Statement by the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International
The ongoing protests rocking Iran express deep popular anger, born of decades of dictatorship, high living costs, uncontrollable inflation and the collapse of living conditions for millions of people. International sanctions and the disastrous economic policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran have caused a deep slump, while the regime's elites and the Revolutionary Guards have amassed immense fortunes.
Starting with traders in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, the social unrest quickly spread to more than 80 cities, igniting working-class neighbourhoods, small traders strangled by the crisis, students and young people with no future. It has thus transformed into a nationwide political movement, posing a new challenge to the authoritarian, corrupt Islamic regime based on the exploitation and oppression of women and national minorities.
For decades, and particularly through the major mobilisations of 2022, when women were at the forefront of the ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadi’ uprising, the people of Iran have continued to confront the authorities with courage and have constantly expressed their aspirations for a democratic society, equality and social justice.
Similarly, the current movement is not limited to a simple circumstantial revolt: it embodies a new phase in the struggle of workers, students, women and oppressed peoples – notably the Kurdish people of Rojhilat – to take control of their own destiny.
By synthesising the social demands of the mass mobilisations of 2018 and 2019 with the demands for equality and freedom at the heart of the ‘woman, life, freedom’ uprising, the current mobilisation carries immense revolutionary potential. The Islamic Republic of Iran is on its last legs and it knows it. The regime is held together only by violence and brutality. We unequivocally condemn state repression and the use of police violence against demonstrators and social, trade union, political and cultural activists.
We affirm our wholehearted solidarity with their strikes, rallies and demonstrations, their demands and their forms of autonomous organisation. We support their struggle for a society free from exploitation and oppression.
Our internationalism cannot be reduced to a simple moral denunciation: it is about recognising and concretely supporting the power of self-emancipation of peoples against all forms of oppression. The peoples of Iran do not want to choose between two despotisms.
We reject the plans for ‘regime change’ by Trump and Netanyahu, who are attempting to impose a solution from above by financing the monarchist movement and threatening further military intervention against Iran. Behind Trump's plans lies the explicit objective of gaining control of fossil fuel reserves, as he clearly stated with regard to Venezuela.
Recent history shows that bombings, sanctions and external interference only serve to reinforce the hegemony of the major Western powers and authoritarian states, devastate peoples and divide the working classes. The people need neither imperialist ‘protectors’ nor authoritarian regimes: their liberation can only come about through independent, unified and self-organised struggles by workers, women, young people and national minorities themselves, to freely decide their future without imperialist interference.
5 January 2026