Amid intensified crackdowns, Iran’s teachers sustained nationwide organizing, faced mass dismissals and arrests, built cross-movement solidarity, and demanded an end to securitized schooling, recognition of union rights, and freedom for imprisoned educators.
Over the past 12 months, Iran’s teachers’ movement has been one of the country’s most persistent labor and civic mobilizations. Despite heavy securitization, teachers continued to protest for labor rights and improvements to the education system. Their demands—from better working conditions and educational justice to the release of imprisoned colleagues and recognition of the right to organize—reflect fundamental aspirations across Iranian society. Instead of addressing them, the Islamic Republic has intensified a security crackdown, detaining, imprisoning, firing, or exiling dozens of teacher-activists. This report reviews key developments in the past year, the movement’s core demands, and the state’s response.
Background
Over recent decades, teachers’ unions have gradually taken shape and coordinated despite lacking official permits and facing state pressure. The Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations has served as a national hub for local unions and, since the mid-2010s, has played a central role in organizing protests.
Core demands have focused on improved livelihoods, equitable funding for public education in line with Article 30 of the Constitution (free, universal education), the right to independent association, and an end to security prosecutions of union activity.
These demands sharpened during nationwide rallies and short strikes in 2018 and 2021. Historically, the state has combined partial promises with repression. During the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, many teachers faced pressure for supporting the protests, followed by a new wave of actions against union activists.
Developments over the past year
Despite pervasive securitization by the Islamic Republic, teachers in cities nationwide kept protesting. In May 2024, Sanandaj held union elections—an indicator of continued organizing in Kurdistan—but security and administrative bodies swiftly opened cases against organizers and newly elected members. In the following months, western provinces—especially Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and Ilam—reported dozens of punitive measures for union activity or protest solidarity, including dismissals, internal exile, suspensions, and forced retirement. The Kermanshah Teachers’ Union condemned these rulings as unlawful and damaging to the future of education.
The courts intensified pressure with heavy sentences. In January 2025 (Dey 1403), Izeh teacher Kokab Bodaghi-Pegah received six years in prison for participating in union gatherings, together with rank removal, repeated suspensions, and steep pay cuts. In Arak, vice-principal Abolfazl Khorran was arrested after briefly visiting the grave of a protester killed in 2022 and later sentenced to five years and one day for “insulting the sacred,” plus a one-year suspension; he remains in Arak Prison without medical furlough. These cases exemplify the ongoing criminalization of independent voices. By the Education Ministry’s own admission, more than 300 teachers have been dismissed since the 2022 nationwide protests—likely an undercount—while officials have refused meaningful dialogue with independent unions.
Around Teachers’ Day 2025, authorities confronted planned gatherings in Tehran and other cities. Veteran activist Mehdi Farahi-Shandiz was arrested at a Tehran rally on April 30, 2025 (11 Ordibehesht 1404). Reports from several provinces noted additional summonses and brief detentions, with most teachers released on bail. Coordinating Council spokesperson Mohammad Habibi said the pattern shows the Thirteenth Government’s repressive policies remain unchanged.
The summer brought an unprecedented raid. On September 15, 2025 (25 Shahrivar 1404), security forces stormed an extraordinary assembly of the Coordinating Council in Shahreza (Isfahan Province), arresting all 18 teachers present, including Mohammad Habibi, Rasoul Bodaghi, Hamid Rahmati, and Manouchehr Aghabeigi. Most were freed within hours, but Masoud Farikhteh—an Eslamshahr teacher with a final five-year sentence issued in August 2025 (Mordad 1404)—was kept in custody. His transfer to prison in handcuffs and shackles, treated as a “dangerous criminal,” sparked outrage and solidarity. The UK’s National Education Union condemned the raid and demanded Farikhteh’s unconditional release.
The human toll escalated. Prisoner of conscience Somayeh Rashidi—arrested in May 2025 (Ordibehesht 1404) for protest slogans—died in Qarchak Prison on September 24, 2025 (3 Mehr 1404) after denial of medical care; days earlier, Jamileh Azizi had died in the same facility following deliberate delays in treatment. In response, Farahi-Shandiz began an open-ended hunger strike on September 26, 2025 (5 Mehr 1404), demanding safe wards for political women prisoners, release of the seriously ill, and guaranteed medical care—once again drawing public attention to the costs borne by imprisoned educators.
