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A burning motorcycle in Tehran, the Iranian capital, on October 8, 2022, amid the biggest wave of social unrest in almost 3 years. CreditAFP/Getty Images
There is mounting evidence that protests in Iran, now in their fourth week, can severely undermine the regime. As government forces continued to bang heads in the streets, the head of the judiciary spoke publicly Monday of “mistakes. . . of weaknesses “and failures” of a government that had never before manifested anything like a fault. “Citizens or political teams want to know that we are listening to protests and grievances and that we are in a position to dialogue,” said Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, a former intelligence minister and one of Iran’s hardliners. He once bit a journalist.
The surprising change in tone came after a sobering weekend for the country’s authoritarian leaders. The protests are far from the largest Iran has ever seen: In 2009, thousands of people marched to protest a stolen election. But it turns out that the existing riots have penetrated the base of the Islamic Republic. Over the weekend, protests were held in neighborhoods in Tehran that were long considered regime strongholds, and Naziabad, Fallah and Valiasar were added. Historically, those neighborhoods have produced Basiji, the state-sponsored paramilitaries who enjoy state sponsorship to the streets to disperse protests. (In 2009, middle-class protesters chanted, “Basiji goes home, no loose food today. “)Now, the same neighborhoods produce the kind of unrest that the Basiji would be called to extinguish. In an ambiguous but highly discussed clip, uniformed police officers are seen not confronting protesters but marching alongside them.
“These are typical spaces of protest,” said Tara Sepehri Far, Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The rift has gotten much closer to them,” he said, referring to the regime, “much closer to their base. “
“I’m not sure you can call it their base now, because a foundation has to be unbreakable for you,” adds Maziar Bahari, editor-in-chief of London-based IranWire. On Tuesday, news reported that security forces are plagued by low morale, defections and personal fears that the armed forces will collapse. The aforementioned anonymous former security official said: “The query for many in the army and security forces is: ‘What for?Downwards?
On Saturday night, the change in government control was broadcast across the country. Activists briefly seized state television on the main newscast, interrupting a report on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a sign depicting Khamenei on the cross and the words “The blood of our young people is on your hands. “while protesting his death. ” Join us and stand up,” the card read. The soundtrack was the protest song “woman, life, freedom”.
After a few seconds, the screen again showed a live shot of a presenter looking for a natural unhappy. IRIB, or Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, is the regime’s main propaganda arm and is controlled directly through Khamenei. Press reports described the episode as a “hack”, however, an IRIB spokesperson under pressure that, since the screen is not online, it is in fact an act of “infiltration” within the organization.
“The collapse of the Islamic Republic, while not inevitable, is no longer inconceivable,” Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, told TIME. place and what will remain is absolutely unpredictable. The question is whether the regime can quell those protests without inflaming them further and while keeping its security forces intact. They have managed to do so in each and every mass uprising so far, but the geographical scope and intensity of those protests are unprecedented.
“Street protests can be contained through repression,” Sadjadpour added. “But if giant, sustained movements are initiated between petrochemical personnel and the bazaar, things can start to get worse quickly. “
Read more: Why are academics joining the wave of Iranian protests?
Indeed, as Ejei spoke Monday, oil personnel at state oil facilities in two provinces called for a strike amid the protests, marching and chanting “Death to the dictator” and “Don’t be afraid, we are standing. “solidarity. ” The next day, the strike allegedly spread to a refinery in Abadan. The oil bureaucracy is the foundation of Iran’s economy.
The regime seemed to be under attack from all sides. When President Ebrahim Raisi ventured into Al-Zahra University, a school for women, on Saturday, the carefully selected audience listened respectfully as a bunch of scholars walked out into the hallway chanting, “Get lost, Raissi. “
The videos leaving the country oscillate between horror and emotion. In one, a mother calmly describes the state of her daughter’s corpse after her release by security forces: “Her teeth were crushed and there was a giant hole in the back of her skull. “Another documents schoolgirls chasing middle-aged men sent to tell them to put their headscarves on.
The regime is uncertain of its position. By cracking down on past protests, the government has effectively toyed on Iranians’ sense of nationalism, fueling simmering fears that the unrest could serve as an awning for separatist movements among the country’s Kurdish, Baloch and Arab ethnic minorities. Amini’s death seemed to go further. all of that. She is ethnic Kurds and was on her way to Tehran when she was abducted and reportedly beaten for “inappropriate hijab” or devout clothing. The first protests were held outside the hospital where she was pronounced dead on September 16, and then in her hometown. within days, they had erupted in more than 80 cities across the country, adding Qom, the holy city. Oslo-based Iran Human Rights says it has documented the deaths of 185 protesters in 17 of Iran’s 31 provinces.
Read more: The Iranian people’s 100 years for freedom
Authorities have targeted their forces in the Kurdish region, firing artillery across the border at opposition camps in the Kurdish territory of Iraq’s interior and, on Monday night, launching a brutal sweep of the streets of the Kurdish city inside Iran. But so far, protesters seem united to oppose a regime that, in 4 decades in power, has become more remote and oppressive, especially towards women. A few days before Amini’s death, an Iranian Kurdish woman from the town of Marivan jumped out of her own apartment to escape the rape. from a neighbor. After local women protested against systemic violence against women, Iran’s Vice President of Women and Family Affairs Ensieh Khazali praised the victim for choosing to protect her honor over her life.
On the other side of the country of 84 million people, regime forces killed about 90 more people in the ethnic Baloch town of Zahedan, where a protest for Amini was mixed with local outrage: the rape of a 15-year-old woman through a local police officer. Protesters in Tehran claimed those suffering as martyrs.
Read more: Protests in Iran have shaken the heart of the Islamic Republic
“Solidarity across ethnic lines still remains, for the most part,” said Sepehri Far of Human Rights Watch. in a political movement. It feels very dispersed and across ethnic divisions in a way that is, again, different. There is a new connectivity.
No one claims to know where events are going. In a September 28 interview with TIME, world-famous human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh spoke of “a very genuine option for regime change. “Sociologist Asef Beyat, of Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, cautiously observed in an interview with the Iranian daily Etemad that spontaneous national outrage over Amani’s death paralleled the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor whose self-immolation after repeated humiliations at the hands of city officials led to the Arab Spring. But for Iranians, the first reference remains the 1979 revolution that brought the mullahs to power.
“It’s a scenario where everyone loses, really,” Bahari said, adding that Iranians know Ejei, the chief justice, “as a partner and a disingenuous person. “In any case, his offer of “dialogue” can hardly be Responded. The protests are completely leaderless and the regime has dismantled all civil society organizations that can be put at the service of intermediaries.
“Who are they going to negotiate with?” Sepehri Far. Have the unions closed?Have they been put in jail? The political parties they banned?»