Iran Protests: Regime Challenged by Push for Change

File photo: Smoke rises during a protest after authorities raised fuel prices, in the central city of Isfahan, Iran, November 16, 2019. (AP)
File photo: Smoke rises during a protest after authorities raised fuel prices, in the central city of Isfahan, Iran, November 16, 2019. (AP)
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Iran Protests: Regime Challenged by Push for Change

File photo: Smoke rises during a protest after authorities raised fuel prices, in the central city of Isfahan, Iran, November 16, 2019. (AP)
File photo: Smoke rises during a protest after authorities raised fuel prices, in the central city of Isfahan, Iran, November 16, 2019. (AP)

More than 100 days of protests in Iran have shattered taboos and shaken the ideological pillars of Iran in a push for change that has defied a fierce crackdown.

The demonstrations, which erupted in mid-September following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, are a reflection of pent-up public anger over economic shortcomings and social restrictions, analysts say.

While there have been protests in Iran before, this movement has been unprecedented due to its duration, spread across provinces, social classes and ethnic groups and its readiness to openly call for the end of the clerical regime, AFP said.

Banners of supreme leader Ali Khamenei have been set ablaze, women have openly walked down streets without hijab headscarves, and demonstrators have at times clashed with the security forces.

Iran, for its part, accuses hostile foreign powers of stoking the "riots", chiefly its arch-foe the United States but also other Western nations such as Britain and France as well as exiled opposition groups.

In an intensification of the state crackdown, Iran this month executed two people in connection with the protests, drawing international rebuke and new sanctions.

Iran's prosecutor general said in early December that the morality police, which arrested Amini in Tehran for an alleged breach of the strict dress code for women, had been abolished.

But activists received the declaration with skepticism, given the continued legal obligation for women to wear a headscarf.

This was not any "actual change" and women are still "punished in other ways", said Shadi Sadr, founder of the London-based Justice for Iran group.

And it has not changed the movement's key demand.

"The protesters want the Islamic republic to go away," she told AFP.

- 'Never more vulnerable' -
While protests may have decreased in frequency and size in recent weeks, Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) said they still take place "every day across the country".

The regime has been unable to quell the popular unrest, and "there is no turning back," IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam told AFP.

The Islamic republic has ruled Iran, first under revolutionary founder Khomeini and then his successor Khamenei, since ousting the more West-leaning and secular shah in 1979.

Rights groups accuse the regime of committing gross human rights abuses ever since, including extra-judicial killings and abductions abroad, and holding foreign nationals hostage at home.

It now carries out more executions than any country other than China, according to Amnesty International.

IHR says the country has executed more than 500 people this year alone.

Iran remains at odds with Western powers over its nuclear program, and has also spread its influence throughout the Middle East, notably through Shiite allies in Lebanon and Iraq.

Iran has been an active participant in the civil war in Syria and backs rebels in Yemen.

International condemnation of the crackdown and waves of Western sanctions have buried any expectation of quickly reviving the 2015 deal on the Iranian nuclear program that the United States walked out of in 2018.

US President Joe Biden said in early November the talks were "dead, but we are not going to announce it", according to a video that surfaced last week.

The regime is also active in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, tightening relations with Moscow and -- according to Western allegation that Tehran denies -- supplying Russian forces with drones, which have been used to attack Kyiv and other cities.

Yet it is at home that the Islamic republic is now facing its greatest threat.

"Never before in its 43-year history has the regime appeared more vulnerable," Iran scholar Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the US journal Foreign Affairs.

- 'Machinery of repression' -
In response to the protests, the authorities have mobilized what Amnesty International has described as their "well-honed machinery of repression", including the use of live fire, mass arrests and death sentences.

At least 476 people, including 64 minors aged under 18, have been killed by security forces, IHR said Tuesday.

About 14,000 people have been arrested, according to the UN, including several prominent figures such as globally renowned actor Taraneh Alidoosti, who was jailed after making a string of social media posts supporting the protest movement. In the posts, she removed her headscarf and condemned the execution of protesters.

The rapper Toomaj Salehi was also arrested and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Apart from the executions of Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard, the judiciary has sentenced nine others to death. Two of those have secured a retrial.

IHR said on Tuesday more than 80 other defendants face charges that could also see them receive the death penalty.

But the "strategy of spreading fear through executions has failed," said Amiry-Moghaddam, arguing they have largely stoked public anger rather than had a chilling effect.

"The countdown for the regime has started. It started the day Mahsa was killed."

- 'Sure we will win' -
Unlike when Khomeini challenged the shah from exile in the late 1970s, there is no single leader to the protest movement.

But Kasra Aarabi, Iran program lead at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said the protesters were drawing inspiration from several figures, all representing different constituencies.

Most were deemed such a menace by the authorities that they were locked up.

"These protests are not leaderless," Aarabi told AFP, adding the demonstrators believe "they are in the middle of a revolution and there is no going back".

Key figures include free speech campaigner Hossein Ronaghi and prominent dissident Majid Tavakoli, who have both since been released, and veteran women's rights activist Fatemeh Sepehri, who remains behind bars.

"I continue to fight with the intensity of passion and hope and vitality inside Iran," rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi, who was in detention even before the protests, said in a message from Tehran's Evin prison, relayed by her family to the European parliament.

"And I am sure that we will win."



Trump Criticizes Putin After Approving More Weapons for Ukraine

 President Donald Trump, left, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Tuesday, July 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP)
President Donald Trump, left, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Tuesday, July 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP)
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Trump Criticizes Putin After Approving More Weapons for Ukraine

 President Donald Trump, left, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Tuesday, July 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP)
President Donald Trump, left, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Tuesday, July 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP)

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he had approved sending US defensive weapons to Ukraine and was considering additional sanctions on Moscow, underscoring his frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the growing death toll in Russia's war with Ukraine.

Trump, who pledged as a presidential candidate to end the war within a day, has not been able to follow through on that promise and efforts by his administration to broker peace have come up short.

Trump directed his ire at Putin on Tuesday during a meeting with cabinet officials at the White House.

"I'm not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now," Trump said, noting that Russian and Ukrainian soldiers were dying in the thousands.

"We get a lot of [expletive] thrown at us by Putin ... He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless," Trump said.

Trump said he was considering whether to support a bill in the Senate that would impose steep sanctions on Russia over the war. "I'm looking at it very strongly," he said.

The bill, whose lead sponsors are Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, would also punish other countries that trade with Moscow, imposing 500% tariffs on nations that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports.

DEFENSIVE WEAPONS AGAINST RUSSIAN ADVANCES

Trump said on Monday that the United States would send more weapons to Ukraine, primarily defensive ones, to help it defend itself against Russian advances.

On Tuesday he said he had approved such a move. "We're sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine, and I've approved that," he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday he had ordered an expansion of contacts with the United States to ensure critical deliveries of military supplies, primarily air defense.

"We currently have all the necessary political statements and decisions and we must implement them as quickly as possible to protect our people and positions," he said. "These are critical deliveries that mean saving lives and protecting Ukrainian cities and villages. I expect results from these contacts very soon. And this week, we are preparing formats for meetings of our military and political teams."

Zelenskiy has repeatedly urged Ukraine's Western allies to impose tougher sanctions on Moscow to force the Kremlin to agree to a ceasefire as a step towards reaching an end to the war, now 40 months old.

A decision by the Pentagon to halt some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine prompted warnings by Kyiv last week that the move would weaken its ability to defend against Russia's intensifying airstrikes and battlefield advances.

Trump, who was seated next to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, was asked on Tuesday who had ordered that pause. "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?" Trump responded.