As the US and Israel bomb Iran, we republish this statement opposing the warmongers signed by hundreds of Iranian activists inside the country and in the diaspora

The life of the majority of Iranian society has fallen into a dire situation. The Islamic Republic’s economic policies, which for decades have made people’s tables smaller by the day while fattening the capitalist minority it supports, have today pushed the general public into unprecedented poverty and misery and have restricted the purchasing power of wage‑earners and working people more than ever.​

The Islamic Republic, which from the very beginning rose up on the basis of suppressing revolutionary organizations and massacring fighters and dissidents, has throughout its existence—regardless of which faction was in power at any given time—survived only through repression and elimination of opponents and stripping society of its organizations; from the bloody suppression of revolutionaries in the early years after the 1979 Revolution, to the assault on revolutionary organizations and the massacre of tens of thousands of militants in the 1980s, from the brutal crushing of people protesting the poverty produced by structural adjustment policies in the 1990s in Mashhad and Eslamshahr and Shiraz and Qazvin and Arak and so on, to the bloody suppression of the protests in the Tehran University dormitory and the disgraceful chain murders of intelectuals, from the killing of people protesting the imposed economic misery in December 2017 and November 2019, to the suppression of women and men demanding equality under the progressive slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” in the 2022 protests, and finally the unprecedented massacre of people who had been pushed to the edge in January 2026.

Yet over the past five decades, progressive movements of different strata of Iranian society have not stopped even for a moment. Students, teachers, pensioners, women, and the working class, for years now, despite the repression of any collective activity and the smothering of every effort at organizing and building associations, have risen up at every possible opportunity—and at the cost of torture, prison, exile, and death—against reaction, exploitation, and despotism, and have fought to win their just collective demands.​

Today, however, alongside the poverty, mourning, and misery imposed on the majority of Iranian society, the shadow of a devastating war has also fallen over the heads of this long‑suffering people. Only a few months after the attacks of the genocidal occupying Israeli regime on Iran and the killing of more than a thousand innocent people, the United States government—with its history of killing millions in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Iraq—has once again resorted to a shameless lie and, under the brazen slogans of “saving the Iranian people” and “helping” them to overthrow the Islamic Republic and “restore former glory”, seeks to further pave the way for bombing, destruction, and the stripping away of the lives, property, security, and dignity of the people of this country.

We, the signatories of this statement, who consider ourselves among the opponents of the current system, believe that no hatred of the Islamic Republic can justify accepting or aligning with the imperialist and destructive scenario of warmongers. We have witnessed the catastrophic results of U.S. military interventions in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and Iraq, and no “freedom‑loving” or “humanitarian” promise can erase from our memory the slaughter of the people of the Middle East and the destruction of progressive movements in these countries as a result of war.​

We believe that although for many forces active on today’s scene, the demand for war and sanctions is an attempt to enter the political arena and to claim a share of power and impose their rule through the killing, torment, and torture of rivals and opponents, for us it will never bring anything but the death and dismemberment of our loved ones, the destruction of the country’s basic infrastructure and deprivation of water, electricity, fuel, and public services, and deeper humiliation, poverty, and hunger and ever‑emptier tables.​

We believe that war will destroy the very foundations of our social life and will push back our protest movements—including the workers’ movement and the movements of women, students, teachers, and pensioners—by decades, will drag the struggles that we have advanced with such pain and effort into ruin, and will reduce our lives merely to a struggle for “staying alive.” We know that liberation from the claws of exploitation and despotism is not possible through foreign intervention and reliance on promises of overthrowing the current system, and we believe that equality and freedom are the fruit of the struggle and effort of societies themselves, not imported and tradable notions.

We call upon all freedom‑seeking people of Iran to, without hesitation and without fear of the abuse and threats of the warmongers, to carry the slogan “No to war” into their families, among their friends, and into their workplaces and neighborhoods, and not allow, in the absence of independent progressive media, the voices of those who oppose war and warmongering to be silenced. We believe that resisting foreign military intervention and spreading the slogan “No to war” throughout society is not only inseparable from all the slogans of the progressive movements in Iran’s history, but is the very basis and foundation of any struggle that holds dear the ideals of dignity, equality, and a more humane life.

No to war!
Long live the progressive struggles of the masses!