A-Infos (en) Italy, FdCA, IL CANTIERE #40 - A Look Back at the "Woman, Life, Freedom" Uprising in Iran - Interview with Assareh Assa (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

*The interview was conducted by zyg in September 2025 and published in 
French in «Courant Alternatif» in October and November. ---- We met 
Assareh Assa, an Iranian comrade exiled in France, for an interview that 
retraces the 2022 Iranian uprising, which followed the assassination of 
Mahsa Jina Amini. In the last issue of Cantiere (39, November 2025), we 
published the first part, dedicated to the achievements of that movement 
in terms of women's freedom, its limits with respect to social issues, 
repression, and nationalism in Iran. In this second part, Assareh talks 
to us about the Israel-Iran war, the situation of the working classes, 
and the "fascist" nature of the regime.

Let's return to the war between Israel and Iran. You said that Iranian 
nationalism ended up helping the Islamic Republic. Can you explain this 
idea?

Indeed, any attack against a country tends to reawaken nationalist 
sentiment among its population. In the case of the Iranians, the 
situation was particularly ambiguous during what was called the 
Twelve-Day War between Iran and Israel.

The vast majority of Iranians deeply hate the current regime, for the 
violence and brutality with which it represses its opponents. They feel 
incapable of liberating themselves, and therefore derive a certain 
satisfaction from seeing their oppressors severely retaliated against. 
Undoubtedly, Israel's reprisals against the Islamic Republic's 
commanders have rejoiced among the majority of the Iranian population.

Although the Israeli bombings have hurt national sentiment, a large 
segment of the population passively awaits Israel's next attack as an 
opportunity to finally rid itself of the Islamic Republic, and therefore 
views Israeli military action as a positive thing. It must be said: 
unfortunately, the idea of being "liberated" from a state like 
Netanyahu's, whose fascist nature has long been known, does not bother a 
segment of the Iranian population.

This indifference is partly explained by the fact that liberals strive 
to present Israel as the only true democracy in the Middle East: a 
functioning state that guarantees freedom of expression and the economic 
security of its population, etc. We know this isn't the case, but 
Iranian society now seems far from seeking the truth about the nature of 
the Israeli regime. This is due to the narrative the Islamic Republic 
has maintained throughout its existence.

I'd like to dwell on this point for a moment. Iran, long before the 
birth of the Islamic Republic, was culturally opposed to the Israeli 
occupation of Palestine. But in recent years, a segment of Iranians has 
sided with Israel precisely because of the Islamic Republic. By 
transforming the Palestinian cause into a state issue, the regime has 
changed Iranians' perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Indeed, by using the Palestinian cause as a tool of internal repression, 
the regime has made it detestable in the eyes of many Iranians. For 
example, some time ago the regime organized a parade of bassidji , young 
pro-government women charged with attacking women who dared to go out 
into the streets without a veil; these bassidji marched holding the 
Palestinian flag.

However, it's not just the use of the Palestinian emblem that pushes 
Iranians to equate pro-Palestinian discourse with their oppression. 
Throughout its existence, the Islamic Republic has pursued a foreign 
policy that has directly resulted in Iranians' unrestrained impoverishment.

Of course, the cause of this devastating policy can and must be sought 
in the economic interests of the leaders. But to the average Iranian, 
things look like this: the regime spends the country's money on the 
people of the countries it considers its allies in the "axis of 
resistance," particularly the Palestinians.

This is why in recent years, and even today, the slogan "Forget 
Palestine, find a solution to our misery" is often heard shouted at 
demonstrations.

It's clear that the regime uses oil revenues to finance the armaments of 
various military and paramilitary forces in the region, part of the 
"axis of resistance." But claiming that this money will improve the lot 
of the people of countries like Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or Palestine is a 
pure and simple lie.

In any case, the widespread belief in Iranian society is that if the 
regime worships the Palestinian cause, then Iranians hate the 
Palestinians and their cause, and love their enemy, Israel; the same 
Israel that massacres them.

In my opinion, applauding Israel-psychologically, morally, and 
ideologically-for what it is doing in Gaza reveals only a fascist 
mindset. It is a profoundly sad attitude, induced by the Iranian regime. 
Iranian society, which before the 1979 revolution supported the 
Palestinian cause, has become, if not openly supportive of the genocide 
underway in Gaza, at least indifferent. Out of pure opportunism, 
according to the principle "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," or out 
of that reformist logic according to which bad is preferable to worse: 
Israel is bad, but the Islamic Republic is worse. Once again, simple 
minds refuse to see the bond that unites these two fascist regimes, and 
the way they fuel each other through their antagonism.

You've repeatedly called the Islamic Republic "fascist," which isn't a 
minor point. Everyone knows that Iran is a theocratic dictatorship. But 
should we really call it fascist?

