Truck drivers in Iran have been on strike since 22 May. Beginning in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, the strike has spread to more than 150 cities in the days since. According to the Alliance of Iran Truckers and Truck Drivers’ Unions (AITTD), over 400,000 vehicles remain off the road out of approximately 433,000 registered HGVs.
The strike has been sparked by the government’s plans to introduce a tiered pricing system for fuel, which would sharply raise prices compared to current state subsidies. Truckers are demanding maintenance of the current subsidies; relief from insurance and toll fees; improved road safety and infrastructure; and fairer rates for freight, which are regulated by the state.
Despite reports of arrests of strikers and the use of military vehicles to transport goods, the truckers appear to be remaining strong. This national action has grown despite the fact that 93% of HGVs in Iran are owned by self-employed individuals. The AITTD itself is a semi-legal organisation, active since at least 2018, which has assumed a central organising role in contrast to the state-backed Union of Nationwide Transportation Truckers’ Cooperatives (UNTTC), which has criticised the strike. This all shows that when workers have had enough and are determined to struggle, they can overcome all barriers.
Series of strikes in recent years
This truckers’ strike is the latest in a series of strikes and protests in Iran over the last several years, including strikes by teachers and workers at the large Haft Tappeh sugar refinery and the Women, Life, Freedom movement in 2022. Underpinning all these movements is a deeply reactionary and oppressive theocracy attempting to manage Iranian capitalism in deep crisis. Inflation in Iran continues to hover at around 40%. Clearly, the bosses are intent on making ordinary Iranian workers’ pay the price.
In a joint statement, over 180 civil rights and student organisations in Iran have expressed their support for the truckers and have urged other sections of society – including teachers, factory and service workers, shopkeepers and students – to form coordination councils and broaden the movement. Similar councils were set up during the Women, Life, Freedom movement, although these were unable to establish deep connections with the organised working class. This present strike offers a new opportunity to not only revive the coordination committees but to draw in broad layers of workers. A national network of coordination committees, with the organised working class taking the lead through the semi-legal unions, would be essential for workers, civil rights activists, students, shopkeepers etc to both coordinate strikes and protests and to discuss and democratically agree a programme and list of demands.
The theocracy in Iran needs to be overthrown. The crucial question is: what next? Iran has been in conflict with Western imperialism since the 1979 revolution which saw the theocracy take power. Because of this conflict, some capitalists in the West have spoken in favour of workers’ struggles in Iran. Even exiled ‘Prince’ Reza Pahlavi has supported the truckers and called for international solidarity from other trade unions! Workers, in Iran and internationally, must be under no illusion about these capitalist forces who would no doubt like to see a ‘colour change’ in Iran – replacing the theocracy with a more ‘liberal’ capitalist government. There is no prospect of a capitalist Iran being able to improve the living standards of ordinary Iranians, and any such government would quickly find itself compelled to attack Iranian workers.
The Iranian working class must maintain its political independence from all so-called ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ capitalist forces. Bringing together the industrial and civil rights struggles in a national network of coordinating committees would be a great step forward. This would immediately pose the task of fighting to build a mass workers’ party with a socialist programme to not only overthrow the theocracy but also to consign dead-end Iranian capitalism to the rubbish heap and begin to build a socialist Iran, with appeals to the working classes of the Middle East and the world for solidarity. Such a struggle would have an explosive effect.
The Committee for a Workers’ International sends solidarity to the Iranian workers and welcomes discussions with all forces looking to build a socialist Iran and a socialist world.