{"id":3192,"date":"2026-09-08T08:57:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T08:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/?p=3192"},"modified":"2026-09-08T08:57:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T08:57:02","slug":"september-8-from-jaleh-square-to-the-oil-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/september-8-from-jaleh-square-to-the-oil-strike\/","title":{"rendered":"September 8; From Jaleh Square to the Oil Strike"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Today, September 8, 2026, marks the anniversary of one of the decisive days in Iran\u2019s contemporary history: September 8, 1978, which later became known as \u201cBlack Friday.\u201d
September 8 should be viewed as part of a chain that began with the protests of the preceding months and reached its culmination several months later with the nationwide strike of oil workers and the collapse of the Pahlavi government.
In the summer of 1978, protests had spread across the country. Millions-strong demonstrations, strikes, and social discontent had confronted the Shah\u2019s government with a serious crisis.
Following the massive demonstrations on Eid al-Fitr on September 4, protests continued in Tehran. The government, no longer able to control the situation through ordinary methods, declared martial law in Tehran and several other cities in the early hours of September 8.
But on the morning of Friday, September 8, people took to the streets. The participants in the protests were unaware, during the early morning hours, that martial law had been declared. Crowds gathered in Jaleh Square, which is today known as Shohada Square. Army forces had been deployed around the square. The people were ordered to disperse.
But the crowd did not leave the square. The military forces of the Pahlavi government opened fire on the people. Unarmed people, women and men, young and old, fell to the ground in the square and the surrounding streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Friday had begun.
There are very different accounts of the number of victims on that day. In the years after the revolution, much higher figures were also cited; but the significance of September 8 lies not only in the number of those killed. September 8 was a turning point in the relationship between the government and society.
Before that, some political forces still hoped that the crisis might be controlled through reforms, negotiations, and government concessions. But the bullets fired in Jaleh Square severely weakened that hope.
The government wanted to silence the streets through a massacre. But the result was the opposite. The killing of people intensified anger and protest. More importantly, it shifted the struggle from the streets into workplaces and factories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, we must point to a very important date:
September 9, 1978; just one day after Black Friday.
On that day, around 700 workers at the Tehran Refinery, led by the late Yadollah Khosrowshahi, went on strike. Their demands were initially mainly economic and labor-related, but martial law and the September 8 massacre had a profound impact on the political atmosphere among workers. Research into the history of the oil strikes also identifies September 9 as an important point in the expansion and politicization of the oil workers\u2019 strikes.
Khosrowshahi was an activist and organizer of the oil industry workers\u2019 movement and played a role in forming strike committees and organizing oil workers. He later emphasized that the oil workers\u2019 strike had not begun in the autumn, but that workers\u2019 struggles and protests had been underway for months and gained new intensity and political dimensions after September 8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This point is very important:
September 8 was not merely a massacre; it was a bridge that connected the street protests with the workers\u2019 movement.
And this connection changed the fate of the Pahlavi government.
The strike at the Tehran Refinery quickly spread to other centers of the oil industry. In the following days, workers at other refineries also joined the strike, and by the end of September, the oil strikes had expanded to major oil centers across the country.
But this was still only the beginning.
In October, the strikes became broader. Workers and employees of the oil industry increasingly joined together. In Khosrowshahi\u2019s memoirs, refinery workers are described as marching with the slogan, \u201cWorker, employee, congratulations on your unity,\u201d in an effort to bring administrative employees into the strike as well; subsequently, political slogans and demands for the overthrow of the Pahlavi government also emerged among the workers.
At this point, the issue had gone beyond a labor strike.
The oil worker had understood that his power lay not only in the number of workers, but in the role his labor played in the country\u2019s economy.
Oil was the economic lifeline of the government.
When the oil worker stopped working, it was not merely one factory that shut down. Government revenues declined. Oil exports were disrupted. The government\u2019s economic machinery was damaged. And most importantly, the government showed the people that it was no longer capable of keeping even the most important sector of the country\u2019s economy moving.
That is why the relationship between September 8 and the oil strike must be taken seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

September 8 was the government\u2019s bullet;
September 9 was the worker\u2019s response.
On September 8, the government attempted to stop the movement through military force. But from the following day, workers entered a form of struggle that was far more dangerous for the government:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strike.
Street repression can be continued for a while. But governing a country whose workers have stopped working is far more difficult.
And that is exactly what happened several months later.
The oil industry strike expanded and became one of the most important factors paralyzing the economy of the Pahlavi government. From Tehran to Abadan, Isfahan, Tabriz, Shiraz, Kharg Island, and the oil-producing regions of the south, oil workers entered the struggle.
As a result, oil (the economic pillar of the government) became one of the most important weapons of the revolutionary movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is an important historical lesson here:
The Pahlavi government believed that power lay in the army.
But the experience of 1978 showed that political power does not exist only in weapons.
Power is in society.
Power is in the streets.
Power is in the factory.
Power is in workers\u2019 strikes.
And when millions of people decide to stop cooperating with the machinery of power, even a government with a powerful army can be paralyzed.
Therefore, if we want to summarize the path toward the fall of the Pahlavi government in several stages, we can say:
Popular protests \u2192 September 8 and the Jaleh Square massacre \u2192 growing social anger \u2192 broader entry of workers into the struggle \u2192 oil strike \u2192 economic paralysis \u2192 expansion of nationwide strikes \u2192 collapse of government authority.
So September 8 should not be remembered only through photographs of Jaleh Square.
Jaleh Square must be seen alongside the Tehran Refinery.
The victims of Black Friday must be seen alongside the workers who stopped working the following day.
The sound of gunfire must be heard alongside the sound of the strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because one of the most important lessons of September 8 is this:
Repression can drive people away from the streets;
but if people move the struggle from the streets into factories and workplaces, the balance of power changes.
And this is where workers themselves can become one of the makers of history.
September 8, 1978, was recorded in blood in Jaleh Square.
But several months later, through the oil workers\u2019 strike, the same movement reached a point where the government could no longer govern the country as it had before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that is why it can be said:
Black Friday deepened the divide between the government and the people;
but the oil strike was one of the most important blows that shattered the economic pillar of the Pahlavi government.
From this perspective, the distance between September 8 and September 9 is not merely the distance between two days.
It is the distance between two forms of struggle:
One, resistance in the face of bullets;
the other, stopping the economic machinery of the government.
And history showed that when these two became connected, the Pahlavi government could no longer contain the crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, September 8, 2026, marks the anniversary of one of the decisive days in Iran\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[33,24,10,18,8,168,132,150,39],"post_badge":[],"class_list":["post-3192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-quote","tag-abroad-committee-of-the-communist-party-of-iran","tag-communist-party-of-iran","tag-cpi","tag-daily-quote","tag-komala","tag-oil","tag-protests","tag-strike","tag-worker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3194,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3192\/revisions\/3194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3192"},{"taxonomy":"post_badge","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_badge?post=3192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}