More than fifty cities are under the influence of a cross-industry strike through Wednesday.
Dozens of traders have closed their shops in many Iranian cities since Monday, December 5, as the country is called into a three-day general strike.
An unprecedented mobilization in the country, part of a massive wave of protests shaking the very foundations of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And that has been since the arrest and death on September 13 of Mahsa Amini, who set fire to the powder in a country where the wearing of the veil has been compulsory since 1979.
Dealers close shop
Calls for a general strike have been circulating on social media since last week, notably via the @1500tasvir Twitter account, which has more than 385,000 subscribers and is relaying protests.
This unprecedented strike began on Monday December 6 and is expected to last until Wednesday evening, affecting more than fifty cities. Videos posted on social media show the iron shutters being pulled down from shops in major cities across the country. Tehran Bazaar, one of the largest covered bazaars in the world, is also closed. A strike that is said to be cross-sector: Many school children would not have gone to school either, and Iranian industrial workers across the country are also being called on to revolt. Apparently, “the call for a general strike is working,” analyzes Mahnaz Shirali, an Iranian sociologist and political scientist.
This call to insurrection seems to have no particular origin, since the thinkers of this new type of strike remain silent. “It is a mass movement,” explains the researcher, “an uprising based on a general will that arises, a collective that prevails”. In question: “social networks” that unite the demonstrators and make demonstrations of this magnitude possible.
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What to expect from the continuation of this general strike? “Not much economically,” sighs the researcher. “In Iran, the economic fabric is anemic and operating at 5% of its capacity.” The regime has survived for years “on the offshore markets, fakes: the spearhead of its operation is based on the informal economy,” she explains. In fact, “the workers’ strike is obviously more than remarkable, but it cannot bring the already crippled Iranian economy to its knees.”
On the other hand, the symbolic dimension of such a strike plays a role that cannot be neglected. Closing one’s shops and putting a cross on a working day “shows how much the Iranians don’t want this regime anymore,” Mahnaz Shirali recalled. It is another stone that leans against the development of a revolutionary movement in Iran “that wants nothing less than the overthrow of the regime”.