A New Wave of Crackdown on Leftist Intellectuals: Where Repression, Reformists, and Monarchists Unite

The Iranian regime ignited a new war on freedom of opinion in November 2025, detaining left-leaning thinkers and smearing educational hubs, such as Iran Academia, as a “covert network” on state TV. These assaults signal the regime’s desperate attempt to erase critical voices amid economic collapse and Israel’s gathering storm. Oddly enough, in the process, the regime has found unexpected allies: monarchists and reformists.

The crackdown was similar to the August raids on Samandar Publishing’s writers and translators, known for their work on political economy and critiques of capitalism. The message was clear: anyone who educates the public and insists on the urgency of imagining alternative futures is now a threat.

Prime targets of these crackdowns include economist and Naqd-e Eqtesad-e Siasi editor Parviz Sedaghat; feminist sociologist Mahsa Asadollahnejad, whose work probes political imaginaries and social structures; and translator Shirin Karimi, who brought Judith Butler and Fatima Mernissi to Farsi readers. Security forces raided their homes, seized their devices, and detained them, while summoning others such as economist Mohammad Maljou, Kurdish movements writer Hemn Rahimi, and critical theory translator Rasoul Ghanbari.

Through their work, these intellectuals expose how state policies simultaneously erode workers’ bargaining power, police women’s bodies, and marginalize national minorities

Kurdish translator Ehsan Rostami—who has been on hunger strike since October and is known for bringing major critiques of political economy into Farsi—was detained alongside cultural activists Ramin Rostami and Nima Mehdizadegan, as well as poet Hassan Touzandejani. All remain imprisoned. When security forces later sought forced confessions, they beat Ehsan’s father, Jahangir, a well-known unionist in Harsin, Kermanshah—punishing the family when their narrative failed to materialize.

Through their work, these intellectuals expose how state policies simultaneously erode workers’ bargaining power, police women’s bodies, and marginalize national minorities. They show, with clarity and precision, the many ways ordinary Iranians are being pushed beyond the limits of a livable life. That is precisely why they are being silenced. However, this recent wave of silencing is only the latest chapter in a long history of state efforts to monopolize its grip on the cultural scene in Iran by crushing intellectual independence and political dissent.

A Long Shadow of Repression

The repression of independent thought in Iran has a long and violent pedigree. After the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic moved quickly to crush political diversity. The crackdown began at the margins—most visibly in Kurdistan—where cultural and linguistic expression was treated as a threat to national security. Soon after, the Cultural Revolution of 1980–83 swept through universities, purging students and academics who refused to conform to the new ideological order.

Yet the darkest chapter came in the summer of 1988, when, acting on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s orders, authorities summarily executed around 5,000 political prisoners—members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization and various leftist parties—without trial, erasing a generation of dissent in a matter of months.

Among them was poet Mohammad Mokhtari, who, in one of his final poems, asked, “How long should one stay in this two-meter space before the withered body respects the limits of language?”

This systematic silencing only intensified in the years that followed. By 1998, the Chain Murders had exposed the state’s capacity for eliminating dissent outright, with more than 80 writers, poets, and dissidents assassinated, kidnapped, and disappeared under suspicious circumstances.

Among them was poet Mohammad Mokhtari, who, in one of his final poems, asked, “How long should one stay in this two-meter space before the withered body respects the limits of language?” His question captured the regime’s underlying fear: that language, when used freely, can make oppression visible; untenable.

A Calibrated Assault on the Left

What makes the recent arrests distinct is how clearly they target a coherent intellectual current: scholars, critical economists, and translators who interrogate social injustice, gender oppression, and the state’s governance failures.

Naqd-e Eqtesad-e Siasi—the online journal at the center of this wave—is one of the few remaining platforms for leftist analysis and translation in a landscape where political repression and economic hardship have suffocated independent publishing. It hosts Marxist economic critiques, feminist theory, debates on national minority rights, and environmental justice; it embodies a plural, rigorous leftist tradition that refuses both state propaganda and geopolitical reductionism.

