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Persian Pandemonium by Shammai Siskind
The Jewish Home | NOVEMBER 24, 2022 Persian Pandemonium
The Recent Iranian Protests are Exposing the Regime’s Fault Lines
By Shammai SiSkind
It was a typical day in late September at Imam Khomeini International in Tehran, the capital’s primary international airport.
Security workers were perhaps a bit more on edge as usual, being aware that fierce protests had ignited nearly two weeks prior over the death of one Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman. Rumors were already beginning to circulate that Amini had died at the hands of the dreaded Gast-e Ersad, the so-called virtue police.
At the time, most assumed this protest wave would blow over the same way all such trends had ended over the past decade. Eventually, the brutality of police and military would stomp out the protesters’ spirits. There was hardly any reason to think this time would be anything different.
Suddenly, several black sedans pulled up in front of the main terminal. Dozens of teenagers, women, and young children poured out and were quietly and quickly ushered into the main hall by several intimidating men wearing dark green uniforms. Passengers waiting inside stared in confusion. What were Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) soldiers doing in the airport on a regular weekday? The group passed through security unabated. They exited the terminal through an irregular side entrance and went straight to the tarmac. After a few moments, all ascended a private jet that had been waiting for them on the runway. Within minutes, the aircraft’s door closed, and the pilot began takeoff. Destination: unknown.
All the Reason for Panic
A group of civilians with an entourage of IRGC rushing through check-in at Imam Khomeini is, by all accounts, not a typical incident.
Once is notable. Twice is already highly unusual.
But reportedly, this scene has been repeating itself – in one form or another – up to five times a day for nearly three weeks.
Of course, regime-controlled media would never report on such an occurrence, let alone offer an explanation.
But the consistency of these strange chartered flights from Tehran was eventually picked up by international outlets. As it turns out, these groups of women and minors are none other than the families of regime officials fleeing the country.
As several investigations have now confirmed, there have been a steady stream of officials seeking to get their families, assets, and themselves, out of the Islamic Republic. Some sources have even reported on officials applying for foreign passports wherever and however there may be a chance to obtain them.
At the same time as the families of ministers were taking off the runways of Imam Khomeini, leaders were making public speeches warning protesters they were being used as pawns of international actors to overthrow the government. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said in his first speech breaking the silence on Amini’s death that the protests were actually a joint plot of the U.S. and Israel.
Khamenei urged protesters not to take part in these “unnatural” protests, thereby falling prey to the machinations of the Americans and the Jews.
This Time It May Be Different
To be sure, Iran is no stranger to anti-regime protests. Over the past fifteen years, there have been several major protest waves that swept the entire country, resulting in massive civil unrest and wholescale violence. The first of these modern eruptions took place in the early days of the Obama administration at a time when the West felt confident the United States’ new appeasement strategy toward Tehran would lead to a more peaceful situation, not just in Iran itself, but in the region as a whole.
But alas, it was not to be. In the summer of 2009, the progressive Green Movement of Iran took to the streets to protest the presidency of Mahmud Ahmadenijad and what was almost certainly a rigged election that had brought him into power that June. The Green Movement protests, which lasted well into the following year, were the first display in contemporary times of the disdain the people of Iran had
for their Islamist overlords. It was also an important showcase of what the regime was willing to do to protect itself against dissent. Protesters were routinely brutalized. Hundreds were arrested. Some three dozen were killed. Countless others suffered severe injuries.
Since that period, major coordinated demonstration waves from the 2017 Democracy Movement to the 2021 protests over food shortages that quickly took on an anti-regime character all displayed to the world the hatred the population harbored for its government and just how far the Ayatollahs would go to eliminate threats to their power.
So why has this round seemingly triggered such concern amongst leadership? Why are officials desperate to get out? Why is the Supreme Leader all but openly warning these protests could actually destabilize the government?
There are a few points worth highlighting.
First off, the impetus for these demonstrations is a highly sentimental issue. This would be true for any society, but especially one as steeped in conservative tradition as Iran is.
