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The 2017-2019 Iranian Uprisings in Relation to Revolts Across the Region
Abstract
The 2011 Arab uprisings sparked renewed protests in neighboring Iran where protesters called for political freedoms, a continuation of the earlier 2009 “Green Movement” against the dubious reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A protest slogan heard in 2011 after the fall of Mubarak and Ben Ali testifies to the impact of the Arab uprisings on the Iranian protests: “Mubarak, Ben Ali, next in line is Seyyed Ali [Khamenei].” Since 2011, however, Iranians have engaged in two more nation-wide uprisings: the 2017-2018 “Dey mah” protests and the 2019 “Aban mah” protests, named after months in the Iranian calendar during which they took place. In my paper, I examine parallels between these later revolts and the 2011 Arab uprisings. While the 2009 protests emphasized political grievances over economic grievances, the plunder of public wealth became an increasingly prominent feature of public discourse in Iran throughout the 2010s. This anti-elite sentiment laid the groundwork for the “Dey mah” and “Aban mah” uprisings, which differed from the 2009 revolt in terms of the more visible participation of working-class people. As seen in the 2011 Arab uprisings and the later 2019 uprisings in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, and Iraq, a crisis of global capitalism forms the conditions for the Iranian revolts. To illustrate this, I discuss oral histories I conducted with the Center for Workers’ Defense, a Tehran-based organization of independent unionists and labor organizers. I explore their work organizing a major 2015 teachers’ strike, as well as their writings on precarious labor conditions in Iran including the temporary contracts imposed upon the majority of the work force. I argue that these worker activists have participated in conversations around the plunder of public wealth by domestic elites, sentiments which led to the 2017/2018 and 2019 revolts. They further spoke of bearing the brunt of US sanctions while decrying domestic elites who escape sanctions unscathed and in fact grow richer. What complicates the Iranian uprisings in relation to some of the Arab ones is Iran’s position in the global order as an adversary of the United States. This means that US state actors hope to co-opt protests for the benefit of the US agenda for the region. Yet I show that a growing number of Iranian activists condemn both Iranian state repression and US sanctions and warmongering. Their double-edged condemnation prompts us to imagine different social conditions than the ones made available by the Iranian and US states.
Discipline
Sociology
Geographic Area
Iran
Sub Area
Iranian Studies