Echoes of May Day

IRAN

A key battalion of the working class has entered the struggle in Iran, throughout the Middle East and the world

Long live the strike of the Iranian oil workers!

Out with the murderous theocracy!

This May Day found the Iranian workers in the middle of a national strike of the oil, petrochemical and gas workers. This strike has been developing in the heart of the proletariat of this country, which is the second largest oil exporter and the second largest gas reserve of the world. There are more than 110 companies paralyzed by their workers in Iran, and the strike is spreading to Iraq, as workers of the same company operating in Iran also marched on strike. It is a strike of the proletariat that extracts, refines and exports the oil, gas, petrochemicals and derivatives that generate 80% of the world's energy!

Thus, May Day in Iran was a great workers' and internationalist action, an example of how to fight for workers' demands, hitting hard the imperialist oil companies that plunder the region.

These strikes had started at the end of April with the contract workers and as the hours went by more and more factories and sectors have joined in. Among other demands, they call for a 79% wage increase in the face of the brutal inflation, and a work regime of 20 working days and 10 days off, in order to have the opportunity to be with their families.

With the same demands for bread, decent work, and freedom, rubber workers, construction workers from Kurdistan province, sugar workers from Haft Tappeh, nurses from Shiraz, and workers from Isfahan power plant have also joined the strike.

The working class is in the vanguard leading the revolutionary process that started last September after the murder of young Mahsa Amini. The exploited people as a whole have won the streets and confronted the murderous Iranian regime. Every struggle has been united under one demand regardless of nationalities or ethnicities. The ethnic minorities in the regions of Khuzestan, Baluchistan, Kurdistan are in the same struggle, the same fight against the same bloodthirsty enemy.

The response of the theocracy is a redoubled repression mainly in these oppressed nations where the regime has perpetrated real massacres. Moreover, it assassinates workers, popular leaders and fighters on a daily basis. There have been hundreds of public executions already while more death sentences are being prepared on fake trials with convictions based on the worst of tortures and fabricated evidence. Its police raid the workers' leaders houses and arrest them, destroying their homes and intimidating their families. There are thousands of political prisoners already and the number increases every day. The regime's retaliations against the youth who "dared" to rise up last year have even reached primary and secondary schools. The repressive forces have attacked them with chemical weapons causing dozens of poisoned and dead people.

In spite of the brutality of the murderous regime, the demand is still alive and the embers of last year's fights are still burning. Today they burn again with the workers going on strike and confronting the theocracy.

Meanwhile, imperialism is also preparing traps against the Iranian masses. For example, the pro-US bourgeoisies who, dressed- up as "democratic", denounce the regime in order to form a "democratic front" in case of a possible fall of the ayatollahs. But today imperialism lets them crush and massacre and, eventually, negotiate. It does not want the regime to fall as a product of revolutionary actions since it would be a triumph for the masses.

Let the oil strike, which has already started to spread, be transformed into a General Revolutionary Strike until the regime falls!
Bread, work, freedom and wage increases now! Contracts with decent conditions and job security!

Nationalization without payment and under workers' control of all natural resources and the entire oil and gas production branch! There will be enough resources to provide electricity, cheap food for the people to eat and have a dignified life.

Workers' control of all state enterprises with an elected board of directors, starting with the Haft Tappeh sugar factory.

Out with the theocracy and its regime of big capitalists and military murderers of the people!

Out with the Iranian Guard in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and all the countries of the region! Dissolution of the counter-revolutionary Guard, the Basij and all the repressive forces! Freedom for the political prisoners!

National assembly of delegates from all sectors in struggle! Self-defense committees and picket lines to strengthen, extend and defend our struggle!

Make way for the working class! Bring back the shoras, the armed workers' and peasants' councils, as in the revolution of the 1980s!

The struggle of the oil workers in Iran, which has already spread to Iraq, shows that it is the same struggle in both countries. This leaves behind the historical divisions imposed by imperialism in the fratricidal wars where millions and millions of workers have died. The enemy is imperialism that plunders our nations! The enemy is its local representatives like those in Iraq! The enemy is its junior partners like in Iran, millionaire clerics who fill their pockets with juicy business deals while the workers are subjugated to live like beggars! The enemies are Al Assad and Putin who together with the Iranian Guard have massacred in Syria! The enemy is Zionism which is on a full offensive against the Palestinian masses!

From Tehran to the resistance in Idlib, Gaza, Baghdad and the whole Maghreb and Middle East, one and the same intifada!