Iranian truck drivers have widened their labor stoppage to include more than 100 towns and cities across the country, while the clerical regime launched a violent crackdown on strikers in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj.

Iranian experts have long urged successive U.S. administrations to provide strike pay and other forms of aid to restive workers in the Islamic Republic, with a view to improving human rights and causing regime change from within.

Truckers are a key industrial force that helps keep the worsening Iranian economy above water.

The Union of Iranian Truckers and Heavy Vehicle Drivers is also demanding remedies for the lack of roadside aid for graft in the allocation of cargo.

The truckers are also seeking the amelioration of expensive spare parts, freight brokerage fees and diesel quotas. Greater security on the long stretches of Iranian highways is also demanded.

“A driver who protests for his bread and dignity is not a rioter,” the truckers’ union stated, adding, “Protest is not a crime, but our legal right,” reported IranWire.

Lisa Daftari, an Iran expert and editor-in-chief of the Foreign Desk, told Fox News Digital, “The latest nationwide truckers’ strike is not an isolated incident—it is only the latest manifestation of deep disenchantment among Iranians who are denied dignity and proper rights in every industry. Over the past 46 years, we have witnessed waves of protest across a patchwork of sectors and communities, each uprising pointing to a single, overarching truth: the Iranian people are not just sending a message to their government, but to the entire world, urging support in their quest for freedom and basic rights.”

Truckers in Iran have been on strike since last week and are demanding better conditions. (The Foreign Desk)

She added, “This is a fundamental demand, but as history has shown, it is not easily achieved under a government that has proven itself incapable of reform or of delivering the life Iranians deserve.”

In 2019, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) urged Tehran to release detained workers’ rights activists. In 2018, the Teamsters Union, which represents most truckers in the U.S., issued solidarity support for truck drivers on strike in more than 290 Iranian cities.