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From Anarchist Front
April 3, 2026
Answers to the questions of "Maszyj Augustin"; an anarchist comrade in Poland

American and Israeli bombs have been falling on Iran for over a month. Civilians are dying, hundreds of them children. More than a million people have been displaced. The internet has been down since February 28, 2026. Now the war has spread throughout the region.

But we want to say something that other media outlets avoid saying.

We do not mourn the Islamic Republic. We have fought it all our lives. They have tortured our comrades. They have imprisoned our sisters. They have massacred our people for forty-seven years.

But the imperial bombs are not for our freedom.

Trump himself said, he is not fighting for democracy. He is not fighting for Iranian women. He is fighting for America's strategic interests, to destroy missile power, to control the region. Washington is not dropping bombs for freedom. Ask the people of Iraq, the people of Afghanistan about this.

While bombs are falling from without, the Islamic Republic is waging war from within. Protesters are being executed. Political prisoners are being held in cells without food. Our comrades have disappeared. The regime is using detainees as human shields in military bases.

The people of Iran are caught between two forms of violence. One wears a turban, the other wears shorts.

To those who wave the Shah's flag abroad, we say frankly: We did not survive forty-seven years of one dictatorship to hand over our country to the son of another dictatorship. The crown and the turban are two sides of the same coin. We reject both.

What we want is simple. A society built from below. Without masters, without mullahs, without kings. Workers in control of the workplace, like other societies, organizing and managing themselves. All people free to determine their own future.

We stand with the people of Iran, not with the governments of the United States and Israel, not with the Islamic Republic, not with the Crown.

With people.

No to imperialist war! No mullah! No shah! Woman—life—freedom!

1) Is the anarchist movement in Iran marginal and scattered, mostly concentrated in university cities? How active is the diaspora?

– The anarchist movement in Iran is young. It is only in recent years that anarchism has become a real movement in the full sense of the word in the geography of Iran. It is also only in the past few years that some anarchist books have been officially translated into Persian and allowed for publication inside Iran.

However, the movement is geographically broader than outside observers expect. Based on surveys we conducted on Twitter and Telegram, anarchists are present in all 31 provinces of Iran, from very small towns to very large cities, across the entire geography of the country. The movement is everywhere, even if it is not always visible.

Due to conditions of severe repression, the anarchist movement has become increasingly decentralized. This decentralization is not weakness, but a survival strategy.

We are the only anarchist organization that has had continuous organized activity for about 17 years. We started outside Iran on August 15, 2009 under the name “Voice of Anarchism”. From 2011 to 2014 we were reorganized under the name “Anarchist Network”. Since 2013 we have been running the website Asr Anarchism. After comrades from Afghanistan joined in 2015, we merged all activities into the collective Asr Anarchism. In 2018, together with two other anarchist organizations (one in Iran and the other in Afghanistan), we founded the Union of Anarchists of Afghanistan and Iran. In 2020, this union became part of the Asr Anarchism Federation. In mid-April 2025, the Federation was effectively dissolved. We have kept its pages as an archive, both as a record of our history and to prevent the use of its name while the pages were inactive. Since April 30, 2025, we have been operating under the name “Anarchist Front”, focusing on the geography of Iran, Afghanistan and the surrounding region.

We have no desire to expand our organizational force in the conventional institutional sense. Our focus is on the quality and depth of organizing, not its expansion.

Regarding the diaspora: Our situation is unlike many Iranian opposition forces whose main base is outside the country. In our case, the roots and main presence are inside Iran. Outside Iran, the number of anarchists is still not large.

2) The Federation of the Age of Anarchism and the "Women of March 8" — are they rival groups or branches of the same ideological tree?

– As mentioned, the Federation of the Age of Anarchism no longer exists and was dissolved in April 2025, and most of its associates are now self-organized in the form of the Anarchist Front. The Anarchist Front has a coalition structure made up of various anarchist tendencies. We work with all anarchist currents except those that combine anarchism with pacifism, nationalism, religion or capitalism.

