In the course of the war it has imposed on the people, the Islamic Republic has taken over the streets—not to confront an external enemy, but to control the internal enemy: the protesting and rebellious people in neighbourhoods and cities. Numerous checkpoints have been set up across urban areas, and in addition the regime continually orders its thugs and affiliated forces to dominate the streets.
The Islamic Republic fears the people far more than it fears any “external enemy.” It fears a population that, after forty-seven years under the bloody rule of this criminal regime, dreams day and night of overthrowing it and protests in every possible way. The purpose of these repressive measures is to intimidate the population, prevent protests, and prepare to suppress a popular uprising after the war.
At the checkpoints now stationed everywhere, citizens are subjected to searches of their personal belongings, including their mobile phones and private vehicles. In some urban areas that have been major centres of protest in recent years, special units have been deployed whose presence appears intended to continue even beyond wartime conditions. The regime is pursuing a criminal war policy. While government officials hide in secure shelters, they call on people to remain in the streets so they can be used as human shields.
In reality, the regime is treating people as cannon fodder in a criminal war aimed at preserving its vile rule, while at the same time attempting to control the population and prevent protests by imposing a militarised atmosphere on society.
These policies must be resisted. The people have already shown their ability to dismantle the morality-police apparatus, and today too they must protest in every possible way against the militarisation of their neighbourhoods and the deployment of repressive forces where they live. The burdens and imposed hardships of the war on the people must end immediately. The Islamic Republic’s repressive forces must be removed from the streets. Turning society into a military garrison in the name of war must come to an end. The militarised atmosphere imposed on the streets against the people must end immediately.
The united protest of the people of Abdanan against the deployment of government security and military forces near residential homes, and the protest of the people of Marivan to prevent the Islamic Republic’s military forces from being stationed in the city stadium, are examples that show that even under wartime conditions, people rise up to defend their lives.
This is not the people’s war. People recognise the cause of this war in a government that, for the sake of its own survival, refused to abandon its missile and nuclear programmes and its support for proxy forces. The people of Iran have never had, and have no, interest in these projects. No war and no repression can silence the people’s demand for life and freedom. The war imposed on the people and the presence of repressive forces must be removed immediately from the streets and from people’s living spaces.
Worker-communist Party of Iran
12 March 2026
