Since 2017, Iran has witnessed several large uprisings and countless local protests in various regions, involving people from different classes. This phenomenon was recently the focus of a study that“three out of four Iranians participate in protests.”
The largest of the prior uprisings, in November 2019, encompassed nearly 200 cities & towns while featuring slogans that had become popularized over the preceding two years as expressions of widespread demand for regime change, such as ‘mullahs must get lost.’
Early this year, MEK supporters began a serious campaign, they replaced the images of the supreme leaders, with crossed-out images with the slogan“death to the dictator” and speeches of opposition leader Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, were broadcasted.
To prevent clerics to collapse, the regime has assumed an even more hardline character in the face of the prior uprisings. Among the clearest examples of this trend is the appointment in June 2021 of Ebrahim Raisi as the new president of the regime.
The regime has visibly strengthened the enforcement of its fundamentalist ideology, stepping up arrests and harassment of religious and ethnic minorities and further restriction on the rights of women, and accelerating punishment of improper veiling.
Early this year MEK supporters began a serious campaign that has so far involved controlling state media broadcast signals & taking government websites offline.
The MEKS Resistance Units have also continued their well-practiced on-the-ground operations, posting images of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi in public spaces with messages to fight for democracy.” — MEKPARIS, FRANCE, September 13, 2022 /EINPresswire.com / — Since the end of 2017, Iran has witnessed several large-scale uprisings and countless local protests in various regions, involving people from a range of demographics and professional affiliations.
This ongoing phenomenon was recently the focus of a study conducted by the Supreme National Defense University, which concluded that“three out of four Iranians participate in protests” and that a similar proportion can be expected to remain involved if other nationwide uprisings break out in the near future.
The largest of the prior uprisings, in November 2019, encompassed nearly 200 cities and towns while featuring slogans that had become popularized over the preceding two years as expressions of widespread demand for regime change.
Those slogans were promoted in large part through the efforts of“Resistance Units” affiliated with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) , the country’s leading pro-democracy opposition group, which the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had personally held responsible for another nationwide uprising that began in December 2017.
Khamenei’s January 2018 speech on that topic marked a dramatic departure from longstanding propaganda that sought to downplay the threat posed by the MEK to his regime’s hold on power.
Thirty years earlier, that regime sought to stamp out the opposition with a campaign of mass executions stemming from a fatwa by Khamenei’s predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini, which declared all MEK supporters to be guilty of the capital offense known as“enmity against God”.
Though the 1988 massacre claimed the lives of over 30,000 political prisoners, of which roughly 90 percent were MEK members, the organization itself rebounded and has continued growing to the present day.
In the meantime, regime authorities mostly resolved to simply pretend as if the MEK had been effectively destroyed.
While condemning the organization in countless state media broadcasts, articles, and entire books, Tehran continued promoting the narrative that supports for the MEK was limited to a“cult” or a“grouplet” mostly comprised of exiles.
In recent years, however, this narrative has been seriously undermined by the Resistance Units’ activities, which have come to reflect a broader range of tactics than ever before.
Early this year, MEK supporters began a serious campaign that has so far involved controlling state media broadcast signals and taking government websites offline.
In both instances, the regime’s content was replaced with crossed-out images of the supreme leader, accompanied by the now-familiar slogan“death to the dictator” as well as excerpts from speeches by the Iranian resistance leader Massoud Rajavi and Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Amidst these activities, the Resistance Units have also continued their well-practiced on-the-ground operations, posting images of the Massoud and Maryam Rajavi in public spaces along with messages urging the people to fight back against repressive authorities.
These operations have also escalated in some respects, as evidenced by several reports of MEK supporters taking control of public address systems to issue calls for further uprisings.
In January 2022, they also struck a significant blow to the regime’s militant propaganda by setting fire to a newly unveiled statue of Qassem Soleimani, the late commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ foreign special operations division, the Quds Force.
Two years earlier, the regime attempted to rally support for itself on the back of Soleimani’s death at the hands of a US drone strike but ended up sparking another anti-government uprising when efforts at retaliation resulted in the ostensibly accidental downing of a commercial airliner near Tehran.
The timing of that uprising was remarkable because it came only two months after the November 2019 uprising was violently put down, with mass shootings claiming at least 1,500 lives.
Furthermore, Resistance Units and ordinary Iranian activists both took advantage of the January 2020 uprising to explicitly condemn the IRGC, despite the fact that it was the entity most responsible for those shootings.
Ongoing defiance of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and other state institutions is a repressive strategy failing to contain public outrage.
The recent SNDU study seems to acknowledge that failure, insofar as its authors, working on behalf of the General Staff of Armed Forces, recommended alternative interventions to prevent future uprisings by actually addressing underlying grievances.
The study said, for instance, that authorities should start“reforming political governance” and prioritizing“social justice” as well as the economic disparities and lack of social mobility which are major driving forces behind social unrest.
The study also cautioned that in absence of constructive interventions, the regime will likely contend with the increasing likelihood“that Iranian society is on the threshold of political collapse.”
To prevent this collapse, the regime has assumed an even more hardline character in the face of the prior uprisings. Among the clearest examples of this trend is the appointment in June 2021 of Ebrahim Raisi as the new president of the regime.
In 1988, Raisi played a leading role in the massacre of political prisoners, and in 2019 he led the judiciary through the crackdown on the November uprising. His endorsement by Khamenei was therefore widely viewed as a call for more of the same repression, and Raisi’s first year in office has largely lived up to that expectation.
During that time, the rate of executions has skyrocketed in Iranian prisons, more than doubling the rate from the previous year as part of an apparent effort to foster a stronger climate of fear.
Meanwhile, the regime has visibly strengthened the enforcement of its fundamentalist ideology, stepping up arrests and harassment of religious and ethnic minorities while passing laws to further restrict the rights of women and accelerate punishment of religious offenses such as improper veiling.
So far, these trends have failed to silence public expressions of dissent. Despite the fact that the SNDU study and various reports in state media demonstrate widespread awareness of the explosive state of Iranian society, the regime is incapable of changing course.
Source » menafn