Meanwhile, the ayatoilets propaganda department are as expected using the same script as Assad, calling protesters CIA and Mossad stooges, I suppose including the kids who was in the midst of the protesters killed by regime thugs yesterday?
The uprising in Iran: ‘This is what revolution looks like’
Unlike the massive protests that erupted after Mahmoud Ahmedinejad came out on top in the sham presidential elections of 2009, the unrest this time around is not largely confined to Tehran, Iran’s capital. It’s coming from everywhere. And unlike the 1999 uprising, the tumult of the past four days is not a student revolt. It’s an eruption that has arisen from the Khomeinist heartlands. Even in Qom, the Shia holy city, throngs of protesters last Friday were shouting ‘Khamenei, leave the country.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is Iran’s doddering Supreme Leader. In Iran’s criminal code, disparaging Khamenei in that way is a crime punishable by death.
“I think you’re beginning to see the initial kernel of a revolution forming right now. If this thing is sustained over a period of time and the government tries to clamp down, but the numbers of protesters grow, I think at that point you’ve got a revolution on your hands,” Kaveh Sharooz, a Toronto lawyer, human rights activist and former senior policy adviser to Global Affairs Canada, told me over the weekend.
“You’ve got all the elements of a revolution now,” Shahrooz said. “You’ve got an oppressed population rising up and demanding justice—the wholesale discarding of a government—and that government is clamping down. That’s what a revolution looks like. There’s no magic to it. That’s what it is, and I think we’re beginning to see the early forms of it.”
This time around, the uprising is leaderless, and freelance journalist Samira Mohyeddin, a prominent figure in Toronto’s Iranian diaspora, says that’s a good thing. “There isn’t a single person they can go after and put under house arrest. The regime is scared, and that’s what’s really interesting. You can tell they’re afraid the red lines are gone,” she told me. “People are saying ‘Death to the regime.’ They’re saying ‘Death to Hezbollah.’ They’re saying ‘No to Syria, No to Gaza, No to Yemen.’ Iran’s imperialist behaviour is being called into question. The chants are ‘We don’t want an Islamic Republic.’ Posters of Khamenei are being burned.
“It’s totally unprecedented. And most of this movement is not in Tehran. It’s in the slums and in the small towns. That’s where people are feeling the disparity. This is where the movement is really happening. These are people who have nothing to lose anymore.”
In the two years since U.S. President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran went into effect, Iran’s theocratic elites have gained access to roughly $100 billion in funds formerly frozen in escrow accounts by the UN’s nuclear-related sanctions. On top of that cash pile, the regime has already more than tripled its exports to Europe. The flooding of such enormous volumes of money into the ayatollahs’ bank accounts and the IRGC’s many budget portfolios has allowed Khamenei to shift his belligerent regional ambitions into hyperdrive.
Iranians have no way of subjecting corruption of this magnitude to any scrutiny. After the 2009 protests, what little remained of Iran’s independent news media was crushed. Foreign journalists were driven out of the country. The regime shut down the BBC’s Tehran bureau. Three years ago, the Washington Post‘s bureau chief was arrested on espionage charges. Twitter is banned. Facebook is banned. Over the weekend, the social media platform Telegram, which boasts an Iranian client base of 40 million people—half the country—was shut down.
The working-class Iranians who flocked to the polls to re-elect Hassan Rouhani last May on the promise of political reform and jobs have been obliged to stand idly and watch as the Khomeinist ruling class has devoured the post-sanctions windfall. It’s bad enough that Barack Obama turned his back on Iran’s courageous Green Movement in 2009 in exchange for the Khomeinists’ commitment to stick around at the nuclear bargaining table. Obama then doubled down by abandoning Syria’s revolutionary democrats to Assad’s barrel bombs, the IRGC’s bombardment of Aleppo, and Vladimir Putin’s air force—all to keep the nuclear talks on track, and all for an agreement that merely temporarily mothballs the Khomeinists’ plans to develop a nuclear weapons capability.
As for what the future holds, this is where Sharooz and Mohyeddin part ways.
Mohyeddin is filled with optimism, convinced that the darkness that descended upon Iran in 1979 will soon be lifted, and that the Iranian people will not allow the regime to resort to the barbarism and genocide Bashar Assad has unleashed upon the Syrian people for their impudence in demanding democracy. “The regime would never dare do what Assad did,” she said. “They just wouldn’t dare.”
Sharooz said he wants to believe that, but he just can’t.
“This is not going to have a happy ending. I can’t imagine that. This is a regime that is not going to give up power without a fight. The moment that they feel their power is threatened they will unleash any violence that they can to maintain that hold on power. The ending to this story, whether it’s two years from now or five years from now, it’s going to be bloody.”
