2025-11-11

The Impasse of the Islamic Republic in the Context of Global and Regional Developments

October 2025

The World is Still in a Period of Transition

The capitalist world is facing one of the deepest crises of its existence. The post-World War II international order, which was shaped by U.S. hegemony, has reached its end amidst a structural crisis of capitalism. This crisis has manifested itself in the pervasiveness and globalization of the economic crisis, the parasitic nature of finance capital, the failure of state capitalism, and the impasse of neoliberal globalization. This international order, which was built upon pillars such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the hegemony of the U.S. as the superior economic and military power, and the setting of legal frameworks around concepts like national sovereignty—which, in their view, were intended to prevent major wars and regulate the competition of global powers through multilateral institutions—has collapsed. This is because the post-World War II international order reflected the balance of power among the capitalist blocs in 1945 and, subsequently, the balance of power in the bipolar East-West world during the Cold War, and not the reality of the current era, where the rise of China and its strategic plans, alongside the emergence of other power blocs, have completely shifted the balance.

The collapse of this global order is clearly demonstrated by the discrediting of the Security Council and the paralysis of its function in crises such as Syria, Ukraine, and Gaza, the weakening of the legitimacy of international institutions, and the disregard for the rulings of the International Court of Justice or the Human Rights Council regarding the genocide by the Israel’s State in Gaza. It is further evident in the decline of U.S. hegemony as the head of NATO as a result of the powerful rise of China, the return of Russia, the empowerment of regional actors, the end of the unipolar system, the impasse of neoliberal globalization, and the war of tariffs. Against the backdrop of this collapse, concepts such as democracy and human rights have practically been transformed into tools for legitimizing imperialist wars and a cover for cobbling together bourgeois alternatives in crisis-ridden countries.

The continuation of this economic crisis and the paralysis of the international order have fueled the escalation of geopolitical crises in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and various parts of the world. Since the old imperialist order has practically ceased to function, and a new order has not yet been established, the world remains in a period of transition toward the consolidation of a multipolar world. Consequently, we are witnessing regional chaos, proxy wars, bloc competition, and a crisis of legitimacy for international institutions.

Against the backdrop of the collapse of the post-World War II global order—a collapse that the commencement of the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza, supported by the U.S. and its European allies, delivered the final blow to—the world is now facing the rise of a Neo-Fascist movement in the U.S. White House. The Trump administration has abandoned all pretense of liberalism and openly supports the international extreme right and Neo-Fascists in various countries around the world. Unlike the 1930s, when the U.S. and its allies stood against Hitler’s fascism in Germany, today the United States, through its unquestioning support for the fascist government of Israel and its genocide in Gaza, and its continued proxy occupation of Gaza on behalf of Netanyahu, is leading and supporting Neo-Fascist movements globally. This situation has led to extensive consequences in the political, ideological, and environmental spheres.

In concrete terms, the world is now multipolar. Powers such as China, the U.S., Russia, India, Europe, and regional actors in the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa are in competition. These powers, through the blocs they have formed, will continue to compete to play a greater role in the redefinition of the global order. The balance of power and the boundaries of influence among these powers and blocs have not yet been stabilized, the new order has not yet been born, and it is this instability that characterizes the transitional nature of this period—a period in which monsters like Trump and Netanyahu have emerged. What is clear is that political and economic blocs such as BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the European Union (EU), the G7, and the G20 will continue their existence, but the balance of power among them is changing. In these competitions, BRICS, led by China with its Belt and Road Initiative project, will gain greater importance in shaping and redefining the global order.

Amidst these blocs, rivalries, and during this period of transition, it is still unclear whether a multipolar world can be stabilized, or if the world is heading toward the structuring of chaos—meaning the continuation of the inability to control climate, migration, energy, and technological crises, and the intensification of regional conflicts. However, regardless of the direction the capitalist world moves, what is evident is that the gap between poverty and wealth is deepening daily, and poverty and inequality are accumulating on an unprecedented scale. Under these conditions, workers’ strikes and protests and mass movements will inevitably expand across the world: against this poverty and inequality, against the assault of governments on the labor, life, and livelihood of workers, against the encroachment on political freedoms, and against slaughter, genocide, and the destruction of the environment. The socialist and internationalist movement of the working class, in this historical period and in the context of the growth of workers’ struggles and protest movements, has the potential to move beyond a defensive position, adopt an offensive approach, and transform into a powerful political pole. In this period of history, It is a prerequisite for the advancement of the working-class socialist movement to create revolutionary communist parties that can integrate the current struggle of workers (whether against the onslaught of capital or for the improvement of their working and living conditions) with the strategy of workers and socialist revolution, and transform the strike and protest movements in society into a powerful political movement against capitalist governments.