For decades, the Islamic Republic has treated any attempt at class-based organizing as a direct threat. Labor syndicates such as the Tehran Bus Workers’ Union and the Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane Mill have faced relentless pressure, arrests, and harassment. Meanwhile, the rise of informality and precarity in Iran’s labor market has made collective action increasingly difficult.

Against this backdrop, leftist intellectual spaces—however small—have become essential for articulating the experiences of working-class Iranians and exposing how the state’s economic policies manufacture poverty, dependency, and exhaustion. Silencing these spaces is not incidental; it is strategic.

When Reformists and Monarchists Join Forces

Reformists inside Iran and monarchist exiles abroad assail the left with equal ferocity

Leftists in Iran are targeted by both the regime and a broader anti-left project uniting hardliners, reformists, and monarchists. Reformists inside Iran and monarchist exiles abroad assail the left with equal ferocity, while elevating the “Resistance-axis left” as its sole legitimate face. As economist Mohammad Maljoo notes, this faction “cries out against imperialism to drown out the voice of domestic oppression,” echoing state geopolitics and forsaking equality, democracy, and emancipation—making it palatable to both reformist and monarchist camps.

Reformists have spent over two decades vilifying the left. The Khatami presidency—initially hailed for liberalization—disillusioned millions, as repression endured and neoliberal reforms worsened economic conditions. Yet reformists positioned themselves as the modern alternative to hardliners, branding leftists as reckless ideologues.

This enabled privatization and austerity while posing as civil society defenders and opening doors to Western diplomacy on nuclear issues and sanctions relief. Their narrative deemed the left politically dangerous and economically naïve, despite left intellectuals’ sharp critiques of state violence and market precarity.

Monarchist discourse rests on a myth blaming leftists for the 1979 Revolution and its aftermath, ignoring their early violent persecution under the Islamic regime. As Naqd-e Eqtesad-e Siasi editor Sedaghat explains in a video before his arrest, this narrative erases the left’s anti-authoritarian tradition, labor organizing, women’s liberation role, and their partial support for national self-determination of minorities in Iran, which challenges monarchical centralism.​

During the Jina uprising, Kurdish “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” (Woman, Life, Freedom) clashed with monarchist “Shah, Homeland, Freedom,” recasting feminist revolt as royal revival. As Hemn Rahimi shows, monarchism “transforms the past into a manageable future,” with the nation as an object revived by the “Father of the Nation” and thus deprived of any political agency.​

Exploiting the atmosphere of fear and distraction due to internal oppression and external invasion, and amid Israel’s 12-day war on Iran, a wave of “fake Persian-language accounts” operating from Israel began aggressively amplifying Reza Pahlavi’s profile and spreading the monarchists’ anti-left rhetoric online. When organizing and mobilizing on the ground is suppressed by state terror, such misinformation campaigns can play a significant role in shaping public opinion.

The overlapping aggression from hardliners, reformists, and externally supported monarchist actors against the left leaves a lasting imprint not only on Iran’s present—as it struggles with multiple crises—but also on the possibilities for its future political and social transformation

What This Convergence Means for Iran’s Future

State repression, alongside anti-left attacks from reformists and monarchists, dangerously narrows the space for independent political thought and leaves room only for reactionary forces.

Hardliners silence critiques of their failures, reformists discredit the left to stay relevant, and monarchists peddle nostalgic restoration—all reinforcing inequalities under authoritarianism, neoliberalism, or monarchy. None of which tackle the deepening crises: inflation exceeding 50%, mass unemployment, collapsing social protections, sanctions, and environmental disasters rendering land uninhabitable.​

Amid rising external pressure from Israel and the United States and deepening internal unrest, Iran needs a strong, independent left more than ever. It could be the force to promote values of collective care and solidarity, defend social justice, workers’ rights, gender equality, and stand firm against external pressure without compromising its domestic mission.

Without it, the voices of ordinary Iranians risk being silenced, leaving authoritarian power unchecked—and Iran’s future will hang in the balance.