I have been reading left analyses of Iran recently and there is this pattern that keeps appearing in many. Religion disappears. The theocratic structure of the state vanishes from the analysis. The Islamic Republic becomes “the Iranian state” or “national bourgeois formation” and we are expected to treat clerical rule as if it were decorative. As if it were irrelevant to materialist analysis.

This bothers me because it is not serious. You cannot do materialist analysis of the Islamic Republic whilst systematically ignoring how the state works. And the state works through religious authority. That is not incidental. It is constitutive.

Take a recent post I read about the protests. The argument went like this: sanctions cause everything, Western imperialism explains all internal Iranian dynamics, the theocratic state has no agency except as reaction to external pressure. Fine. Except the word “theocracy” appeared exactly twice, both times as a neutral descriptor, like saying “republic” or “monarchy.” What the theocracy does, how it functions, what it means for people living under it: completely absent.

Why?

I think because engaging seriously with the religious character of the Iranian state complicates the so-called anti-imperialist narrative. It requires acknowledging forms of oppression that cannot be reduced to Western sanctions. It means admitting the Iranian working class faces exploitation and repression from their own bourgeoisie (which includes clerical elites) regardless of what Washington does.

How the thing actually works

The velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the Islamic jurist) is not some cultural peculiarity bolted onto an otherwise standard capitalist state. It is the organising principle. The Supreme Leader derives authority from claimed divine mandate mediated through Shia jurisprudence. Not popular sovereignty. Not even revolutionary legitimacy in the normal sense.

This determines how dissent gets categorised and crushed. Opposition is not political disagreement or class struggle. It becomes apostasy, corruption on earth, enmity against God. When the morality police enforce hijab requirements, they are religious authorities implementing what they claim is divine law. When women get arrested for improper covering, they are defying God’s commands. When protestors get executed, this is righteous punishment for those who wage war against God and His messenger.

You cannot explain how power operates in Iran without this. You cannot explain who suffers most, what forms resistance can take. The religious dimension is not separable from the class dimension. They work together.

Yet these anti-imperialist analyses ignore it. As though acknowledging theocratic oppression somehow means endorsing regime change.

The gender question

Notice how the absence of religion tracks with the absence of gender. Women’s bodies and behaviour are sites where state power, religious authority, and patriarchal control intersect. Mandatory hijab is not comparable to other dress codes. It is the visible marker of a system of gendered religious law governing marriage, divorce, inheritance, testimony, movement, social participation.

Mahsa Amini was killed by morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly. This was theocratic violence enacting religious law. The protests that followed (Woman, Life, Freedom) were challenging a religious order that subordinates women through divine mandate.

A materialist analysis that cannot account for this has collapsed into crude economism. Women’s specific oppression becomes at best secondary, at worst a distraction from anti-imperialist struggle. Liberal identity politics. Western concern-trolling.

Except it is half the population living under systematised religious subordination. You cannot do class analysis whilst ignoring how the working class is divided through gendered religious law. You cannot talk about revolutionary potential whilst dismissing struggles against theocratic control as less important than opposing sanctions.

Unless you do not actually care about the Iranian working class. Unless what you care about is the geopolitical position of the Iranian state as obstacle to Western hegemony. In which case just say so.

Clerics as bourgeois faction

Something else disappears in these analyses. The religious establishment is not simply ideological apparatus. The clerical elite are themselves a bourgeois faction with distinct material interests.

The bonyads (charitable foundations) control enormous economic resources. Construction, pharmaceuticals, oil. Nominally religious institutions overseen by clerics, operating outside normal taxation and regulatory structures. Accumulating capital whilst claiming religious purpose. The Revolutionary Guard have become a vast economic empire with interests inseparable from their ideological commitment to preserving the Islamic Republic.

So when we talk about “the Iranian bourgeoisie”, who exactly? The merchant class? Industrial capitalists? The clerical establishment? The Revolutionary Guard’s networks? These factions compete and cooperate. You cannot understand Iranian capitalism without examining how clerical authority enables particular forms of accumulation.

