Notes from the [Post]War Days 5
July 22, 2025
Report from Zanjan
Just a few hours after Israel launched its military aggression against Iran, the group known as “Kargah TV”, which labels itself on its homepage as “the media of Iranian workers”, issued a short statement titled “From the Factory to the Frontline, We Stand”:
“We, the workers of Iran, stand shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers of the homeland on the frontlines. Our bodies will be the pillars that keep the flag of Iran flying high. Every factory that stays lit, every machine that keeps turning, means the heart of Iran is still beating, it means we are here, committed to work, to defense, to the homeland.”
This statement, unsurprisingly, brought immense joy to the petty bourgeoisie, who, this time, were witnessing disaster unfold near their own homes and among their own relatives, and who now delighted in the fact that the “working class,” or at least what was being presented as the working class, was standing alongside them for “defense” and the “homeland.”
In the following days, “Kargah TV,” quoting the public relations office of the “Union of Trade Associations of Gas Refinery Workers of Bushehr Province,” informed us that they had “declared their full readiness to cooperate in any way necessary in fulfillment of their religious, national, and humanitarian duties,” addressing this message to the management of South Pars Gas Complex, the Crisis Management Headquarters, and regional and municipal authorities. On behalf of “us, the workers of the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries,” a set of security instructions was issued, though not to protect the safety of militant workers, but rather to safeguard the national order. And just after the ceasefire was announced, they wrote in a statement:
“In the critical conditions of war, solidarity and cooperation between the state and the working class was not only a necessity, but a symbol of national resistance and perseverance. This collaboration, which in practice contributed to the country’s economic, social, and security stability, showed that mutual understanding and closeness between the two can provide a firm foundation for overcoming major challenges.”
They illustrated this collaboration from the government’s side as follows:
“During the war, the state increased inspections and oversight, preventing profiteers and opportunists from holding people’s livelihoods hostage. While under normal circumstances rising prices and shortages of essential goods would cause serious concern among the public, especially among the lower classes, during the war, the government, through firm management, not only prevented the prices of basic goods from increasing, but also ensured these goods were abundantly available. The timely payment of wages to workers in state-owned industries, even before the mid-June, alongside the country’s military strength, brought reassurance and a sense of security to the general population, particularly the working class.”
Naturally, the “working-class arm of the sacred Islamic system” made no mention of the fact that during the war hundreds of workers were laid off, and in some of those same “state-owned industries,” the war-time shutdown was deducted from the workers’ paid leave entitlements. Eventually, after a few days’ delay, it published some guidance for workers laid off during the war, guidance that merely directed them to refer to official legal channels.
The duplicity of this outlet, which, according to its own claims, “is a licensed labor media platform established through the efforts of workers at the South Pars Gas Complex and a group of journalists”, as well as the nature of its hand-picked workers’ representative, Alireza Mirghafari, had already been sufficiently exposed during the case of the “70% wage increase campaign” (which we had previously addressed in a note titled “The 70% Wage Increase Campaign: Much Ado About Nothing”).
This time, however, the opportunist infiltrators within the working-class showed that they were neither willing nor able to maintain even the usual appearances, such as making a token gesture by referring to the mass layoffs from the standpoint of so-called “national interests.” For example, they could have said these mass dismissals are harmful to the “national interest” and called on the government to act against them in the name of defending the “homeland.” But they were far too content with the fact that Mirghafari had received his own wages even before the mid-June; the condition of the “class” and the “worker” no longer mattered to them.
But the situation was even worse than that. While the thugs of “Kargah TV” and their left-leaning allies were chanting slogans of class unity around a shared homeland, there were parts of the working class who continued to show up for work every day, not because, as the Kargah crowd claimed, “those who remained at their jobs and homes despite the threat of war and explicit calls by Trump and Netanyahu were mostly workers,” but because they had no other choice, and more importantly, because capitalists had made that decision for them. The report you are about to read tells the story of such workers, workers who do not belong to the Kargah faction’s version of the working class.
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On Wednesday, June 18, around 5 PM, a loud explosion was heard across the city of Zanjan. According to local sources, “Immediately after the explosion, internet connectivity was disrupted and soon completely cut off. Even domestic websites were either inaccessible or opened with extreme difficulty and slowness.” The word quickly spread across town that a factory near Nakh Tier had been targeted. The Islamic Republic’s baffling secrecy in withholding precise information about the attack and its possible casualties or damages has only fueled a flurry of rumors throughout the city.
According to the information we have obtained, the bombed factory is one of the facilities affiliated with the Calcimin Company, located 12 kilometers along the old Zanjan–Tehran road, within the National Lead and Zinc Industrial Complex. This complex, known locally as “Shahrak-e Rouy” (Zinc Township), covers an area of 500 hectares and hosts numerous factories and workshops involved in the production of zinc and lead ingots.
The real reasons behind the bombing of the Calcimin factory remain unknown. All that can be gathered from past news records is that the company has been on the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions list since 2018, a list that, at the time, also included twenty other companies and banks, from Tabriz Tractor Manufacturing to Esfahan’s Mobarakeh Steel Company.
Another report from last December, following the assassination of Seyed Reza Mousavi, a senior Quds Force commander in Syria, claimed, without offering any concrete evidence, that Mousavi had, on several occasions, received billions of tomans from Hosseinieh Azam of Zanjan and the Ahmadi Neyeri brothers to fund Quds Force operations. The Ahmadi Neyeri brothers, themselves former IRGC members, are reportedly major shareholders in Amir Investment Company, which for years, through Calcimin, operated the Angouran lead and zinc mine in Zanjan. The problem, however, is that none of this James Bond-style information amounts to anything more than unverifiable rumors.
There are conflicting reports regarding the damage and casualties caused by the bombing of the Calcimin factory. Some local sources have heard that “the factory had been shut down and emptied of personnel because it had already been targeted in a failed attack the night before.” However, other sources claim that a number of factory workers who were on duty at the time of the bombing were killed. What is certain is that, according to the Zanjan Governor’s Office, the city was targeted 14 times by missiles, 7 times by drones, and 4 times by rockets over the course of the 12-day war, with 23 military and non-military sites hit. Based on official sources, 16 people were killed and 79 injured during these attacks. Some of the casualties were conscript soldiers or IRGC personnel who were killed in strikes on military barracks. However, there is no available information about the identities or the exact locations where most of the victims were killed. Moreover, official sources have not said a single word about the bombing of the Calcimin factory.
More important than all of this, however, is that according to the information we have obtained, throughout the entire 12-day war, workers employed in most of the factories and workshops in Shahrak-e-Rouy (Zinc Town) not only continued to show up for work, but also received warnings from factory owners and managers stating that any unexcused absence from the workplace would result in immediate dismissal. This happened while many of the factory owners living in Zanjan had left the city during the war, retreating to villas and residences they had purchased in Turkey. While they were sunbathing by their pools in these villas, they were confident, from afar, that the cycle of surplus value production would not stop for even a moment. Because it is the workers who, as Kargah TV thugs claim, are expected to “defend the homeland” even under the threat of dismissal. They were forced to remain at their workplaces and in their homes not because they had no fear of the bombs, but because capital does not cease its pursuit of profit for even a moment, not even in wartime, and the lives of workers matter to no one; especially not to those who, in the name of the workers, embrace the class enemy under the pretext of crisis.
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