Our cooperation with Afghan anarchists began in 2015. Three groups (one from Afghanistan) founded the Union of Anarchists of Afghanistan and Iran in 2018. Now Afghan comrades have been part of the anarchist front from the beginning. Also, comrades from several other geographies cooperate with this front.

As for the “Women of March 8”: they are not anarchists, but Maoists, and are affiliated with the Communist Party of Iran (CPI). We share opposition to the Islamic Republic and some areas of women’s rights, but they represent a fundamentally different political tradition: organized around party structure, vanguardism, and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology. We do not consider them rivals, but we are not from the same ideological tree either.

3) Where is the situation worse—Iran or Afghanistan? And has Afghanistan been forgotten?

– Both situations are catastrophic, but the forms of catastrophe are different and must be named accurately.

In Iran today, people are facing at least three major challenges simultaneously: extreme poverty, widespread repression, and a devastating war. The intensity of the war in Iran is high. More than 1,500 civilians have been killed, including more than 200 children. The global internet has been down since February 28, 2026. People are simultaneously under bombardment, bullets, and economic collapse.

In Afghanistan, people face at least five challenges simultaneously: extreme poverty; the mass expulsion of Afghan refugees from Iran and Pakistan; repression; a limited but ongoing conflict with Pakistan; and the complete exclusion of girls and women from education, work, and public life under the Taliban. There is still no real anarchist movement in Afghanistan, and only a small number of anarchists are present inside and outside the country.

The situation in Afghanistan has completely changed since the beginning of the Ukraine war, and international attention has been completely diverted. Afghanistan has entered a state of “oblivion,” abandoned by the same Western powers that created the conditions for the Taliban’s return, no longer useful as strategic news, and has become invisible in the global media. Despite the ongoing tragedy for 40 million people living under one of the most totalitarian systems of gender apartheid in modern history.

We reject this invisibility. Both situations require solidarity. Neither can be humanly superior to the other. But forgetting Afghanistan is itself a political act, and we call it that.

4) How did the anarchist movement react to the December-January uprising? Did our comrades participate?

– It is natural that when people protest in the streets, anarchists are also present. When tens of thousands of people are arrested, anarchists are inevitably among those arrested. Our comrades were present, they organized, they documented, and some were also arrested.

However, after the killing of tens of thousands of people, concentrated mainly on January 8 and 9, 2026, anarchists and many other political activists have decided not to participate in street protests. Not because the struggle is over, but because the current form of street protest will not bring down this regime. The regime has shown itself ready to massacre tens of thousands more. They have made it clear that anyone who participates in the protests will be considered an enemy and will be shot.

The question is not whether to resist or not, but how to resist effectively without becoming a target for further killing. This question does not have an easy answer. But it is an honest one.

 5) What would you say if most Iranians really wanted the Shah to return?

We must be precise about what really happened. People took to the streets spontaneously on January 7, 2026, without any call from opposition groups abroad, and remained on the streets for eleven days. Then, Kurdish organizations called for a general strike on January 18. After that, Reza Pahlavi called for participation in the protests on January 18 and 19.

His call, after eleven days of independent popular presence, set the stage for the slaughter of tens of thousands of people in those two days. This timing is not coincidental. The royalists tried to ride a wave that was completely self-organized and independent.

According to polls, supporters of the monarchy are about 17 percent of the population. While this is not a small number, it is not a majority and does not represent all of Iran. Various coalitions and congresses have been formed. In contrast, the Pahlavi-related groups only include his supporters. He represents the monarchists, not the Iranian people.

6) Were the protests unpatriotic, given the threat of attack? Were they incited by sanctions?

– The Islamic Republic came to power in 1979. Less than a month later (March 8, International Women’s Day), widespread women’s protests against the compulsory hijab began. That same year, the Kurdistan Movement was suppressed by military force. In the 1980s and 1988s, thousands were executed in prisons. In the 1990s, we saw urban protests in dozens of cities, all of which were suppressed. The student movement in 1999 and then the Green Movement in 2009 were suppressed.

