The Workers’ Union of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company; the Haft Tapeh Sugarcane Workers’ Union, Khuzestan Retired Workers, the Pensioners’ Union, and the Coordination Committee to Help Establish Labor Organizations issued a joint statement on the war:
Given the unstable and dangerous conditions in Iran and the region today, the organizations signing this statement have considered it their duty to adopt a collective position.
The working people of Iran – workers, teachers, nurses, retirees, and other wage earners – have not and will not benefit from war, the expansion of militarization, the bombing of the country, and domineering and exploitative policies.
Israel’s military attacks and bombing of hundreds of targets in various parts of Iran, including infrastructure centers, workplaces, refineries, and residential areas, are part of a war-mongering project that ordinary people, especially the hardworking, are paying for with their lives, livelihoods, and livelihoods.
Israel’s claim that it has no enmity with the Iranian people is nothing but lies and political propaganda. Just yesterday, the Israeli Defense Minister threatened to “burn Tehran.” The repeated threats by Trump and other American officials and the full support of Western governments for these actions have only fueled increased tension, insecurity, and destruction in the region.
The Israeli and American governments are among the main perpetrators of the current genocide in Gaza and many other crimes in the region and the world, and the United Nations and international institutions that hypocritically pose as peacemakers but in practice remain silent about these crimes are part of this structure of domination. The entire capitalist world system, its profit-oriented logic, and the imperialist powers are the main causes of wars, human disasters, and environmental destruction.
The Iranian working class not only has no interest in the wars, but these wars have directly targeted their lives and security. The continuation of economic sanctions, the allocation of large budgets to military affairs, and the restriction of freedoms will lead to wider poverty, wider repression, hunger, death, and displacement of millions of people.
We, the independent labor and popular organizations and activists in Iran, have no illusions that the United States and Israel want to bring us freedom, equality, and justice—just as we have no illusions about the repressive, interventionist, adventurist, and anti-labor nature and practices of the Islamic Republic.
We, the workers and toilers of Iran, have paid heavy costs for many years to achieve the minimum rights and basic necessities of life, such as imprisonment, torture, execution, expulsion, threats and beatings, and we are still deprived of the right to organize, assemble and express ourselves freely. The workers and toilers of the country are rightly angry and disgusted with the rule of the Islamic Republic and the capitalists who have accumulated astronomical wealth on our shoulders for more than four decades and have kept us in permanent deprivation and insecurity. All officials and institutions that have played a role in the suppression and killing of workers, women, youth and oppressed people of Iran must be tried and punished by the oppressed people.
Our struggle, the workers, is a social and class struggle. This struggle will continue, relying on our own strength, in the continuation of the movements of recent years, including for “Bread, Work, Freedom” and “Women, Life, Freedom,” and in conjunction with the international support of the working class and humanitarian, freedom-loving, and egalitarian forces.
Continuing the current course of war will have no consequences other than further destruction, irreparable damage to the environment, and the repetition of human tragedies. The working class and deprived people of Iran, like the oppressed in other countries in the region, are the main victims of this situation.
The organizations signing this statement call on all labor organizations, human rights institutions, anti-war groups, environmental activists, and peace-loving forces around the world to unite in calling for an immediate end to the war, bombing, killing of innocent people, and environmental destruction, and to support the struggles of the people of Iran and the region to end genocide, warmongering, and repression.
The people of the Middle East need an end to the destructive tensions between regional and global powers and the establishment of a lasting peace; a peace in the light of which the people can determine their own destiny through organization, mass formations, the expansion of protests, and direct and universal participation.
No to war – no to war-mongering policies
An immediate ceasefire is our immediate demand.
Workers’ Union of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company
Haft Tapeh Sugarcane Workers’ Union
Khuzestan Retired Workers
Pensioners’ Union
Coordination Committee to Help Establish Labor Organizations
Pensioners’ Union Group
17 June 2025