The Position of the Islamic Republic

In the context of this turbulent situation in the world and the region, and the failure of the strategic policies of the Islamic Republic in the Middle East, pressures from the U.S. and European governments on the regime have intensified. These pressures aim to dismantle its nuclear programs, stop the production of long-range ballistic missiles, cease the provision of arms and financial aid to its “proxy forces,” engage in direct negotiations with the U.S., and, in a word, force its surrender. However, the U.S. government, at the head of NATO, and its allies in Europe still do not pursue a policy of overthrowing the Islamic Republic regime. This situation, under the shadow of war threats from the Israeli and U.S. governments, has prolonged the “neither war, nor peace” scenario.

Inside Iran, the deepening economic crisis, cronyism and the growth of mafia gangs within the ruling structure, institutionalized corruption, the consequences of the activation of the “snapback mechanism” and the intensification of international sanctions, unprecedented inflation, high prices, and unemployment, the out-of-control environmental crisis, and the inability of the national consensus government of Pezeshkian to provide bread, water, electricity, and clean air, have all granted greater depth and profundity to the Islamic Republic regime’s comprehensive crises. These crises, coupled with the crisis of legitimacy and the inevitable expansion of the workers’ movement and other social and protest movements, have entered a decisive phase for the governmental crisis and the infighting among the ruling factions.

Within the ruling political structure, the reformists and moderates have raised the banner of direct negotiation and surrender to the U.S. and European powers, believing the survival of the Islamic system hinges on compromise at any cost and the lifting of sanctions. The extremist principlists and the Paydari faction insist on maximum resistance in the face of these pressures. The leadership cadre of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which holds the main resources and levers of power and is aware of the reality that the balance of power has entirely shifted against the Islamic Republic compared to ten years ago when the JCPOA agreement was signed, has in reality accepted defeat, and they are seeking an “honorable compromise”. The IRGC, with an approach of compromise, not surrender, is attempting to regain the regime’s lost “credibility” and its defeated image from the “Twelve-Day War” and to mobilize Iranian expansionist nationalism behind it for the continued survival of the Islamic system. However, until the IRGC finds a path to an honorable compromise that must simultaneously be acceptable to the Trump administration, the pressures from the U.S. and the state of “neither war, nor peace” will persist. The governmental factions, which have adopted different approaches in their dealings with the U.S. and the West, are, however, united around the strategy of internal repression as the secret to the Islamic system’s survival, openly confronting the people and the “domestic enemy.” Despite the continuation of this repression, society has not been intimidated, and the prospect of expanding social and protest movements has terrified the regime’s leaders.

The workers’ movement, the women’s movement, the revolutionary movement of Kurdistan, and other protest movements have continued their trajectory of advancement beneath the veneer of the ruling apparatus’s police suppression, and following the pause created by the “Twelve-Day War.” The workers’ movement, with an average of two thousand strikes and protests per year, is the most vibrant and alive social movement in Iran and has influenced the atmosphere of society and other protest movements. The women’s movement has not only appeared in the form of the movements of retirees, teachers, nurses, political prisoners, and families seeking justice, but has also transformed the face of the streets and cities of Iran by defeating the reactionary “Chastity and Hijab Law”. The revolutionary movement of Kurdistan occasionally demonstrates its vitality and vanguard role to the regime’s repressive machine with new initiatives. The student movement continues its resistance. Political prisoners, by organizing the “Tuesdays of No to Execution” campaign behind prison bars, have ushered in a new phase of the struggle against the death penalty. The hunger strike of over 1,500 prisoners in Ghezel Hesar against the death penalty, and the solidarity of other prisoners and their families with this strike, was a turning point in the movement against capital punishment. The workers’ movement and other social movements have also made progress in the field of organization. Simultaneously, the existence of a wide spectrum of radical and socialist activists and leaders of the workers’ movement, who have stepped forward in organizing protests and strikes, has provided the human material for shaping a countrywide leadership.

Bourgeoise Opposition

The continuation of social movements in Iran and their relative radicalization, coupled with the rapid pace of developments in the region, has, to some extent, more clearly exposed the political and class nature of the bourgeois opposition forces. The Monarchist extreme right, which stabbed the Zhina revolutionary movement in the back with the Georgetown conference and the publication of the Mahsa Charter, has been further discredited and marginalized, especially after the recent publication of an investigative report by the Israeli media outlet Haaretz, which revealed that an NGO in Israel, with funding from the Netanyahu government, used artificial intelligence and fake social media accounts to promote Reza Pahlavi.