Mahsa Amini was a young Kurdish woman from the country’s west who was in Tehran visiting relatives. All reports indicate she wasn’t engaged in any behavior that should have aroused the wrath of the Gast-e Ersad goons. According to eyewitness accounts, Amini was detained, beaten, and dragged away. The next time anyone heard of her, she was in a coma, having suffered a severe head injury. She was declared dead in a Tehran hospital two days later.
The idea that the regime would needlessly target and kill a young woman who was just minding her own business while strolling the streets of the capital struck a chord. What’s even worse is that these morality enforcers have been an extremely unpopular feature of Iranian society since their inception. For a long time, there has been an unspoken “truce” of sorts between the regime and the people that the morality police will keep a low profile. But that drastically changed following the election of the current president Ebrahim Raisi, a known clerical extremist.
Khamenei has accused the US and Israel of fomenting the protests A protest in Tehran in 1979 in support of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
– election fraud, economic crisis, etc. – this movement from its outset was explicitly targeting the essence of the regime and its totalitarian nature.
And this leads us to the second unique feature of the Amini Protests: they have exposed, in many powerful ways, the fault lines of the regime as an institution. Understanding this point is crucial and goes to the heart of how the Ayatollahs view them-
selves and their position of power in Iran.
At the time of the Islamic Revolution in Iran over four decades ago, the country was in the midst of turmoil following generations of sustained political crises. In the mid- to late-1970s, the period in which the Revolution took place, nationwide opposition to the Shah was not particularly religious in nature. It was characterized by anti-corruption sentiments, the desire to implement the rule of law fairly, and promotion of policies to spread the benefits of Iran’s natural resources (i.e., oil) in a publicly beneficial manner. In other words, the collective force that toppled the Shah and opened the door to a governmental alternative was, by any definition, quite liberal in character. Ayatollah Khomeini, who was a popular political exile and had already cultivated a substantial network of supporters throughout the country, managed to ride this wave and install the current Islamist system.
While the above historical description is a bit oversimplified, the point is this: the regime never commanded country-wide support that was fully in line with its ideology. The regime was merely the one faction among many that had succeeded in replacing the old order. From day one, the Islamic Republic was on shaky ground. Weak, strapped for cash, and internationally isolated, the Ayatollahs knew they were still vulnerable to being usurped by other political forces: Arab movements, Kurdish movements, secularist communists… you name it. The main focus of the regime quickly became protecting itself. This is what spurred the founding of the IRGC, a military organization with the explicit purpose of defending not the Iranian people, but the regime itself.
By the early 1980s, countrywide crackdowns were taking place, rounding up anyone suspected of colluding with opposition groups. All of this meant the regime came into its own while ensconced in the mindset of self-preservation. And the sad fact is, the regime has never grown out of this mentality.
For the entire history of the Islamic Republic, the main interest of the government has been to hold on to its own power – even at the dire expense of the population. Restrictive election laws and the dictatorial status enjoyed by the Supreme Leader have prevented political reformers in Iran (and there are many) to gain a substantial foothold. We saw this in action during last year’s presidential election when a council under the jurisdiction of Ali Khamenei summarily disqualified hundreds of candidates mere weeks before the ballot boxes opened.
The regime’s response to the protests at every level demonstrates just how warped and dysfunctional the Ayatollah government is.
Imagine this scene: a small town in western Iran organizes a demonstration to protest Amini’s death. The hundred-orso-people turnout is met with a small fleet of armored personnel carriers manned by IRGC to quash the gathering.
Thus, the Gast-e Ersad, with the seething hatred toward it harbored by the younger generation, was the perfect catalyst to kick off large-scale violence.
Indeed, in numbers alone, this latest protest phenomenon has been something unique. Over 15,000 people have been arrested in the course of eight weeks. Some 240 people have been killed including dozens of children.
