Page 12 - MEOG Week 27 2021

MEOG POLICY MEOG

Industry strikes the

pressing issue facing Raisi

IRAN THE most pressing predicament facing the next large enough to alarm the regime in Tehran”.
president of the Islamic Republic, President-elect Added Ghosh: “Its [the regime’s] usual
Ebrahim Raisi is receiving little attention outside response is to blame unspecified ‘enemies’ and
the country – the strikes and protests that have crack down hard on protesters. But dissatisfied
broken out in Iran’s critical petroleum industry, workers in the energy sector represent a threat
where workers are fed up with low wages and of a much higher order. The regime has long
poor working conditions. extolled this labour cohort above all others as
This is the opinion of Bloomberg columnist working-class heroes. This reflects not only
Bobby Ghosh, who in a July 1 piece for the news the importance of hydrocarbons to the Iranian
service also wrote that “The unrest underscores economy but the vital role petroleum workers
the gravity of the economic crisis confront- have played in the country’s politics.”
ing Raisi,” adding that “It could also precipi- Widespread oil strikes in the late 1970s par-
tate a serious political crisis at the start of his alysed the Iranian economy. At the end of 1978,
presidency.” Shah Reza Pahlavi tried to end the strikes by
The protests, dubbed “Campaign 1400” force.
with reference to the Persian calendar year that After his troops opened fire on demonstra-
started in March, involve thousands of workers tors in the oil-producing regions of the south,
that have mounted protests across Iran’s oil, gas the protests spread to other sectors and turned
and petrochemicals industry. distinctly political. That, as Ghosh observed, set
Raisi, a religious hardliner who will be sworn the stage for the toppling of the Shah in the 1979
in to succeed pragmatic moderate President revolution.
Hassan Rouhani in August, will be monitoring a “You can see why any president, even one
situation that, as Ghosh described, for the most with Raisi’s hard-line credentials, would be
part involves small and local strikes, which have reluctant to deploy security forces against today’s
“occasionally flared into street demonstrations strikers,” noted Ghosh.™

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