property of the ruling class in Iran. Conversely, the working class itself can only become the real leading force of a revolution if it links the decisive social questions with that of its own liberation, the expropriation of capital and the establishment of a democratically planned economy. Otherwise, the proletariat—regardless of gender—will remain a class of wage slaves.

Such a perspective and a revolutionary programme that combines democratic and social demands with socialist ones and culminates in the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ government do not emerge on their own. They require a force that consciously fights for them in the working class, at universities and schools, among the youth, women and oppressed nationalities.

This is the only way to stop the steady advance of the counter-revolution here and now. Those who fight most persistently for such demands, learning the lessons not just of the last month but of four decades, are those who can begin to build this force, a revolutionary party.

One thing is clear: only such a party will be able to lead the struggle in all conditions, to operate underground when necessary, and to intervene in strikes, trade unions and, above all, in mass movements in times of upsurge.

Having deceived the Iranian people by threatening to intervene if Ali Khamenei massacred the protesters, Donald Trump has now, after doing just that, announced that he will send a “large fleet alongside Iran”, led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. At the same time, Trump hinted in an interview that the leadership in Tehran “wants to make a deal”, and an unnamed senior US official told reporters that Washington was “open to negotiations”.

This should make it clear to Iranians that Trump is not guided by democratic motives in the slightest and that any attack by the US would be extremely reactionary. He merely intends to blackmail the clerical dictators to act as his stooges in the region and open up the country’s natural resources to US exploitation, a pattern already seen in Ukraine, Gaza and Venezuela.

In fact, the Iranian revolution, if it comes, must not only be anti-monarchist, democratic and socialist, but also resolutely anti-imperialist—just like the uprising against the Shah in 1978/79, before it was taken over by the counter-revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs.

• No to another attack by the USA and Israel on Iran
• No to the restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty
• Down with the clerical dictatorship and its fascist gangs
• For a workers’ revolution that paves the way for the liberation of women and the oppressed nationalities and culminates in socialism