On Monday January 9, the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader spoke to a group of supporters of the regime. He repeated his previous condemnations of demonstrators and affirmed the punishments meted out to them by the Judiciary.
These punishments have led to hurried death sentences for some protesters. They are considered by people and jurists as state murders, aimed at intimidating dissidents and opponents of the government.
Lives of dozens of others is under threat and many might be executed any moment. Thousands of others are waiting in prison for their sentences and are faced with the serious threat of torture, misbehavior and forced confessions.
Desperate families and families of victims of the last four months and the injured form a community of thousands of people all around the country.
Street protesters have reportedly decreased. Instead of a vast confrontation with forces of oppression on the streets, we see nightly outburst of spontaneous slogans from windows and rooftops. Why did the leader of the Islamist regime have to organize a meeting in Qom?
Qom and Mashhad are two cities where the Islamic regime has tried, for 43 years, to change the native context, use them to spread extremist Shiite ideas and turn them into a religious pole and a base for the regime. It has thus invested a lot in them. But by joining the nationwide uprising, they’ve put a serious challenge to the regime of the Supreme Leader.
The largest post-1979 anti-government demonstration happened in 2017 in the city of Mashhad. In the course of the current nationwide uprising, the large demonstrations in Mashhad and Qom have been a surprise to the regime.
Even when rumors about Ayatollah Khamenei’s health, death or secret surgery were so widespread that The New York Times wrote about them, he didn’t see reason enough to be present in public and snuff out the rumors.
But since the national uprising of Iranians begun four months ago, Ayatollah Khamenei has spoken publicly a total of 11 times, for various reasons and in a variety of meetings, explicitly and implicitly mentioning the current events.
Some people believe that his public presence and his threats against the jailed protesters is aimed at sowing fear. But I have another interpretation.
The uprising of the Iranian nation has not finished and its vast scale and audacity and fearlessness of protesters all over Iran, from Qom and Mashhad to Zahedan, Kurdistan, Tehran, Khuzestan and Azerbaijan, has created a lot of worries amongst the supporters of the regime.
The ruling regime must, first and foremost, reassure its own supporters, who are a minority in society. It must take care of their concerns.
The speech of Khamenei on Monday was toward his supporters and in a city where, for decades, a lot has been invested in making it into a base. Around seven weeks ago, on November 20, some people in Qom put up a fire on South Keshavarz Avenue to support the struggles of people in Mahabad.
The terrorizing approach of the regime against the arrested protesters and their hasty execution is less of a dam against the thundering floods of the Iranian nation and more a display of the force of severe repression to the supporters who are worried about the future beyond the regime.
In the first days of Iran’s revolutionary movement, Hossein Ashtari, Iran’s police chief (who was dismissed from his position on January 7) had been present amongst the Special Units and asked them “not to have any doubts.”
This itself shows that doubts were present even amongst the forces of repression and governmental mercenaries. As police forces were suppressing the demonstrations every day, the regime tried to keep them happy: On October 30, it passed a 20 percent increase in the wages of armed forces and the police.
As the pensioners and teachers have organized many protesters due to their low income or lack of payment of wages, the salaries of armed forces and the police have been increased twice in a year.
The other fact that shows the regime being worried about the coming events is the change of the top police commander.
Two days prior to his speech in Qom, on Saturday, January 7, Khamenei replaced Ashtari as the national police chief.
Ashtari has not done any dereliction of duty or showed any dissent.
The oppressive forces under his direct command killed hundreds in the streets. Thousands were injured and arrested. Dozens of young men and women lost their eyesight as pellets were fired to their eyes.
Ahmadreza Radan was Tehran’s police chief from 2006 to 2008. He was then deputy national police chief till 2014. He has the experience of suppressing demonstrations following the 2008 disputed elections. It was in that year that killing of protesters began on streets and the crimes continued in Kahrizak’s torture center.
The return of Radan to a top police post after eight years is not about scaring the protesters. It is about reassuring the worried supporters of the religious tyranny. Following the Iran-Iraq War, Radan was posted to the police and was police chief of Kurdistan followed by Sistan and Baloochestan.
He has also been police chief of Khorasan and Khorasan Razavi.
He thus has experience in suppression and practical work in all cities and sensitive centers in Iran and his appointment, more than terrorizing the protesters, aims to show the biggest card of the regime to its own supporters who are worried about their own future. Those who can afford it have left to Canada and the West and some are left wondering what to do. (Recently, a video of an IRGC commander was published on social media which shows some IRGC commanders have differences with Khamenei and the regime about how the protesters should be approached.)
Radan’s appointment could be a show of strength for supporters of the regime but the crisis of legitimacy has roots elsewhere and there is no force that could solve it. This crisis lies in the graves, unmarked in an affront to human dignity; young people, filled with hopes, loves and dreams, were unjustly killed and are buried in these graves. The unjustly shed blood of the youth of this country keeps the uprising alive, more than any demonstration or street protests.
The slogan we hear these days is full of meaning: “Thousands behind every killed person.” This shows the opponents are countless and a nation is angry. The murder of the youth of this nation is like an arrow shot at the eyes of Esfandiyar.
Esfandiyar was a Royintan, a concept in Persian literature that denotes immortality. In his masterpiece Shahname, Iranian poet Ferdowsi speaks of how Rostam was able to defeat the immortal Esfandiyar. Rostam asked the bird Simorgh for help. Simorgh told Rostam to make an arrow out of tamarisk, poison it and aim at Esfandiyar’s eye; he would be killed then.
The mother of Mohammad Mehri Karami, who was executed on January 7 alongside another arrested protester, Mohammad Hosseini, mourned for two boys: her own son and Mohammad Hosseini who had no family. Crying on the grave of her son, she said: “Oh God! Don’t let the tyranny reign.”
Eighty million Iranians have heard the voice of this mother and thousands of mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, neighbors, friends, acquaintances, neighborhood mates, fellow denizens and compatriots. They have shed tears for the martyr offpsring of the nation.
The life of this youth will not have been in vain. It will become the arrow that hit the immortal Esfandiyar in the eye and killed him.
