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On May 10, in a nationally televised address to a state-organized audience presented as workers for Iran’s Labor Week, the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei extolled laborers as “the most important investment in production” and warned against “enemy plots” to drive a wedge between the working class and the Islamic Republic.
But his silence on the fourth round of nuclear negotiations underway in Muscat was as pointed as his rhetoric, reflecting a deliberate strategy to shift attention away from rising diplomatic tensions and toward symbolic displays of internal unity. This comes just days after senior U.S. officials called for the dismantling of Iran’s key enrichment sites—an escalation that highlights mounting pressure on Tehran. Khamenei’s avoidance reveals concern over collapsing morale and possible infighting within the regime over the political cost and consequences of these talks.
“The enemies of nations, including the enemies of the Islamic Republic, have sought from the beginning to separate workers from the revolution and create discontent,” Khamenei said, framing worker loyalty as a bulwark against foreign subversion. He pointed to “early communist attempts to halt production after the revolution” and claimed that workers “stood firm and punched them in the mouth.”
Throughout the speech, Khamenei blended praise for workers’ role in Iran’s economy with ideological messaging aimed at reinforcing loyalty to the regime. He called work “the main pillar of human life,” asserting that “without workers, nothing moves forward.” While acknowledging problems in Iran’s industrial sector, he stressed that solutions lie within the system rather than in external criticism.
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— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) March 6, 2025
Khamenei used the rally to showcase the late President Ebrahim Raisi as an economic savior, insisting that Raisi’s cabinet had “revived eight thousand closed or semi‑closed factories” and therefore proved that “the remedy is never to shut a plant—problems must be fixed.” The figure—unsubstantiated by any public audit—allowed the Supreme Leader to shift blame for years of mass layoffs onto unnamed officials while ignoring that his own Article 44 “privatization” drive handed hundreds of factories to IRGC‑linked holding companies, many of which collapsed under asset‑stripping and debt.
He then warned ministers to resist the “easy temptation” of imports, declaring: “Opening the door to foreign goods may look simple, but it harms the nation and the worker community.” Instead, he urged a nationwide campaign to “turn the consumption of Iranian products into a culture.” For critics, the message masked a deeper reality: sanctioned elites import luxury cars and raw materials through IRGC‑controlled ports even as ordinary Iranians face chronic shortages.
Khamenei’s ideological pivot was equally telling. Quoting himself, he contrasted “Islamic cooperation in the workplace” with “the Marxist philosophy that pits workers against owners,” portraying strikes and independent unions as alien concepts smuggled in by enemies. Analysts note that labeling class conflict “Marxist” gives the state ideological cover to criminalize labor organizing while state‑run “Islamic labor councils” police shop floors.
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— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) February 26, 2022
The speech ended with a customary foreign‑policy diversion: denunciations of Israel and its “Western sponsors” for “crimes in Gaza” and a call that “the question of Palestine must never be forgotten by Muslim nations.” By wrapping domestic hardship in the flag of regional resistance, Khamenei attempted to redirect worker anger outward.
Yet the reality on Iran’s streets exposes the gap between rhetoric and lived experience. Week after week, steelworkers in Ahvaz, petrochemical crews in Asaluyeh, pensioners in Tehran, and teachers from Mashhad to Shiraz stage rallies over unpaid wages, collapsed pensions, and bread‑line inflation—protests that security forces routinely disperse with arrests and tear gas.
These diverse groups share a single refrain: the poverty and inequality they face are the product of policies set at the very apex of power. While Khamenei poses as the guardian of labor, it is his IRGC‑centric “privatization,” elite rent‑seeking, and sanction‑proof monopolies that strip factories of capital, drain pension funds, and drive skilled workers into exile. Far from defending the working class, the Supreme Leader presides over a system that manufactures the grievances fueling Iran’s unending cycle of strikes and street demonstrations.