The protests that began on Dec. 28 in Iran have brought to the streets a cross-section of people calling for economic justice and political change, demanding dignity and freedom.
Witnessing from afar the brutal and murderous suppression of protests by government forces, many of us are compelled to raise our voices in solidarity with the people on the streets.
While the Iranian government has made it all but impossible to obtain independent news, corporate media in Canada and the West more broadly is pushing dangerous narratives and trying to manufacture consent for imperialist interests.
We must reject the imposition of exploitative scenarios in place of supporting the legitimate demands of the Iranian people.
There is nothing new about proposals for direct military intervention, increased sanctions and rule by self-proclaimed leaders with visibility in the diaspora and the backing of big money. Of these so-called leaders, the right wing of the Iranian diaspora and their pro-Israel and MAGA allies have settled on Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah of Iran.
If we truly care about the right of Iranians to live with dignity and freedom, we must be extra vigilant to differentiate between demands from inside Iran as distinct from those of the Trump and Netanyahu camp. The U.S. and Israel have an agenda for further dominance in the region by undermining the viability of a sovereign Iran. We must not become their mouthpieces.
What does history tell us about this moment?
At the dawn of the 20th century, the Constitutional Revolution in Iran (1905-1911) demanded the end of the monarchy and its replacement with a republican system. However, Islamic reactionaries and the British and Russian empires intervened to install a soldier to the highest seat of power. That soldier became the first king in the Pahlavi line. During the Second World War, when the first Pahlavi lost his usefulness, the Allied powers replaced him with his 19-year-old son, who effectively signed over any semblance of political sovereignty.
After the grassroots victory of the Oil Nationalization Movement (1949-1953), the second Pahlavi fled the country. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and British MI-6 then intervened with a military coup d’etat, mobilizing the reactionary Islamic clerics to create opposition to the democratically elected nationalist government.
Upon reinstatement, Mohamad Reza Shah arrested thousands, executed hundreds, established the infamous SAVAK secret police with the assistance of the CIA and tutelage from Israel’s Mossad, and presided over a regime of terror. The looting of Iran’s resources and the building of a military that acted as the regional arm of the U.S. pushed millions of Iranians into marginal survival in urban peripheries.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, there was strong opposition to Pahlavi’s rule from left-wing and working-class movements. The 1979 Revolution saw a year of general strikes and dramatic, massive street protests demanding economic independence (esteghlāl), freedom (āzādi) and the end of the monarchy. Once it became clear that the people of Iran would not tolerate the king any longer, Western governments, in order to thwart the possibility of socialism in Iran, supported the Islamic fundamentalists. Contrary to popular misperceptions, these forces have been the West’s go-to in the region.
Over the past 48 years, there has been a succession of uprisings by women, ethnic minorities, students and workers demanding political reform for social and economic justice. But the clerical regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has brutally suppressed all of them. It has all but annihilated organized leftist and nationalist forces. It has targeted, killed, or imprisoned civic leaders including student activists, journalists, lawyers, artists, union activists, writers, teachers, and doctors. And it has created the apparent vacuum of leadership that Pahlavi and his supporters are banking on, cheered on by the MAGA and pro-Israel crowd.
What can we do?
People of conscience in Canada must not be limited to only rhetoric about the Iranians’ right to self-determination. We must keep our ears to the ground and hear the voices from inside Iran. A king replacing the clerics is no meaningful move forward and goes against what Iranians have been struggling for in the past century and a half.
Iranians do not need white Western “saviours.” The same criminals who are committing genocide in Gaza and ethnically cleansing large sections of the Palestinian West Bank will not bring freedom to Iran.
We must speak out against the U.S.-Israel agenda of regime change and the threats of military intervention.
Simultaneously, we must firmly stand against the brutality of the IRI against Iranians and demand the immediate and unconditional end to the killings and suppression of dissent. We must hold the government of Iran accountable and demand the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners.
The current crisis of runaway inflation and rampant black market for necessities of life that has caused so much hardship for the majority of Iranians is to a large degree caused by the economic sanctions against Iran. The sanctions have created fertile conditions for the spread of systemic corruption on the one hand, and on the other hand the sanctions are imposing collective punishment on Iranians. Canada is a part of that. The UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights has urged the countries imposing unilateral trade blockades to stop violating the Geneva Conventions and UN charter by doing so.
We must therefore demand that Canada end debilitating economic sanctions against Iran.
Womxn, Life, Freedom is more than a slogan. It is a global imperative now more than ever.
The original version of this letter is available here.
This article appeared in the 2026 Feb/Mar issue.
