All throughout last week, the propaganda apparatus of the clerical regime in Iran had been busy hyping up Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s first Friday prayers’ sermon in eight years. The regime’s propaganda reached the International level, giving the impression that Khamenei was going to address important issues.
But on Friday, contrary to the regime’s propaganda and the expectation of the media, Khamenei had nothing important to say. By repeating the usual lies, he merely tried to show that the establishment is still on its feet. Now, the question is why did Khamenei participate in the Friday prayers and what goal was he pursuing?
In his speech, Khamenei talked about “two eventful weeks” and exposed his fear of Iranian peoples’ protests and their slogans. During the past two weeks, the uprising has been the most important event in Iran. It has been the source of all the crises that the regime is engulfed in, and it has paralyzed the regime.
After the elimination of Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Qods Force chief Qassem Soleimani, the entire propaganda apparatus of the regime, as all dictators do, in a detailed plan, tried to assemble a large crowd for Soleimani’s funeral. The plan was to show that the regime still enjoys popular support, to boost the morale of its forces on the one hand, and to get international legitimacy on the other hand. In reaction to the downing of the Ukrainian passenger jetliner and the death of 176 passengers by the IRGC, people took to the streets and ruined Khamenei’s plan. The protests took place in many cities all across Iran with the main slogan of “death to Khamenei.” The protesters also tore up Qassem Soleimani’s pictures. In his speech, Khamenei, without mentioning the “death to Khamenei” slogan, reacted to Soleimani’s torn pictures, which indicates that this action was done extensively and widespread.
By participating in the Friday prayer and gathering some crowds, Khamenei, intended to demonstrate a show of power. The propaganda apparatus of the regime by announcing that metro tickets are free for Friday prayer, bringing people from other cities by buses, and other initiatives tried to assemble large crowds for the Friday prayer, but the establishment was defeated in gathering large crowds, and at the same time in his speech, Khamenei demonstrated that his regime is on the verge of collapse.
The independent observers put the number of people participated in this week’s Friday prayer at 45,000 people at most, and that is why the preannounced pro-government demonstrations were canceled later. Furthermore, in his speech, Khamenei raised a few issues which were a reminder of Shah’s speech on his last days.
On November 5, 1978, in a speech known as “hearing the voice of the Revolution,” the Shah, by calling the protesters “hopeless youth who are compelled by passion and emotion” said: “I ask the intellectual youth leaders to choose the principal way of struggle for the establishment of real democracy by calling on the youth for calm and order. I call on Iranian fathers and mothers who, like me, are concerned about the future of Iran and their children to guide and prevent them from participating in the unrest and anarchy, and to stop them from hurting themselves and their country based on their passion and emotion.”
Similarly, Khamenei in his speech on January 17, 2020, repeated the Shah’s remarks in another fashion and said: “Some people, based on American and British media, are trying to abuse this sad event (downing of Ukrainian airliner by IRGC), and set the ground for forgetting the glorious funeral and the harsh revenge of the IRGC. Obviously, some are young and emotional, but others are not willing to understand and stick to the national interest.”
“Young and emotional” is the common code name that the Shah and Khamenei phrased for the freedom-loving protesters. The same protesters who were chanting: “Death to the oppressors, be it the Shah or the Leader.”
After that speech, everyone was convinced that the time for the rule of the Shah has come to its end. On December 15, 1978, George Ball, a member of the U.S. National Security Council and political aide to President Jimmy Carter, who visited Iran and wrote a report about the situation, said: “Downfall of Shah is inevitable.”This is while a short time earlier American intelligence agencies reported that Iran “is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation.”
Khamenei’s attendance in the Friday prayers is indicative of the fact that the recent uprising by the college students and people of Iran, with their slogans, have hit the heart of the regime; slogans such as: “So many years of crimes, death to the Supreme Leader,” “Commander-in-Chief, resign, resign,” “We did not give martyrs to compromise and praise the murderous leader,” “Death to the dictator,” “Khamenei is a murderer, his rule in null and void,” and “Khamenei hear us, we are the people, not thugs.” Khamenei has heard the people’s slogans loud and clear, and it forced him to come out of his cave. Khamenei came to the Friday prayers to say, like the Shah, that he is “hearing the voice of the Revolution” but since he is a mullah, and hypocrite, he uses reverse language to respond to the slogans of the protesters.
Just as the Shah’s rule, after “hearing the voice of the Revolution”, didn’t last long, after this ridiculous show, Khamenei’s dictatorship will not last long either. This is no claim, but a practiced statute in the history of mankind.
Source » ncr-iran