Civic campaigns and solidarity
Beyond street protests and strikes, civic campaigns were a defining feature this year. In response to worsening prison conditions, the Coordinating Council launched a “Support for Prisoners” campaign that drew broad participation. Initiated after the October 2022 (Mehr 1401) assault on political prisoners in Evin, it has gathered nearly 2,500 signatures from teachers; justice-seeking families; labor, women’s rights, and student activists; and artists. Spokesperson Mohammad Habibi said strong participation by ordinary citizens alongside public figures shows support for prisoners has become a widely shared ethical and social demand. In its final report, the Council stressed that lasting change requires social power rooted in solidarity and links among movements—campaigns like this can seed broader alliances.
Solidarity also deepened between teachers and other civic forces. Labor unions offered notable support: the Syndicate of Workers of the Tehran Bus Company condemned the prison sentence for Masoud Farikhteh, arguing that the professional and civic work of educators like him advances education and social justice and is not a crime. With its own long record of resisting unjust rulings, the syndicate said silencing justice-seeking voices serves the ruling class rather than the public, and it called for Farikhteh’s immediate release and for independent organizations to defend teachers’ rights.
University faculty repeatedly stood with teachers. At the University of Kurdistan, professors publicly backed educators in the province, including by joining a widely covered family “protest hike” supporting convicted teachers. As one social-movement analyst noted, when professors—part of the intellectual stratum—stand openly with teachers, they affirm the need for social unison; such alignments can mark decisive moments when diverse social forces set aside divisions and lay the groundwork for a broad protest bloc. In short, the teachers’ movement moved further beyond sectoral isolation and became a hub linking diverse social struggles.
Censorship and the Council’s media role
In Iran’s official media, teachers’ voices—and coverage of their protests—face censorship or indifference. Systematic repression of independent organizing also means outlets rarely report teachers’ statements, sit-ins, or gatherings. In this context, Telegram channels have functioned as alternative independent media, and the Coordinating Council has used them effectively. The Council’s Telegram channel serves as the official outlet for statements, calls to action, and open letters.
Its content spans education policy, cultural issues, and labor rights. It publishes critical commentary on schooling and related cultural challenges while consistently documenting arrests, court rulings, and union demands. When teachers are detained or sentenced for union activity, the channel records details and protests the measures, ensuring they do not pass in silence.
Given internet censorship and state filtering, staying active on Telegram is itself a way to circumvent restrictions—widely used by activists to reach audiences. With more than 18,000 followers, the Council’s channel allows teachers nationwide to access movement news directly and share their own narrative. In this way, official censorship and attempts to securitize teachers’ voices are partly blunted: the channel records and amplifies protests, strikes, and repression so union demands are not drowned out by state propaganda.
Core demands and the state’s response
The movement’s principal demands remained consistent—centered on labor and civic rights—but statements grew more resolute and overtly political as repression intensified. Teachers no longer called only for pay raises or long-delayed legal reforms; they demanded an end to the security state in education. The Kermanshah Teachers’ Union outlined five urgent demands:
- Immediate annulment of unjust rulings against educators (dismissals, internal exile, suspensions, forced retirement), reinstatement to work, and restoration of dignity.
- Recognition of educators’ right to union activity under the Constitution and international covenants; forming independent unions and protesting peacefully are legal rights the state must respect.
- An end to securitized approaches to education and labor, replaced by dialogue and engagement; schools must be free of threats and intimidation, and officials should negotiate with union representatives rather than fabricate cases against critical teachers.
- Respect for teachers as pillars of development and social justice, with guarantees of job security; no teacher should face employment insecurity for advocating rights.
- Legal space for independent teachers’ unions to operate as educators’ real representatives; without strong, independent unions, advancing labor rights within existing power structures is impossible.
Alongside these stands an urgent humanitarian demand: the release of all imprisoned teachers and an end to prosecutions of union activists. The surge in arrests and prison sentences—from earlier cases like Esmail Abdi and Mohammad Habibi to more recent ones like Masoud Farikhteh and Mehdi Farahi-Shandiz—has deeply unsettled the education community, making freedom for these educators a shared cause.
Conclusion
Over the past year, state pressure escalated: heavy court sentences, the dismissal and exile of dozens of teachers—especially in protest-active provinces—and the suppression of independent gatherings and assemblies. Yet teachers did not yield. They pressed on with new initiatives—from statements and open letters to signature campaigns and internal union polls. More than ever, the teachers’ movement linked arms with other social forces and, in many observers’ words, became a “voice of freedom, awareness, and justice”—a voice no decree can silence. The solidarity of workers, retirees, academics, artists, and justice-seeking families shows that teachers’ demands are not merely sectoral but foundational to development and social justice in Iran today.