But this requires looking at how the theocratic state works. It requires acknowledging that “national bourgeois” does not capture a state where religious authority is constitutive of class power.

Logic of indefinite postponement

One post about the protests argued they “objectively serve imperialism” because they lack ideological coherence and organisation. Therefore they weaken the state at a moment when imperialist war is likely. Therefore (though not stated explicitly) they should not be supported.

This accepts the regime’s framing entirely. Opposition strengthens external enemies. Dissent betrays the nation. The Iranian working class must subordinate their struggles to the geopolitical necessity of maintaining a state that opposes the West.

But why should Marxists accept this? The Iranian working class has distinct interests from both Western imperialism and their own exploiters. Those exploiters include the clerical bourgeoisie, the Revolutionary Guards’ empire, all those who benefit from theocratic control.

The claim that protests risk transforming the state into a client regime assumes the choice is binary. Either the Islamic Republic or Western domination. This is the regime’s logic. It is also the logic of every authoritarian state facing unrest. All opposition becomes foreign conspiracy.

Yes, Western intelligence attempts to exploit protest movements. Of course. But this does not mean genuine domestic opposition does not exist. It does not mean people protesting theocratic repression are dupes or that their suffering is less important than maintaining a regime that opposes Washington.

There is this move that keeps appearing. Protests lack ideological coherence, therefore cannot succeed, therefore objectively serve imperialism, therefore we cannot support them. We must wait for proper revolutionary conditions.

This establishes an impossible standard. Revolutionary movements do not emerge fully formed. They develop through struggle. The Bolsheviks did not dismiss the February Revolution as spontaneous and incoherent. They intervened.

But apparently Iranian workers must wait. Continue suffering whilst people we explain their protests lack theoretical coherence. Subordinate their struggles to geopolitical necessity. Even though the state exploits them. Even though clerical authority structures their subordination.

When does the waiting end? After the defeat of imperialism globally? After revolution in the imperial core? The logic leads to indefinite postponement. To treating the Iranian working class as objects rather than subjects.

This is campism

I think we need to be honest. This is campism. Choosing geopolitical alignment over class struggle.

The Islamic Republic opposes the West. Therefore it must be defended, or at minimum not undermined. Therefore opposition, even from Iranian workers facing exploitation and theocratic repression, becomes suspect. Better to maintain the existing state, however repressive, than risk replacement by something more aligned with Western interests.

This abandons working class liberation. It subordinates the Iranian proletariat’s struggles to strategic calculations. It treats theocratic oppression as acceptable collateral damage.

However it does require systematic evasion. Evasion of religion. Evasion of gender. Evasion of the clerical bourgeoisie’s interests. Evasion of workers’ agency and genuine grievances.

All dissolved into: sanctions cause everything, protests serve imperialism, wait for better conditions.

An alternative

It is perfectly possible to oppose Western sanctions and regime change whilst also opposing theocratic repression. These positions flow from the same principle: solidarity with the Iranian working class against all forms of oppression.

This means listening to Iranian socialists, communists, independent labour organisers. What do they argue? What are they doing? What forms of organisation exist? These questions are absent from abstract analyses issued from distance.

It means acknowledging that opposing the West does not make the Iranian state progressive. The theocratic regime serves Iranian capital, including clerical capital. It exploits workers. It subordinates women through religious law. It crushes independent labour organisation. It executes communists and socialists.

None of this is caused by sanctions. Sanctions make conditions worse. They are brutal collective punishment that should be opposed. But the theocratic state’s character, its class nature, its repression: these predate sanctions and would continue without them.

A Marxist analysis that cannot name theocratic oppression for fear of serving imperialism has ceased to be Marxism. It has become geopolitical positioning dressed in revolutionary language.

The tell is always the same. Religion disappears. Gender disappears. The clerical bourgeoisie disappears. Women protesting mandatory hijab become dupes. Workers striking risk serving Western intelligence. The theocratic state’s character dissolves into “national bourgeois formation under external pressure.”

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