The uproar, the girls and women ripping off and setting fire to their hijabs, the rage in the streets of 90 Iranian cities, show no signs of abating. The young people now leading these protests are different from the previous generation; they have lost that feeling of fear. They know that they have nothing more to lose by fighting against the only government they have ever known — the oppressive regime run by religious fanatics in Tehran. A report on the latest protests can be found here: “A barrier of fear has been broken in Iran. The regime may be at a point of no return,” by Jomana Karadsheh and Tamara Qiblawi, CNN, October 5, 2022:
A woman dressed in black raises a framed portrait of her son, Siavash Mahmoudi, in the air as she paces the sidewalk in Iran’s capital, Tehran. “I am not scared of anyone. They told me to be silent. I will not be,” the woman seen in a viral social media video yells, her voice fraught with emotion.
“I will carry my son’s picture everywhere. They killed him.”
Mahmoudi’s mother is among many Iranians who claim the regime tried to silence them as they mourned loved ones slain in ongoing nationwide demonstrations.
But Iran’s protesters, and their supporters, are defiant. For weeks [and now in its fourth week], a nationwide protest movement has relentlessly gathered momentum and appears to have blunted the government’s decades-old intimidation tactics. Slogans against the clerical leadership echo throughout the city. Videos of schoolgirls waving their headscarves in the air as they sing protest songs in classrooms have gone viral, as have images of protesters fighting back against members of the formidable paramilitary group Basij.
These are scenes previously believed to be unthinkable in Iran, where the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei rules with an iron fist. But experts say that these protests transcend Iran’s many social and ethnic divisions, breaking a decades-old barrier of fear and posing an unprecedented threat to the regime.
The generation of Iranians in their twenties are unlike their predecessors, who protested about the price of gasoline in 2019 or against the outcome of an election, and possible electoral fraud, in 2009. These protests are not so focused. They are against the regime, against the Supreme Leader; only the collapse of that regime, and that leader, will satisfy them. They may not win this time, but they are using the battering ram of many weeks of nation-wide protests to weaken the foundations of the state.
Across Iran, protesters seem intent on exposing the weaknesses of a clerical establishment which is widely accused of corruption and has stamped out dissent with arbitrary detentions and even mass executions.
Tehran has been convulsing with demonstrations since the death in mid-September of Mahsa (also known as Zhina) Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died after being detained by the country’s morality police for how she was dressed.
Protests crop up sporadically in various parts of the capital throughout each day. At night, a chant that has become a staple of the protests — “death to the dictator” — sounds from the rooftops of buildings. It’s a reference to Khamenei, who was once considered beyond reproach because of his elevated clerical status….
In 2019, the protests prompted by the rise in the price of fuel were directed at the government, with “death to the rulers” heard. But now it is a challenge – or threat – flung directly not at vague “rulers,” but at one man, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. This is most worrisome for the rulers. Yet the regime has held back from the kind of bloodbath it sanctioned in 2019, when 1,500 protesters were killed, and the protests were crushed in three days. The Basij and the army are now using more live fire than they did initially, and the death toll has crept up to 250 (including the latest figure of 82 Baluchis killed), but that number is still far from the toll of lives taken three years ago. One wonders if the government is holding back, as compared to 2019, because it fears that some members of the military or the Basij militia will this time refuse the orders to mass murder demonstrators.
Last week, Amnesty International said it had obtained a leaked document which appeared to instruct commanders of armed forces in all provinces to “mercilessly confront” protesters, deploying riot police as well as some members of the military’s elite Revolutionary guards, the Basij paramilitary force and plainclothes security agents.
In addition, Amnesty International said it had seen evidence of sexual assault against female protesters – CNN has not been able to verify this. Social media video has also shown Iranian security forces dragging unveiled women through the streets by their hair….
This brutality toward women hasn’t cowed these young women, but made them even more furious. They continue to tear off their hijabs and, defiantly, set fire to them. One YouTube scene that has gone viral shows middle-school girls surrounding a member of the Basij who had arrived to read them the riot act, only to be surrounded by the girls yelling at him, and forcing him from the room.
