FOR several days, a vast protest movement has been rising against the theocratic dictatorship that oppresses the people of Iran. Despite the violent repression they faced, they resisted courageously.

Students and workers as well as shopkeepers are at the forefront of the demonstrations. Special units of the Revolutionary Guards opened fire on the population in Tehran, Hamedan and Kermanshah. The exact number of people arrested and injured during this brutal crackdown remains unknown.

The immediate origins of this popular irruption are due to the economic and social policy of the mullahs’ regime: inflation at more than 40 per cent, a decrease in purchasing power, corruption of the ruling circles. Added to this is anger at the effects of the sanctions imposed by US imperialism and its allies.

But, more profoundly, it is a powerful aspiration for democracy, already strongly expressed by the “Women-Life-Freedom” movement, which resurfaces forcefully on the occasion of this mobilisation.

Donald Trump is using these demonstrations as a pretext to threaten military intervention in order to recompose the region in his own hands. This would expose the Iranian people and all the peoples of the region to further catastrophe and chaos.

It is up to the Iranian people, and them alone, to decide their future after they bring down this odious Islamist regime.

The French Communist Party stands in solidarity with the Iranian people’s protest movement against the theocratic dictatorship. They express their full support to our comrades in the Tudeh Party of Iran, who are acting so that the ongoing protest movements can be transformed into a broad popular movement for the liberation of the people of Iran and for a democratic future for the country, based on popular sovereignty.

Paris, January 5 2026
French Communist Party