Iran has no friends left. It buys friendships with weapons, as it is doing with Russia and Armenia, leaving death and victims behind it. That is how Hezbollah managed to leave Lebanon without friends.
By the way, we must pay tribute to the Iranian national football team currently playing in the World Cup in Qatar. It defied the injustice of its regime, refusing to sing the national anthem of the Islamic Republic. “Our people are not happy,” one player said. For his part, the captain declared: “I would like to express my condolences to all the bereaved families. They should know we are with them. We support them, and we sympathize with them.”
Of course, this is brave. However, fears of reprisals against the Iranian players who refused to sing the national anthem have been growing, and they have been threatened to repeat it. Several sources of divergent leanings have reported that Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, the son of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, visited his father alongside former speaker of parliament and presidential candidate Ali Larijani and Ali Larijani’s brother Sadeq (better known as Amoli), who heads the Expediency Discernment Council. Though everyone close to the Supreme Leader had agreed not to include him in discussions of sensitive topics that could annoy or physically and intellectually exhaust him, the Supreme Leader’s son subtly violated this agreement.
Mojtaba said that the brothers, Amoli and Ali, wanted to share their apprehensions regarding the state of affairs in the country and sought the direct council of Khamenei. Amoli explained that things are not right in the country and that this is what has led to the popular uprising led by angry, hopeless Iranian youths. Many people sympathize with them, and the harsh manner with which Ebrahim Raisi has dealt with the situation has made things worse. After the Basij brutalized protesters in cities across the country, they reacted with counter-violence, and the uprising expanded, reaching regions far from the capital.
Amoli Larijani went on to add that some security forces have fled and mutiny, often out of apparent sympathy for the rebels. Ali then said that he need the wise council of the Supreme Leader on how to resolve the crisis. Lying on his bed, Khamenei replied that the conniving insurgents should only be negotiated with after having been punished and requesting mercy. As for those who disobey orders, they should be executed and made an example of.
One news source said that Ali Larijani told him, after visiting the Supreme Leader, that what he saw is similar to what happened with the Shah the day he order a clamp down on the protests. It was the end of the regime. The overwhelming majority of the insurgents are Iranians seeking political change, freedom, and democracy. More importantly, they want to hold the despots in power accountable for the state of the country, which has become far worse than it had been under the Shah, and repression should not be an alternative to dialogue.
What has been called the women’s insurgency in Iran has not stopped since Mahsa Amini was murdered by the morality police because a few strands of her hair were showing beneath her veil. They then claimed that she had died of a health problem she had had while detained as videos documenting the violence she had been subjected to while she was being taken to the police station to were going viral.
Amini was the spark that lit the fuse of a generation that opposes the ideological regime in power. It has two faces. One wants to build on the demands of the 14 Iranian insurgencies that preceded it. The other face insists on changing the ruling political system, greater freedoms, an end to the security regime, bringing down the dictator, and accountability. In an interview broadcast last on ITV, a protester says he wants “a regime that does not interfere in the affairs of neighboring countries, spending everything the country has to fund terrorist militias… and supply Russia with drones while its people are now eating out of garbage cans and lack basic needs.”
The clampdown by the Basij was violent. Save the Children has condemned the repression and demanded a response to reports of hundreds of children in Iran being maimed and detained, calling for the establishment of an independent investigative body. However, also worth noting is the resistance of the insurgents, who fought with stones, sharp, and the light arms left behind by fleeing security forces. Many civilians have died or been wounded, as have several of the Basij forces. Despite this, neither the protests nor the repression ended. Despite totally cutting the internet and cell phone reception, social media pages associated with the insurgency continue to translate information about the developments in Iran. They have reported on the developments of the past week… Among them are the following:
- A mass protest was held in Saro Street in the Shahr-e-Ziba neighborhood of Tehran. “This year is the year of blood, Khamenei will fall” was among their chants.
- A mass protest was held in the city of Bijar in Iranian Kurdistan.
- Thousands of men and women revolutionaries took control of the city of Bukan, occupying all the Basij headquarters there and setting them on fire. They gave the forces of repression a deadline time to hand in their arms. In the city of Kerman, protesters chanted: “Your end is near, Khamenei,” and “Victory to the Iranian revolution.” All the government buildings, police headquarters, and IRGC and army barracks in the city are under the control of the Kurdish revolutionaries in Iranian Kurdistan.
- A member of the special unit, Ismail Chiraghi, was killed in clashes with the rebels in the city of Isfahan.
- Protests were held in Sanandaj, where Basij colonel Hassan Yousefi on Saturday during clashes with insurgents blocking the city’s roads to prevent the Basij from entering it.
All international protocols would designate the use of a “nerve agent” in Javanrud a clear example of war crimes. The Iranian people are calling on the international community to invoke the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) law.
In Asulyeh, laborers in the 11th refinery located in South Pars Gas Company went on strike. And, to put it briefly, Iran will significantly increase enrichment. It announced that it had begun Uranium enriched at 60 percent.
Going back to Khamenei, he described the protesters as “weak, small, and unable to harm the regime” while talking about the youths who have been in the streets since September 16. Nonetheless, he demanded that they and those who “incited them to take to the streets” be punished.
Khamenei is an 83 religious cleric who has led the Islamic Republic since 1988, and he is growing more isolated by the day. He is totally out of touch with reality and cannot understand the demands of the youths crying out “death to the dictator.” Most of those who have been arrested are between 16 and 22 years old. They do not care what Khamenei thinks about revolution, and they detest the values that the so-called Supreme Leader and his aids claim to stand for. The youths are chanting “women, life, freedom-” three vulgar terms in Khamenei’s world.
This week, many older Iranians took part in the protests. Shopkeepers, businessmen, and university students went on strike for three days, reminding Iranians of the hundreds, some estimates say thousands, of Iranians killed in November 2019.
Brute force ended that round of protests. The state spilled blood for longer than the insurgency itself had gone it, and this came at a steep cost. However, for those who had still been diluted, the veil has been lifted off of this regime’s face forever. November reminds them that the Islamic Republic cannot be reformed. It is a hopeless case. Even at this painful time, Iranians take the time to pay tribute to those who will never see Iran free.
Doing so under a government that relies on people forgetting is an act of defiance.
The regime has made flagrant mistakes, not only domestically but also internationally. Regional expansion through militias that fight wars and repress their people has become gospel in Iran. It also implicated itself in the war in Ukraine, sending drones to Russia and choosing a side in this pointless war. Instead of opting for positive neutrality, it took the option of antagonizing the West, which was left with no choice but to deal with the Islamic Republic as a source of evil and terror.
The Iranian regime’s media blames the “riots” on the great satan, the US, the Israelis, and their allies, especially the Arabs. However, the regime and its media seem unaware that their rhetoric about a global conspiracy is not working. The Iranian people know that it is this stubborn, close-minded regime that is responsible. The Gulf states, which are not richer than Iran, prosper and progress, giving the Iranians an idea of what their country- stuck in backwardness, darkness, and poverty- could have been. Iran, of course, has enemies seeking the right moment to pounce on its divisions. However, they would have no hope of succeeding if the Iranians had, first and foremost, reinforced the home front and had played their diplomatic cards right.
The regime will probably maintain the clamp down- to defend itself and its survival before anything else. Indeed, Ebrahim Raisi gives the orders, but he takes orders from his boss Khamenei. Though Khamenei can hardly leave his bed, Raisi wouldn’t be in the position he is in if the Supreme Leader had not decided so. The Larijani brothers are well aware of this fact, though it did take some time and a meeting with the Supreme Leader, who has now become known as a “child killer” after killing over forty of them.
