August 06, 2021
by Michael Rubin
Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution was not inevitable. The Shah had weathered waves of protests over the decades. What ultimately pushed the monarchy over the brink was escalating labor unrest that paralyzed oil exports. The shah needed the revenues from those exports to replenish his treasury.
Now, in 2021, we see why the Islamic Republic has been so sensitive to efforts by Iranian workers to establish independent trade unions. Most Iranian workers do not believe the government will mediate fairly. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps dominates the Iranian economy and routinely stands above any law or arbitration: If the IRGC or its affiliates choose not to pay oil workers or those working in its factories or construction projects, workers have little recourse through the Ministry of Labor. Hence why they’ve chosen instead to form their own organizations.
In recent years, the Iranian government has also grown sensitive to environmental activism. Industrialization and regulatory corruption have combined to devastate Iran’s environment and have led even small towns to suffer or even exceed Beijing- or New Delhi-level pollution. The southern industrial town of Asaluyeh, for example, recently reported “100% pollution” with hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide emissions all out of control. Environmental activists are not dangerous to the regime because Iranian officials fear having to add filters and scrubbers to factories or power plants, but because environmentalists present a movement that might unite Iranians across class and ethnicity.
The regime’s two fears now converge in southern Iran.
A month ago, I reported how Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian had warned that Iran faced an energy crisis because of drought, declining generation, increasing demand, and cryptocurrency mining. That appears to be coming true. Wildcat strikes increasingly affect Iran’s oil ministry: Administrative reforms enacted last year have reduced worker salaries even before they face a de facto 80% pay cut because the real value of the Iranian rial to the dollar is one-sixth the rate. While strikes are a factor, brain drain may have a more permanent effect. Ebrahim Fouladvand, a former director-general in the administrative department of the Ministry of Oil, explained in a recent interview that countries such as Qatar now steal skilled Iranian oil industry employees who can hop a flight to Doha and work for two weeks at a time. They can do so without ever emigrating from Iran or acquiring residency in Qatar.
Asaluyeh’s pollution is bad enough; power cuts in cities such as Bushehr, home to Iran’s civilian nuclear reactor, have set officials against each other as temperatures exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Residents across the oil-producing south do not understand why they float on a sea of gas and oil and yet cannot power their air conditioners.
Protesters in Shiraz might now chant “Death to Khamenei,” but they are hardly alone. Iran is a tinderbox as the government fails at basic services. Residents choke and swelter across the south, and the pace of strikes in Iran’s oil and gas industries is increasing with the admission of provincial authorities and oil industry managers. For the Islamic Republic, it is going to be a long, hot summer.