For 18 weeks, precarious South Pars workers in Asaluyeh have marched against broken promises—exposing how Iran’s “energy heart” runs on exploited labour at the centre of regional militarized tensions.
For 18 weeks, protesting workers have been demanding that their grievances be addressed, but the authorities continue to ignore their core demands.
After 18 weeks of relentless follow-up by short-term contract precarious workers in Asaluyeh, one of the largest workers’ gatherings in Iran’s oil and gas industry took shape on Tuesday, 18 Azar 1404 (9 December 2025).
Workers at the South Pars complex and refineries, who had long planned to rally in front of the Asaluyeh governor’s office, found access roads blocked. But this did not stop them. The protests were ultimately held simultaneously at three main points in the city: Mohammad Rasoulallah Square, Municipality Square and the Asaluyeh three-way junction.
In its report, the Free Union of Iranian Workers estimated the number of protesting workers at around five thousand, describing this demonstration as “one of the largest protest gatherings in the history of Iran’s oil industry in nearly five decades”.
The gathering began at 9 a.m. in Soleimani Square in Asaluyeh; from there, the crowd marched towards the governor’s office. The protesters chanted: “contractors must be abolished!”
Workers say they have heard promises repeated for years without seeing them implemented. Their current platform focuses on demands they have raised many times before: full implementation of the job classification plan with the aim of harmonizing wages; applying the “two weeks on – two weeks off” rotational work schedule to administrative and support staff; clarifying the employment status of drivers, safety personnel and day labourers; paying compensation for the cutting of camp facilities and establishing air transport for long-distance routes; and enforcing the Labour Law and established workshop norms for all workers employed within the refinery zone.
Some labour activists, including Mirghaffari, head of the South Pars Refinery Workers’ Trade Association, told the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) that while there has been some progress on parts of these demands in recent months, “the main points of the platform” remain unanswered – a situation that has driven the continuation of the protests.
The protests of South Pars contract workers go back several years. Last year, workers at the complex also held repeated weekly gatherings and, after receiving promises that their demands would be followed up, temporarily suspended their actions – promises which, according to the workers, have largely not been fulfilled. In previous years as well, protesting contract workers at South Pars have repeatedly faced arrests. These protests have generally centred on entrenched wage inequalities, the harsh working conditions for shift workers, the poor living conditions in workers’ camps, and the lack of job security for those employed on a contract basis.
Why Asaluyeh matters: workers at the core of a strategic battlefield
The choice of Asaluyeh as the epicentre of this protest is not incidental. South Pars and the surrounding industrial zone are the main hub of Iran’s gas industry and one of the pillars of its petrochemical exports. According to economic analyses, the gas and petrochemical phases based in Asaluyeh provide more than half of Iran’s national income, including the daily production of roughly 50 million cubic metres of methane, 75 thousand barrels of gas condensate, and significant quantities of liquefied gas and ethane that feed the country’s petrochemical plants.
In other words, the workers marching through Asaluyeh’s streets are the labour force that keeps what the government itself calls the “beating heart” of Iran’s energy economy alive.
This economic centrality has turned Asaluyeh into a military and geopolitical target as well. In June 2025, Israeli strikes hit phase 14 of South Pars and installations in Asaluyeh, alongside a fuel depot in Tehran’s Shahran district. In response, Iran launched missiles at Israel’s logistical hub, Haifa port.
A senior Iranian diplomat condemned the attack on Asaluyeh as a “blatant aggression” and a “strategic mistake”, warning that dragging the conflict into the Persian Gulf could endanger global energy security and raise the spectre of a regional energy war.
Analysts note that a serious disruption in Asaluyeh would not only slash Iran’s export revenues but could trigger power cuts, water-pump failures and communication breakdowns inside the country – with obvious potential for social unrest.
Seen against this backdrop, the South Pars workers’ protest is more than a local labour dispute. It exposes a sharp contradiction at the heart of the Islamic Republic’s political economy: the same installations that are treated as strategic national assets, defended in the language of “national security” and used as leverage in regional conflict, are sites where thousands of contract workers live in precarious camps, endure punishing shift patterns, and have to fight for basic wage equality and job security.
While Tehran frames Asaluyeh as a “red line” in geopolitical terms, it has yet to treat the rights and conditions of the workers who keep Asaluyeh running with anything like the same urgency.
