Will Strikes Work?

Al Giordano sat down with seven anonymous experts on Iran and produced a sweeping assessment of the current situation. On the possibility of mass strikes, he wrote:

There are unconfirmed reports today that a national strike is underway already, including by Iran state television which has reported that today, Tuesday, thirty percent of workers in the country have not shown up on the job. If state media is admitting 30 percent, it is a safe bet that adherence to the strike is larger than that. It would also be very impressive because the government has warned that any citizen that participates in a strike will be fired from his and her job, or lose his or her space in the public markets.

On the other hand:

A prolonged or indefinite General Strike would be very difficult in any land, but particularly in a country like Iran with 40 percent unemployment: the well from which to draw “replacement workers” (read: scabs) is very deep.

Here he assesses the conservative nature of the revolutionaries:

Their demonstrations and strikes are infused with appeals to that clergy to exercise its influence and change the course of the State. The protests are not aimed at Washington, or at the United Nations, nor at any other external power to intervene (if there's one thing that almost all Iranians agree on it is that they will never again be ruled from abroad, which is why the regime – and its clueless apologists abroad – flails so desperately to portray the protesters as dupes of CIA or other foreign manipulation; a tactic that is so far not gaining traction in any way to quell what is a distinctly Iranian revolt).

The demonstrations are, instead, very shrewdly aimed at the internal dynamics inside Iran; the self-actualized protests of a people very well informed as to their indigenous opportunities for self-rule.

Read the rest here.