How many were there? This is the first question the media asks after every massacre and every crackdown.

They want a number. A statistic.

A figure. But we chose to start somewhere else: with names, with jobs, with stories, with real lives.

After the massacre, once we had come to terms with the reality and shaken off shock, with some friends and activists, I started compiling a list not only to count the dead, but to show who was killed. Day and factory workers, lawyers and teachers, retirees, and even children who were working to support their families.

People who took to the streets for their right to live and were killed. This effort is not just a documentation project;

I see it as a form of resistance against forgetting. When political power turns everything into a performance — official narratives, televised confessions, state celebrations — our response is to preserve human memory.

If the story collapses, violence does not stop with the body; it attacks memory and tries to bury the truth. Another risk is that this crisis is viewed only through the lens of geopolitical rivalry.

Iran is often portrayed in the international media as a “nuclear issue,” a “regional actor,” or a “sanctions case.” While this language describes part of reality, when it becomes the starting point of analysis, it erases everyday life. A worker who hasn’t been paid for months, a woman excluded from the labour market, a villager struggling with a water crisis, are reduced to “variables” in a larger game.

Iran: what happens when survival comes before politics Sanctions have an impact, too. They have increased economic pressure and limited access to financial resources and technology, making inflation more complicated.

However, sanctions are not the main cause of the crisis. Even before the harshest rounds of sanctions, Iran’s economy faced deep structural problems: dependence on oil revenue, the concentration of economic power in institutions aligned with the ruling system, opaque privatisation processes, and widespread organised corruption.

Sanctions have intensified this flawed structure, but they did not create it. To understand the crisis, we must look at the internal mechanisms of capital accumulation and unequal distribution of economic power.

Temporary contracts, blank-signed contracts, widespread unemployment, long delays in wage payments, lack of insurance and job security—these are not the result of competition between Washington and Tehran. Rather, they are the product of a development model whose costs are paid by workers and lower social classes.

At workers' gatherings, especially in protests by retirees, a slogan has been heard repeatedly: “One less embezzlement equals a solution to our living crisis.” It is a simple yet powerful statement.

People understand that the crisis is not just about a lack of resources, but also about how they are distributed and captured. Massive corruption cases involving pension funds, banks, and semi-state companies have become part of the public awareness.

When a retiree who has worked for thirty years has to wait months for his pension, while news of billion-dollar embezzlements spreads, the crisis becomes a concrete experience of injustice. The situation faced by women is another example of this structure.

Women make up less than 14% of the labour market. I saw in the media that some hosts or activists are claiming that the situation in Iran for women is great.

For example, they mention the high rate of education among Iranian women. Indeed, a high percentage of Iranian women have university degrees.

However, when labour laws, hiring systems, and legal and cultural frameworks are shaped in ways that restrict women’s economic participation, education does not translate into employment. Focusing only on the issue of compulsory hijab, despite it being one of the most visible tools of control over women’s bodies, provides an incomplete picture.

The discriminatory legal and economic system goes far beyond a dress code. The same logic applies to the environment.

The destruction of forests, the water crisis, and severe air pollution cannot simply be explained by sanctions or foreign pressure. These crises are largely the result of rent-based development policies, excessive dam construction, unscientific water transfer projects, and the close connection between political power and economic interests.

Projects carried out without independent environmental impact assessments have generated huge profits for a select few while imposing long-term costs on society. Environmental activists who warned about these trends faced pressure and restrictions, not because of international rivalries, but because their criticism targeted structural interests.

This does not mean ignoring the role of foreign powers. Iran’s internal crises are also exploited for political gain on the international stage.

The government labels social protests as “foreign interference” and uses this narrative to justify repression. On the other side, global powers speak the language of “human rights” while pursuing their own geopolitical and military goals.

Both sides try to frame these crises in ways that support their strategy. However, if analysis starts only from the perspective of governments, then workers, women, and villagers disappear.

Instead of social actors, they become objects in someone else’s narrative. Iran’s crisis is not just a foreign policy issue; it is a set of deep social contradictions that are played out every day in workplaces, in homes, and on the streets.

In this context, memory becomes even more important. When the dead are reduced to numbers, distortion becomes easier.

But when we learn that one of them was a steel factory worker who had not been paid for months, or a teacher attending a union meeting, or a child worker helping his family survive, the narrative changes. They are no longer “casualties.” They are human beings with specific social roles.

Viewing things from below doesn't mean simplifying reality. Geopolitical analysis is necessary.

Sanctions must be examined. Regional rivalries should be understood.

However, when these layers replace social reality, the picture becomes distorted. Sanctions create pressure, but structural corruption and a rent-based development model reproduce the crisis.

Regional tensions are real, but blank-signed contracts are the result of internal decisions. Nuclear disputes exist, but delays in paying pensions come from budget priorities and domestic policy choices.

Today, Iran is facing intertwined crises: a jobs-and-wages crisis, a crisis of women’s rights and discrimination, an environmental crisis, a crisis of public trust, and a crisis of political legitimacy. None of these can be understood through a single explanation.

However, if we must choose a starting point, it should be the everyday lives of people. In the end, the list of names is not only a historical record; it is a political statement.

It says that lost lives cannot be pushed to the margins of big picture analysis. It says that justice—even if it arrives late—begins with preserving truth.

And it says that if the story from below is not protected, violence will not only take bodies; it will also seize collective memory. Iran’s crisis can be discussed in conference halls and policy circles.

But it cannot be understood without the voice of a worker who says, “One less embezzlement means I’d get my wages.” Truth begins with these simple sentences. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)