It’s no longer a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini, hijabs, and the morality police. The rage has metastasized. Now the cries being repeated all over Iran are directed at the regime itself: “Death to the Islamic Republic! Death to the Dictator!” This is a direct challenge to the Supreme Leader who, instead of suavely trying to calm down the protests with a show, however fake, of sympathetic understanding, has ordered his military – the army and the Basij – to crush the protesters. Where before the security forces used metal pellets and tear gas to break up protests, now they use clubs and live fire. Close to 250 Iranians have been reported killed so far, but this has only increased the rage of the protesters, who have no intention of dispersing and returning to the wretched existences that, thanks to the morality police, they had endured before the murder of Mahsa Amini.
“These are primarily very, very young people, a younger generation who have apparently completely lost faith that this Islamic Republic can be reformed,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice-president at the Washington, DC-based Quincy Institute.
“They’re breaking from their previous generation who was seeking to reform the system from within,” Parsi added. “This new generation seems to not have any faith in that at all.”
How amusing that Trita Parsi, who for years in Washington has lobbied against efforts to increase U.S. sanctions on Iran, now finds himself needing to appear to be an ally of that “new generation” that, he must assume, will inherit Iran.
The 83-year-old Khamenei, who commented on the protests for the first time on Monday, blamed – without evidence – the United States and Israel for fueling the protests. He also made clear that the regime would block the protesters’ desire for change.
“I say clearly that these riots and the insecurity were engineered by the US and the occupying, false Zionist regime (Israel), as well as their paid agents, with the help of some traitorous Iranians abroad,” said Khamenei in his address.…
Of course. All those women speaking in Farsi and setting fire to their hijabs must surely be CIA agents. And all those students at the Sharif Technological University are Zionist agents provocateurs. The Great Satan and the Little Satan, aided by traitors abroad, are trying to spread alarm and unhappiness. It won’t work. They tried that it in 2009, and 2017, and 2019, but Iranians were not fooled then, and won’t be fooled now. The Supreme Leader is never wrong.
The difference is that these protests are not winding down, but continuing without letup and in some places have gained steam, in 90 cities across the country — in Tehran, Tabriz, Khermanshah, Shiraz, Urmia, even in the holy cities of Mashhad and Qom. Social media is now being used far more than in previous protests. Many more Iranians now have a computer or a Smartphone than they did in the previous protests, and the regime is having a difficult time trying to censor social media sites, so it shut down access to the Internet altogether. But Iranian activists have figured out a way to access the Internet nonetheless. This new approach involves Tor servers inside Iran itself, and engaging the tech community outside the country. This approach — using servers inside the country as a sort of “Trojan Horse for internet access” — is gaining endorsement from the free-speech community at large. What this means is that the Iranian government can no longer prevent dissidents from accessing the Internet. As one tech expert said: “If Iran has segmented off its residential internet access from the rest of the world, but its servers located within the country can still access both Iranian residential IPs as well as the outside internet, then setting up servers within the country to relay traffic should work. The government no longer controls the information received by, or disseminated by, the tech savvy young.
“The protests transcend social sectarian boundaries, bringing together a much broader strata of Iranian society than we have seen in years,” said Ali Vaez, director of the International Crisis Group’s Iran Project. “But they suffer from the same shortcomings that the previous movements in Iran also suffered from. Primarily, the lack of leadership.…
How do we on the outside know that there is no leadership inside Iran? We have no idea whether the protesters in any of the 90 cities simply gather spontaneously, or whether a vanguard of dissidents, perhaps even a single leader, directs their marching, and tells them what to chant. Perhaps the dissidents are leaderless, or perhaps there are leaders, unknown to us, who are sending messages on social media about when and where to gather, what slogans to chant, how to have the greatest impact on other Iranians who may still be on the sidelines, how to appeal to the members of the military to refrain from firing on them, how to make these protests in Qom or Mashhad or Tabriz known to the world’s media.