Forty-seven years, from 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2025, people have taken to the streets again and again: for freedom, against repression, against electoral fraud, against price increases, against the water crisis caused by the IRGC’s dam-building mafia that diverts rivers to serve water-intensive civilian and military industries, and against the murder of Mahsa Zina Amini.

The Islamic Republic has squandered the wealth of the Iranian people. Dozens of officials have fled the country with billions of dollars. The rest has been invested in proxy groups in the region, in dozens of underground missile cities, and in nuclear energy. They have destroyed Iran's environment. They have left the people in poverty.

The January 2026 protests began because the price of the dollar rose catastrophically in a short period of time, making it impossible to buy all goods.

 People took to the streets because of the unbearable pressures of daily life, poverty, rising prices, and lack of freedom. They had outgrown the theocracy that rules Iran. To call this action unpatriotic is to erase forty-seven years of independent Iranian resistance and reduce it to a foreign project. We completely reject this erasure.

7) What about the disputed death toll from the January protests?

– Tens of thousands of people were killed. No one can give an exact figure, and this impossibility is itself the product of deliberate government policy.

What happened is clear: unarmed people in the streets were shot by heavy machine guns, snipers, and thousands of security forces armed with military weapons. Everyone on the streets was killed, including people who were not participating in the protests but were simply going about their daily lives.

Our position is: at least provide verified statistics and admit that the real numbers are significantly higher. Neither the regime’s downplaying of statistics nor the exaggerated statistics are verifiable, and are rejected. The truth, however partial, is more powerful than a convenient number, even one that seems to serve our cause. What is not in dispute is that the scale was catastrophic and deliberate.

8) What about the war being presented as a "war of liberation"?

– There is no such thing as a war of liberation by states. War involves the destruction of people, the environment, and human civilization.

But over the past century, repressive, totalitarian, and fascist states have sometimes been overthrown as a result of foreign wars, as states not only fight their own people, but also fight each other for their own national, ideological, or security interests.

This war is not our war. This is a war between states. The United States and Israel are pursuing their own strategic interests: destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, its naval capabilities, its nuclear program, and its ability to challenge American and Israeli dominance in the region. None of these goals include the freedom of the Iranian people. The bombs prove it: more than 1,500 civilians have been killed, hundreds of children, schools destroyed, and medical facilities hit.

We oppose both the Islamic Republic and this war. Both positions are consistent with one principle: We stand with the people, not with governments.

9) How do we adapt in the event of an internet outage?

– In conditions of complete internet blackout, coupled with widespread repression and arrests, bombs devastating Iran’s geography, unemployment, and skyrocketing prices, Muslims cannot do much.

In such conditions, no one can monitor the situation of political prisoners. Communication between popular resistance groups is cut off. People in areas that are about to be attacked are often left uninformed and unable to warn each other or provide mutual aid. Communication between Iranians abroad and their families inside the country is cut off, millions of Iranians abroad have no information about their loved ones. We cannot provide security information to the people inside the country to help them minimize damage during the war. The combination of war, power outages, repression, and economic collapse has created a situation of multiple simultaneous crises that overwhelms any organized response.

We do what we can. We document. We communicate when connectivity allows. We maintain our presence. But we don't pretend that these circumstances don't seriously limit what is possible.

10) About the disappearance of Sohail Arabi?

– Many former political prisoners have been detained without any reason in the current period. Sohail Arabi, an anarcho-syndicalist and atheist, has disappeared. Due to the internet shutdown, we do not know in which prison, in which solitary confinement, and under what kind of torture he is currently being held, unless he has been transferred to a general ward.

