Hands Off Iran!

The living conditions of the vast majority of Iranian society have fallen into a profound crisis. The convergence of brutal imperialist sanctions and domestic neoliberal economic policies—which over decades have steadily shrunk the people’s livelihoods while enriching a small minority—has today driven the majority of the population into unprecedented poverty and reduced the purchasing power of wage earners and working people to its lowest level ever.

After decades of repression against independent labor organizations and socialist political movements, it has become clearer than ever that bourgeois parties and pro-capitalist academicians have no concrete solutions to resolve—or even meaningfully alleviate—the economic hardships faced by Iran’s working class.

Nevertheless, progressive movements across different sectors of Iranian society have not ceased for a single moment. Students, retirees, women, and various segments of the working class—including industrial workers, teachers, and nurses—have risen at every possible opportunity to struggle for their just and collective demands.

Today, with the renewed escalation of imperialist threats, the shadow of a devastating war once again looms over the suffering people of Iran. Only a few months have passed since the genocidal and occupying Israeli regime carried out attacks on Iran, killing more than a thousand innocent people, and yet the United States government—with its long record of mass killings in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and dozens of other countries across the Global South—has once again resorted to shameless deception. Under the vulgar slogans of “saving the Iranian people” and “helping” them overthrow the Islamic Republic and “restore former greatness”—which in reality means restoring the dependent and subordinate order that existed prior to the 1979 Revolution—it seeks to further pave the way for bombardment, destruction, and the stripping of the Iranian people of their lives, property, security, and dignity.

We, the signatories of this statement, who are committed to the ideals of socialism, emphasize that yielding to the imperialist and destructive war scenario promoted by warmongers—and aligning with it—will only strengthen reactionary tendencies within Iranian society. We have witnessed the catastrophic consequences of U.S. military interventions throughout the Global South, and no false promise can erase from our memory the mass killing of peoples and the weakening and destruction of progressive movements caused by militarism and war.

We believe that if calls for war and sanctions serve, for many reactionary forces active today, as a means of power-seeking and imposing their rule through killing, torture, and the elimination of rivals and opponents, for us they will bring nothing but the death of our loved ones, the destruction of essential infrastructure, deprivation of water, electricity, fuel, and public services, the deepening of poverty and hunger, emptier tables, and the silencing of voices struggling for freedom, equality, and social emancipation.

We are convinced that war will destroy the foundations of our social life and set back protest movements—including the labor movement, the women’s movement, and the struggles of students, teachers, and retirees—by decades. War will consign to ruin the struggles we have carried forward with immense sacrifice and reduce our lives to a mere struggle for survival. We know that the liberation of the oppressed cannot be achieved through foreign intervention or reliance on promises of regime change. We believe that equality and freedom are the achievements of conscious, organized social struggle, not commodities to be imported or traded.

We believe that resisting foreign military intervention and spreading the slogan “No to War” throughout society is not separate from the historic slogans of Iran’s progressive movements. On the contrary, it constitutes the very foundation of any struggle that upholds the principles of human dignity, equality, and social emancipation.

We call upon all progressive parties, organizations, and activists throughout the world to unite around the slogans “Hands Off Iran” and “No War Against Iran,” and to defend the Iranian people’s sovereignty and their struggles for freedom and social justice.

No to War!

Long live the progressive struggles of the people!

Socialist Anti-War Network of Iran

February 2026