One month to the day after the death of Mahsa Amini, this 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, who died three days after her arrest by the morality police, the protest movement is not weakening in Iran despite the repression which has already cost the life of more than 100 people and led to hundreds of arrests. It is even gaining momentum with the mobilization of the oil sector since October 10. A sensitive sector which is the subject of special attention from the mullahs’ regime.
Because in the middle of the summer of 1978, the personnel of the oil industry had called a strike to support the Islamic revolution. It had touched the largest refinery in Iran, that of Abadan and precipitated the fall of the Shah of Iran. Since then, workers in the oil sector have been pampered by the Revolutionary Guards, who control the Iranian economy. “Iran has benefited from the increase in oil price since the beginning of the year because of the war in Ukraine, which means that there are more oil revenues for Iran in 2022”, note on franceinfo Thierry Coville, researcher at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS). However, since October 10, several thousand workers in the oil sector have gone on strike. Several refineries are affected, in Assalouyeh (southwest), Abadan (west) or Bouchehr (south), according to Iran Human Rights (IHR).
“It’s the first sector, one of the most important in terms of the number of people working in it.
Thierry Coville, IRIS researcherat franceinfo
“Those who go on strike would be those who don’t have a full-time contract, but the regime is very vigilant, explains Thierry Coville. The movement should not spread. However, workers are undoubtedly one of the social categories that has suffered the most from the economic crisis and the acceleration of inflation since 2018. So social discontent is violent”, observes the researcher. There are also teachers, lawyers…”There is not a social category that is happy”assures Thierry Coville, according to whom, “we really have to follow what will happen in the coming weeks”.
“The movement affects the whole country and all social classes”, confirms on franceinfo Farid Vahid, the director of the Observatory of North Africa and the Middle East at the Jean Jaurès Foundation. This was not the case before, insists the researcher. “In 2009, it was the middle class, very educated, rather bourgeois and in 2019, the opposite, it was the underprivileged classes, the peripheral regions. Today, it’s all classes. And since Raïssi [président de la république islamique d’Iran] is elected [le 3 août 2021], there have been very worrying signals. There were proposed bills that were completely surreal and very shocking to many Iranians.”
“In the president’s entourage, conservatives mentioned, for example, the possibility, with artificial intelligence, of imposing fines on women who were not veiled in their cars.”
Farid Vahid, from the Jean Jaurès Foundationat franceinfo
“On women and the veil, there is a return to the fundamental principles of the Islamic Republic. This is their program and their political project”, summarizes Farid Vahid. However, he believes that the movement has already “achieved. Many taboos have already been broken in Iran. Many girls today no longer wear their veils in the street, there are intellectuals who take positions that they would never have taken a few years ago. Civil society is advancing, the struggle continues. This is the first phase. Afterwards, if we want to imagine a change of regime, the second phase is to succeed in mobilizing all sectors of the country, organizing general strikes, having part of the forces of order, of the army which, as in 1979, is letting go of the system. All of this, we cannot predict. The regime suffers a severe blow, the opponents have more and more courage in their action. It’s a long process.”
Will the accumulated anger in Iran contribute to regime change? The current repression leaves little hope in the short term. On Saturday again, violent clashes took place in Evin prison in Tehran, a place of sinister reputations where many opponents are locked up. And Iran said on Sunday that nothing could shake it after Joe Biden’s support for protests in the country.