I realize that the term "fascist" is highly charged: it has a very 
specific historical meaning, and therefore should be avoided. However, 
it allows me to adequately describe the political and social situation 
in Iran. The Islamic Republic is, in fact, the result of 
counterrevolutionary forces seizing power; it was born from a failed 
popular revolution. Its first steps consisted of eliminating radical 
elements from society, which it did very well. It then launched a war 
against Iraq, thanks to which it was able to mobilize the masses around 
its supremacist ideology, an Iranian version of Islam: Shi'ism. In this 
way, it succeeded in stifling any voice of opposition during the war and 
for the entire following decade. For all these reasons, it seems unfair 
to strip the regime of its fascist label!

That said, if anyone offers me another term or concept that would allow 
me to place it on the same level as the Israeli regime, I will gladly 
accept it. Indeed, I believe that insisting, rightly, on the fascist 
nature of Israel's practices, particularly the genocide it is committing 
in Gaza, while simultaneously viewing the Iranian regime as a simple 
dictatorship, constitutes a grave error of analysis. This approach leads 
to practices that ultimately support the Islamic Republic in its 
militaristic policies and in strengthening its repression against 
Iranians, under the pretext of confronting Israel.

The political discourse that defines Israel as fascist but not Iran is 
often supported by the left's "axis of resistance." Supporters of the 
so-called "campist" or "anti-imperialist" left emphasize the destruction 
and deaths caused by the two warring regimes.

They ignore, or prefer to ignore, that the Islamic Republic, by its very 
existence as a permanent threat to Israel, has aggravated the life and 
struggle of the Palestinians.

They also ignore that Israel sold weapons to Iran during the Iran-Iraq 
war, which decisively contributed to consolidating the regime's power 
through the war itself. They also ignore Iran's openly anti-Semitic 
discourse, which allows the Israeli state to conflate anti-Semitism with 
anti-Zionism.

Faced with this simplistic comparison coming from a certain left, I like 
to recall Otto Rühle's phrase "to talk about black fascism, you must 
also talk about red fascism," and adapt it to the current situation: to 
talk about Israeli fascism, you must also talk about Iranian fascism, 
and vice versa.

But to avoid remaining merely rhetorical and limiting ourselves to 
justifying the political use of the fascist label to designate the 
Iranian regime, let's look at the issue from the perspective of Afghan 
immigrant workers. Indeed, unlike a simple dictatorship, a fascist state 
requires the support of its population to pursue its fascist policies. 
And it seems to me that this, unfortunately, was precisely the case 
during the Iranian regime's latest attack on the Afghans.

Are you talking about the recent expulsion of Afghan immigrants from Iran?

Yes. I'd like to take this opportunity to address the situation of these 
immigrants in Iran. It also allows me to complete my answer to your 
first question, namely how Iranian nationalism supports the regime. To 
do so, I must return to the end of the uprising that followed Jina's 
death. Indeed, as I said at the beginning of this interview, the failure 
of that uprising resulted in a clash between the various political 
forces over the issue of territorial integrity.

This conflict assumed significant proportions, to the point that Turkish 
sovereignist forces aligned themselves against the Kurdish nationalists, 
the latter against the Persians, and the Persians against everyone else, 
and so on. To control the national conflict after that failure, the 
regime needed to unite all the actors under a national slogan.

But this slogan could no longer be directed against the so-called 
external enemy, that is, the Western countries, since the Iranians had 
long since ceased to believe in it.

Having lost confidence in its identity discourse against the external 
enemy, the regime sought to create an internal one: immigrant workers.

While most Iranians no longer side with the regime in its opposition to 
Israel or the United States, they instead side with it against the 
Afghans, who have come to Iran, according to them, to steal their bread 
or destroy their beautiful country.

In recent years, Afghan immigrants and their descendants have suffered 
atrocities not only at the hands of the state, but also at the hands of 
some Iranian citizens. Despite sharing the same culture, language, and 
religion as Iranians, Afghans have never been welcome in Iran.

They are victims of all kinds of state discrimination:

they cannot settle where they want;

they cannot frequent certain neighborhoods;

access to certain public spaces, such as gardens, is prohibited to them;

They cannot even have a SIM card in their own name nor move freely 
within the country.

They encounter enormous difficulties in enrolling their children in 
school, and in some cases it is completely impossible.

In recent times, the regime has even been seen banning the sale of bread 
and medicines to Afghans.

It is clear that the state could not carry out all this systematic 
discrimination if racism did not exist in Iran.

But even before the Jinna uprising, an Afghan, or even an 
Iranian-Afghan, was not immune from racist acts: incidents of violence 
against Afghans are countless, especially when it comes to Hazaras, 
easily recognizable by their Asian features.

It starts with a simple insult on the street, it progresses to beatings 
and ends up with the burning of their neighborhood.

For as long as I can remember, most Iranians have always felt a sense of 
superiority toward Afghans. I won't dwell on the historical, cultural, 
or economic reasons for this here; I'll simply say that a narrative 
circulates in Iran that Iranians are descendants of Aryans, bearers of 
"pure blood," etc.; a myth that legitimizes their supposed "racial" 
superiority over non-Aryans. This narrative, of course, has taken on 
even greater relevance today; but acts of racism against Afghans, 
especially against Hazaras, are by no means recent. In a context of 
political, economic, and social crisis, this racism leads to acts that 
can only be described as fascist.