Demonstrations in Iran have been going on around the country since September 16; they are now entering their fourth week. This is much longer than any of the previous protests.The one in 2019 was crushed in three days. It is clear that Iranians are no longer fearful of the regime, not even by the use of live fire. And the protests have in some places taken on a distinctly ethnic cast. The massive show of force in Iranian Kurdistan – the Kurds are the favorite target of the Persian-dominated regime – has in turn prompted angry Kurds to chant slogans demanding an end to the government’s curbing of the use of the Kurdish language in schools, and demanding, too, the teaching of Kurdish culture. Now another ethnic group, the Baluchis, have risen up, and the Iranian military have been mowing them down, with at least 66 Baluchis, including women and children, killed in the massacre that took place on September 30 at Zahedan, with another 16 being killed in that city several incidents since. This now has the Baluchi population in an uproar. While there are only three million Baluchis in eastern Iran, there are another seven million right across the border in Pakistan, who are battle-hardened, having carried on for years a separatist insurrection against Islamabad; they can see what the Iranian military is doing to their fellow Baluchis and are no doubt ready to help their fellow Baluchis in Iran.
The Iranian government is flailing out in every direction. It has attacked the restive Kurds, and the Baluchis. But it has yet to crush the protesters in any of the more than 90 cities where they have been marching. It has now come down hard on the Kurds and the Baluchis, who remain defiant. It has tried, but ultimately failed, to cut off access to the Internet. And the sight on YouTube of young schoolgirls defiantly challenging a Basij who had come to intimidate them, and even forcing him into leaving the room, has startled many. Tehran is uncertain how to proceed. Should the military start mowing down the protesters, as it did in 2019, when 1,500 were killed, and the protests were crushed in three days? Or should the government try to avoid mass casualties, lest the response be even more furious, and instead use just enough force to keep an acceptable lid on protests, until the protesters themselves grow tired?
Those protesting know exactly what they are doing. As the Iranian-American scholar in exile, Pardis Mahdavi, has said: “The protests are actually growing despite the violent crackdowns. … The protests not only show no sign of decreasing, but what we’re seeing actually are increased generations out there protesting. Some of the images that we were seeing yesterday are of young schoolgirls, even, resisting, protesting, adding their voice to the protests. And to me, it’s interesting to see this generation, this is the generation born after the 2000s who were born into resistance, these are young people who are building on the decades’ worth of work that … feminists, women and men, have been doing since the revolution.
“For the past 44 years, you’ve seen resistance brewing. But this is a generation that was born into an atmosphere where the resistance was really taking root, and so as long as they have been alive they have seen people speaking out against the regime, which I think has emboldened them to protest in the way that they’re doing today.”
Young girls, university students, bazaaris, lawyers, doctors, trade unionists, are all represented in the protests. Meanwhile, the government menaces, blames Israel and America, calls out counter-demonstrators who seem to consist solely of niqabbed women. The cries of “Death to the Dictator!” grow louder. And the government in Tehran still does not know where to put its hands and feet.
Those protest engaged in by the people of Iran are right and righteous. For the tyrannical Islamic regime is cruelly oppressive in many very brutal hostile and murderous ways.
The Iranian people do have every right to rise up and overthrow that horrendous Islamic tyranny which terribly abuses them and denies then their basic human rights and reasonable personal freedoms and establish a real genuine government.
This is their nature right by, common sense and even explained that very intelligent men, who man Iranians in their quest for freedom might not even know about, as the British philosopher, John Locke.
But, and its a big but, how many mosques will be empty on Friday?
A former Muslim who revealed an important reality when he wrote “The Islamic republic of Iran exists and operates as what every fundamentalist dreams of, an Islamic state ruled by sharia …” He further exposes that “What followed its establishment was the inevitable consequence and inexorable logic of its Islamic premise; state terrorism, a merciless tyranny.” [1]
Those two words that author used “merciless tyranny” to describe that vicious cruel brutal oppressive Islamic and murderous Islamic tyrannical regime is both appropriate and fitting. Just look at those brutal horrendous malicious murders by the state Islamic police and of so many Iranians who are justly and rightly protesting the severe human rights abuses cruelty and oppression of that tyrannical Islamic regime.
Indeed, the tyrants of Khamenei and Raisi are very guilty and have the blood of many innocent people on their wicked hands.
[1] THE ISLAM IN ISLAMIC TERRORISM by Ibn Warraq page 347.