The main part of the Iranian bourgeois opposition is composed of a wide and colourful spectrum of secular and laic republicans, national front organizations, social democrats, and pro-western neoliberals. The emphasis on a peaceful and non-violent transition by this sector of the opposition is a codename for their opposition to revolution. They fear the workers’ movement and revolution more than they fear the regime of the Islamic Republic. Even when they speak of overthrow, they mean a “soft and velvet” overthrow with the help of imperialist powers and a handover of power over the heads of the people. The two main pillars of the strategic policy of all bourgeois opposition forces are the preservation of the army and the IRGC (Sepah-e Pasdaran) and the state bureaucracy structure, and the effort to save capitalist relations. Parts of the Iranian bourgeoisie, a wide range of governmental reformists, and the upper layers of the petty bourgeoisie form the social base of these forces. This sector of the bourgeois opposition advances its strategy by relying on the right-wing tendency within the social movements. In Kurdistan, the nationalist parties are their base of influence. By virtue of this social base, this sector of the opposition is the main rival to the working-class socialist movement in the struggle to determine the fate of political power in future developments. The Achilles’ heel of the Iranian bourgeois opposition is precisely their economic programs. The alternative proposed by these factions for Iran after the Islamic Republic is the preservation of capitalist relations under a non-Islamic management, all concealed under the guise of human rights. In reality, they want to bring non-religious despotism and neoliberal policies—the continuation of cheap selling of workers’ labour under non-Islamic management—as the result of the revolution for the workers and the underprivileged. The international conference “Human Rights in Iran after the Islamic Republic,” held on Saturday and Sunday, October 18 and 19, 2025, in Oslo, the capital of Norway, was the latest effort by this segment of the bourgeois forces to practice alternative-building under the cover of human rights.

Orientation and What is to Be Done

As the analysis of the dynamics of revolution in Iran and the experience of all revolutions in the twentieth century, as well as the revolutionary uprisings in the twenty-first century in the Middle East and other parts of the world—including the experience of the uprisings of December 2017, November 2019, and the Zhina Revolutionary Movement in Iran—have demonstrated that the advancement and victory of the revolutionary movement cannot be guaranteed without the political presence of the working-class socialist movement on the social stage, it is therefore necessary and essential that all energy and capacity of the Iranian communist movement and the Communist Party of Iran, as a part of this movement, be dedicated to uniting the socialists within the workers’ movement and other progressive social movements around the socialist strategy.

One of the main pillars of the socialist strategy calls upon socialist activists of the workers’ movement to popularize this awareness among the workers against the backdrop of current strikes and protests: that the way to end the existing economic poverty and misery and political and social disenfranchisement is not only an uprising against the Islamic Republic regime, but also against the dominant capitalist relations. That is, they must place the horizon of the socialist revolution before the workers and the entire society and, from the perspective of workers’ interests, challenge the attempts of various sectors of the bourgeois opposition to transfer political power over the heads of the workers and toilers in order to preserve capitalist relations.

Another essential element of the socialist strategy is the advancement of the working class’s organization and the creation of mass and class-based workers’ organizations amidst ongoing struggles. Current strikes and protests are the most effective mechanism for workers’ organization. Factory committees, strike committees, general assemblies, and the organizations of teachers and nurses—which are the embryos of future workers’ councils and other mass workers’ organizations—are the product of this very process of struggles to date. Socialists within the workers’ movement must have projects for establishing mass and class-based workers’ organizations in various sectors, so that they can come to fruition by improving the balance of power in favor of the working class.

Another foundation of the socialist strategy is the effort to make workers’ strikes countrywide. In the current circumstances, where the lack of countrywide mass and class-based workers’ organizations is considered a serious obstacle to the expansion of workers’ strikes and protests in industrial complexes, production, and service centers, the creation of an institution composed of independent workers’ organizations and bodies and leaders and activists who are present in the hotbeds of workers’ struggle and possess living and organic relations with the workers, can partially fill this void. Establishing such an institution can fulfil its role in connecting and expanding workers’ strikes and protests.