It should also be noted that the issue of Afghan workers and the racism 
they face is slowly beginning to be raised in society, especially in 
left-wing intellectual circles.

The regime, long incapable of guaranteeing the population a basic living 
standard, has sought to ease the burden of the state. It has found a 
solution by expelling Afghan immigrant families.

To do this, however, he needed the cooperation of society: the war 
provided him with the ideal nationalist pretext.

During the Twelve-Day War, Iranians of all political persuasions were 
shocked. They saw the myth of the regime's military might dissolve, and 
the regime revealed itself to be extremely vulnerable to its enemy. They 
hoped the situation could evolve in their favor, but they also worried 
about their own safety. Thus, once the bombing of cities ended, they 
began to show solidarity with the regime.

How? The regime sought scapegoats to justify its failure, and found them 
among the poorest in Iranian society: Afghan workers. It hunted them 
down in their workplaces, in their homes, and even in hospitals. Most 
Iranians don't believe the regime's completely fabricated story about 
the Afghans, but they nonetheless effectively helped it by supporting 
their mass expulsion.

An estimated five to six million Afghan workers labor in Iran for 
starvation wages. The regime has managed to expel between one and two 
million of them, in appalling conditions.

There were also some deaths in detention camps, where Afghan workers 
were held for days without food or water before being sent back to 
Afghanistan.

Iran's entrepreneurial middle class is well aware of the economic value 
of this cheap labor. However, the regime is so concerned about its own 
future that it cannot assess the damage this bourgeois productive sector 
will suffer in the medium term.

Furthermore, the economic situation of the Iranian working class is so 
dire that the regime is convinced that, sooner or later, they will 
accept replacing it with immigrant labor, settling for miserable wages 
in hard, low-paying jobs.

In addition to the alarming material situation of Iranians, there are 
also water and energy shortages, right?

Yes, but before answering this question, I'd like to provide some 
figures to better understand the economic desperation of the working 
class. A working-class family of four needs about 48 million tomans to 
survive in an expensive city like Tehran, while the current salary of a 
worker doesn't exceed 14 million tomans, or less than $100 a month.

The threat of war and embargo further aggravates the condition of this 
class, but also increasingly impoverishes the middle class, to the point 
that some of its strata are no longer able to reproduce themselves as such.

Regarding the electricity shortage, experts believe it's due to the 
regime's failure to invest in renovating production facilities. There 
are numerous leaks in the networks, whether water, gas, electricity, 
etc. I don't have figures, but apparently a lot of bitcoin is being 
produced in Iran, a sort of cryptocurrency-based gimmick to circumvent 
embargoes. The result: daily power outages.

It's important to note, however, that these outages don't affect all 
Iranians equally: residents of smaller towns and villages are even more 
deprived of electricity than those in larger cities or wealthy 
neighborhoods. By implementing this measure, the regime is attempting to 
reduce the risk of uprisings in major cities.

Regarding water shortages, it's important to note that Iran has been 
suffering from a drought for about five years, but this isn't the only 
cause: poor water resource management is also a factor. And when it 
comes to water scarcity, it's not a temporary phenomenon. Iran's major 
historic cities are now threatened by this problem. In Isfahan, for 
example, the groundwater is subsiding. Why? Because groundwater has been 
tapped for agriculture, in order to realize one of the regime's great 
dreams: achieving food independence. On the other side of the country, 
in the northwest, Lake Orumia, Iran's largest, has been drained by dams. 
The consequence is that in a few years, major cities will be directly 
affected by the salt carried by the wind, drying out everything in its 
path (this phenomenon is already underway). It is difficult to imagine 
the number of rivers and ponds drained, directly or indirectly, for 
direct material interests taken advantage of by the economic mafia of 
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: draining a pond to exploit the 
oil or minerals found nearby, for example.

A few years ago, during a protest movement, a mullah declared: " We will 
not leave. But if we leave, we will leave you scorched earth ."[Editor's 
note:]I personally fear that they may carry out this plan!

And what could prevent the mullahs from realizing that plan?

Ah, what a sacred question! Truly, the fight will not end until we find 
the answer to this question: what to do?

In a climate of war, where the regime arrests hundreds of people under 
the pretext of being Israeli spies, and several have been hanged for 
this reason, there are still protests here and there. There was one 
recently in Baluchistan, which was immediately and bloodily repressed.

Pensioners gather every week to demand a pension increase, even though 
they are not immune to the violence of the repressive forces, despite 
their age. In Shiraz, people took to the streets to protest water and 
electricity shortages; they were dispersed and immediately arrested. In 
some villages, residents are blocking roads to protest the water shortage.

In the labor movement, we can cite the struggle of the workers at the 
Arak aluminum plant, who have been on strike for over fifty days. 
Something unprecedented, as far as I know, also happened: after a few 
weeks, instead of receiving a response to their demands, those workers 
found themselves threatened with dismissal and arrest by the political 
police, VEVAK[the Ministry of Intelligence and Security of the Islamic 
Republic of Iran; editor's note]. Some of them then went on hunger 
strike, refusing even to drink water.

https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en