When the heads of the Islamic regime of Iran say that they will “act decisively” against the Iranian people who are protesting, It actually means those tyrants in power in that Islamic tyranny will use the mayhem in the protests as an excuse to come down with vicious malicious brutal deadly violence against people who only want their basic human rights by being free of horrendous tyrannical oppression. In other words, the heads of that used the chaos as an excuse to inflict pain, misery and death on people who only want to be free from tyranny. As its been wisely said that “Evil is always looking for an excuse.”
That vicious murder of Masha Amini ,of which the misogyny filled Islamic tyranny of Iran is completely responsible for and totally guilty of is a strong reflection of the tyrannical controlling deadly and anti-female religion of Islam.
As revealed by a scholar of Islam who revealed in her book “Control of behavior and disregard for human life are key elements in Islam ideology.” Furthermore, the author also exposed that `” Women is Islam are considered unclean, deemed inferior even to dirt.” [1]
[1] THEY MUST BE STOPPED by Brigitte Gabriel, pages 171,172.
One of the reasons that this cruel vicious Islamic regime of Iran that this “mullah regime” tortured and murdered that helpless defenseless young woman ,Mahsa Anini because Iran is based on Sharia law and Sharia is full of ruthless oppressive brutal cruel malicious deadly misogyny
That brutal cruel oppressive misogynistic as well as murderous tyrannical Islamic regime of Iran is based on Sharia denies basic human rights is viciously harsh on all people, especially girls and women.
Furthermore, it should be made known that the actual origin of Sharia is revealed in a Time –Life book with the title MESOPOTAMIA: THE MIGHTY KINGS copyright 1995. The point is this what an outright liar Rasis is, for he said that he is “a defender of human rights.” For that future history book about the ancient pagan world of Mesopotamia informs the reader that “many Islamic laws resemble the Babylon and Assyrian forebears.” . page 150.
There are the above and other references imply that such pagan teachings were incorporated into the religion that Muhammad manufactured and then started. Thus, this further reveal that a lot of ancient paganism is part of the whole religion of Islam.
In other words, ancient paganism makes up much of Islam and it’s a hoax. Therefore, the Islamic “republic” of Iran is based in Islam and Sharia has its entire foundation build on a hoax.
Ilhan Omar and the other idiots in her squad are on the side of the regime as long as it spreads terrorism & it’s war on America.
As Ilhan wears her rag mainly to give the finger to America, it’d be entertaining to deposit those four fools in Tehran, just to see how they’d contort themselves to fake support.
(Other fools like Hillary & B. Hussein smuggly insist women have a “right” to wear the hijab, when they’ve wanted to do otherwise for decades.)
When the U.N. Women organization demanded that men stop telling women what to do, say, wear and think, do they aim it at islamic dictators? No.
The difference is when it becomes our turn, and it will, Americans will be armed to the teeth and they won’t be protesting. They’ll be shooting.
Should they try to freeze our bank accounts, like the petty tyrannical Trudeau did in Canada, I WILL be paying a visit to collect recompense + damages.
Sleazy *Biden’s declaration of war against all things patriotic MAGA got my attention.
Leftists could care less, as they know their bank accounts will remain in tact in this one-sided justice system. (They can even count on No-Cash bailouts or even a donation from Kamala & Hollywood if arrested for arson.)
Keep in mind Hong Kong of a few short years ago. Mobs filling the streets minus high profile leadership & a clearly articulated program will achieve little against a killer regime…..
And they got little support from us. If anyone in the basketball stands held up a pro Honk Kong banner, they were ejected from the stadium.
Nike Corp needs the slave labor for their shoes, and the fool Kapernick doesn’t seem to mind. (His only concern is if a Betsy Ross flag is printed on their shoes.)
What those ugly and brutal prehistoric men, those ayatollas, who have enslaved the Iranian people, their message is that THEIR SO CALLED GOD is a brutal, inhuman, disgusting God. Since all Gods are loving and good, theirs is a FAKE IMPOSTOR GOD INVENTED BY THEM to enslave the people of Iran. GO AWAY FAKE AYATOLAS!!!
“These are primarily very, very young people, a younger generation who have apparently completely lost faith that this Islamic Republic can be reformed,”
Of course it can’t be reformed. It needs to be deconstructed, and like a cancerous tumor, the Islam has to be removed.
May in Iran no longer walk over the large painting of the American Flag anymore and are tired of having to obey their backwards fake religion