Another pillar of the socialist strategy requires socialists in the workers’ movement to have a plan for the organization of workers, and in the first stage, the radical activists and pioneers of the workers’ movement, into their own class-based, communist political party. This is because the working class needs its own communist political party to defend its specific class interests across various arenas of economic, political, and theoretical struggle, to ensure its independent presence in the field of class conflicts and disputes, and to organize the workers’ revolution. It is by advancing in these areas that the workers’ movement can bring progressive social movements such as the women’s movement, the student movement, the revolutionary movement of Kurdistan, and the movement against execution, etc., along with it, and become the backbone of political general strikes and the organization of the uprising to overthrow the Islamic Republic and the dominant class system.

The women’s liberation movement, in order to consolidate its achievements to date, must deepen and expand its social base among the millions of masses of working and toiling women. The prominent presence of women in the protest movements of retirees, teachers, and nurses as part of the workers’ movement, and their role in the student movement and the “Tuesdays of No to Execution” campaign, has demonstrated the capacity of the women’s movement for organization and leadership. The women’s liberation movement can also bring forth another part of its immense power by organizing the working and toiling women of the poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities into women’s associations and councils. It is through bringing this social force into the arena and with the strategy of alliance with the workers’ movement that the socialists of the women’s movement can guarantee the advancement of the women’s movement.

The most important mechanism in the revolutionary movement of Kurdistan for creating readiness to respond to the needs of this period, creating an opportunity for advancement, and neutralizing the dangers that threaten the movement, is the effort by Komalah (The Kurdistan Organization of the Communist Party of Iran) and other revolutionary socialists to incite mass protests against high prices, unemployment, water and electricity shortages, and the regime’s repression. This also includes assisting in the organization of these protest and social movements, linking the activists and organizers of these movements, and working to form a leadership network at the level of neighborhoods in the cities of Kurdistan. The rebuilding of Komalah’s social credibility as a communist current and a persistent defender of the interests of workers and toilers also follows this path.

In a situation where repression, aimed at intimidating the protesting and fed-up people, has become the survival strategy for all factions of the Islamic regime, it is essential to push back the regime’s strategy of repression by expanding support for the “Tuesdays of No to Execution” campaign and by popularizing the slogan “Political Prisoners Must Be Freed.” The demand for the abolition of the death penalty and the release of political prisoners must become the demand of the workers’ movement and all progressive social and protest movements. In the same vein, the abroad organization of the Communist Party of Iran must serve as a primary pillar for organizing political and publicity campaigns against the wave of executions and for the release of political prisoners.

While the Islamic Republic regime has imposed a state of neither war, nor peace on society under the shadow of the war threats from the Israeli government, and has used this as a pretext to securitize the social atmosphere and increase executions, the reactionary nature of these conflicts must be exposed. The war and conflict between the Islamic Republic regime and the U.S. and Israel over the nuclear program and regional ambitions have nothing to do with the interests of the working class and the people of Iran and the region. In line with its survival strategy, the Islamic Republic regime has so far spent hundreds of billions of dollars of the nation’s wealth and the product of the toil and exploitation of Iranian workers and toilers on nuclear projects and programs, the smoke of which has directly gone into the eyes of the Iranian people. The war and conflict between the Islamic Republic regime and the U.S. and Israel, as a continuation of previous policies, has a reactionary and capitalist nature from both sides. The working class, toilers, and free people of Iran have no choice but to intensify the struggle, make a more concentrated effort to organize their ranks, and form a countrywide leadership to organize a mass uprising and overthrow the Islamic Republic regime in order to be freed from the danger of war and economic sanctions.

Under conditions where the process of overthrowing the Islamic Republic has begun long ago and the pillars of its rule are collapsing one after another, and society is on the verge of decisive developments, it is through attending to the aforementioned duties that the Communist Party of Iran and Komalah, as the Kurdistan organization of this party and as a part of the Iranian communist movement, can play their part in structuring the social base of the socialist alternative. The existing parties, organizations, and forces within the Iranian communist movement, whose political and spiritual influence on the political and struggle atmosphere inside Iran is undeniable—and the reflection of their activity can be seen in the evolution of consciousness and the clarification of the demands of social movements and the social left in society—can fulfil their historical duties only by addressing this important task of uniting the socialist activists of the workers’ movement and other social movements around the pillars of a socialist strategy. It is through this path that they can elevate their political and spiritual ties with the workers’ movement and the social left into a living and organic relationship. The Cooperation Council of Iranian Left and Communist Forces and the Cooperation Council of Left and Communist Forces in Kurdistan can improve the quality of their cooperation and activities with this outlook. The conference of the Cooperation Council of Iranian Left and Communist Forces, which is scheduled to be held on January 10, 2026, in the city of Stockholm, Sweden, can, with this vision, become a turning point in the path of advancing joint activities in order to respond to the needs of this period.

October 2025