Afshin Hairatian, from a Baha’i family but an atheist, a former political prisoner and anarchist, was arrested before the protests began and remains in prison. He has not been granted even temporary bail. We are naming them. We are remembering their situation. In the current circumstances of internet blackouts and war, we cannot confirm the details. This uncertainty is a form of torture, both for them and for those who care about them.

11) Others we ask you to remember?

– During the 2022 Women-Life-Freedom (Zhen-Jian-Azadi) uprising, more than 100,000 people were arrested, and 90,000 of them were prosecuted. During the 2025-2026 protests, at least 50,000 people were arrested, including hundreds of children, most of whom are still in prison or at risk of execution. The number of people currently facing execution is enormous. And dozens more are arrested every day. The list of names is too long to complete. Every name is a life. Every life matters. We call on international comrades to keep up the pressure: document, demand, reflect. Do not let the internet shutdown become a wall of oblivion.

12) About minorities — separatism, autonomy, Rojava model or something else?

– We, as anarchists, oppose any form of government and support stateless ethnic communities and defend the right of people to self-determination and self-organization. The Rojava model can be very instructive and offers a good alternative to state-centeredness: a horizontal, federal, multi-ethnic society, with real power in their own hands. But the people living in Iran, with their own languages, cultures and demands, are the ones who will make their own decisions. It is not our place to decide for them or prescribe solutions. We respect their decisions. What we know is this: the diverse Iranian society cannot fulfill its demands under a centralized, centralist and fascist state that insists on a single language, individual tyranny and the denial of diverse human identities. Such states cannot meet the needs of a truly plural society. We believe in freedom. We do not prescribe solutions for anyone. We support their decisions, even as we continue to oppose any form of government and work to eliminate states, borders, and authoritarianism.

13) About Ukraine and the Russian invasion?

– Russian imperialism is seeking to rebuild its lost empire; it is engaged in conquest, occupation and annexation of territories and has launched a devastating war. Since we are fundamentally opposed to wars between states and imperialist wars (wars that destroy people’s lives, the environment and the lives of children), we condemn this war, just as we condemn the wars of the United States of America, Israel and Iran. Our position is consistent: we oppose all state wars without exception. The destruction of human life and the natural world cannot be justified by any state flag or ideology.

14) Ethical dilemma: If American ground forces attack, should Iranian anarchists defend their country or remain neutral?

– The war between Iran, Israel and America is not the war of our people. State wars have nothing to do with the people. States fight each other and eventually make peace, and in the process only the lives of people, animals, children and the environment are destroyed. We do not fight for states. We do not fight alongside the Islamic Republic under any circumstances. A regime that has been killing our comrades for forty-seven years does not become our ally just because a foreign power attacks it. What we defend is our communities, our people and our lives, not the state, not its flag, not its military interests. This distinction is important. And in a situation where land occupation means the control of the lives of ordinary Iranians by a foreign power, we will defend our communities through every horizontal and grassroots means available, not as soldiers of any government, but as human beings defending human beings.

15) What should Western comrades always remember when thinking about Iran?

– We anarchists have always stood with the people of the world. We oppose all governments in the world without exception. The lives and existence of people in no geography are more valuable than the lives and existence of people in another geography. We make no distinction between governments. We oppose state wars without exception, but remember this above all: the people of Iran are under the bombardment of America and Israel. They are under the heavy artillery of the Islamic Republic. They are in the prisons of the Islamic Republic. And at the same time they suffer from poverty, hunger, unemployment and a complete shutdown of the Internet, which has created even greater difficulties for everyone. They are all carrying these burdens at the same time. Not just one. All of them; simultaneously. Solidarity means keeping this in mind: not a simplified narrative of liberation or regime change, but the full weight of what ordinary people in Iran are experiencing right now.

Anarchist Front / March 2026

Comments

Sack of Mecca (not verified) Sun, 04/05/2026 - 06:57

These people have real skin in the game, and they consistently produce statements befitting of it. "The destruction of human life and the natural world cannot be justified by any state flag or ideology", salute.

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