While other protests may have been rooted in specific policies or states of affairs
The Jewish Home | NOVEMBER 24, 2022
Now, having overseen procurement of these and similar vehicles myself, I can tell you, they’re not cheap. But as numerous incidents over the past month have shown, even in the most underdeveloped areas of the country, the regime still allocates resources to buying military-grade hardware for use against its own people. This is the very type of thing that enrages the protesters even more.
Or consider some of the measures used to prevent protesters from organizing. Officials have repeatedly shut down internet coverage in all or large parts of the country to ensure activists will not be able to communicate using encrypted apps. But, as many of the Mullahs may not realize, use of the internet isn’t limited to protest organizing. Much like the rest of the world, Iranians utilize the internet for business. Whole industries in the country rely on internet communication. The financial losses inflicted upon the Iranian economy as a result of the current internet outages are estimated at $50 million per day. But again, no cost is too high for Tehran when it comes to defending the regime from its adversaries.
Lastly, the regime has made a fool of itself by showing just how out of touch it is. State-controlled media is, of course, hard at work framing protests in Iran and around the world in a certain way – mostly by playing them down. But what officials have failed to notice is that the people no longer rely on those outlets for information. Iranians today tune into BBC Persian or other international outlets broadcast in their language. Even when internet access is sparce, protesters still manually disseminate footage captured on the scene by smartphone cameras.
But the state is totally oblivious to this. Recently, there was a massive Amini-inspired protest held in Germany organized by the Iranian diaspora in the country. About 100,000 people showed up. Reports on the event from regime-controlled outlets in Iran stated that “a few thousand Iranians” had taken to the streets in Germany “to protest rising energy costs.” It’s not the lying that’s so pathetic. It’s that the ones in control still believe the lying is effective.
Getting Out of Hand
Many harbor hopes that the current protest wave, which shows no signs of slowing down, may actually be able to effect real change in Iran.
There are even some signs that support for the protesters is beginning to seep into state entities. While some of these reports have been, in my opinion, a bit outlandish, many others likely contain a kernel of truth.
There have been circulating reports, for example, that the Iranian army (not
IRGC, but the army actually tasked with defending the Iranian population) has been clashing with IRGC troops in various protests throughout the country. Now, the implication of these reports – and I’m sure what many people are imagining when they read something like this – is that units of Iranian military are engaging in large-scale battles with Guard Corps soldiers. There have not been any credible confirmations this is actually happening. But what most certainly is happening is that IRGC troops are being gunned down at these protests. And not just any troops but high-ranking officers. One of the most recent incidents involved the death of Mehdi Molashahi, a Guard Corps Colonel who was shot along with a member of the IRGC-controlled paramilitary force
known as the Basij. Both men died while responding to protests in the southeastern city of Zahedan, a location where activists have been particularly violent.
There have been several incidents of armed men showing up to protests. The IRGC has so far confirmed at least two high-ranking officers have been killed by gunfire in recent days. Reports of “the army taking on the IRGC” are likely overblown. What is more likely, however, is that military personnel, operating on their own volition, are attending these demonstrations with the intention of shooting back.
And this support seems to not be limited to lone AWOL soldiers.
In late October, the Iranian hacker group Black Reward published classified information from the state Atomic Energy Production and Development Company. The leak even included security footage from inside an unidentified Iranian nuclear facility. Black Reward had threatened to leak the data, which it called the “dirty nuclear project of the Mullahs’ regime,” if the government did not release political prisoners and protesters detained during Amini-protests.
Public messages by Black Reward implied the files were obtained by hacking government databases. While this is not an impossibility, it is much more likely that at least some of the more sensitive material – like the surveillance camera footage, for example – was leaked to the group by insiders. This would mean that the state’s most carefully guarded industry is home to protest sympathizers. There’s no doubt that more “hacked” regime files will be forthcoming.
Today, experts on Iranian society will tell you that support for the regime does not exceed ten percent of the population. With the incredible momentum the Amini Movement has achieved in Iran and around the world, the conditions are there for real and substantive impact.
However, we should all keep in mind: a happy ending to all of this is not a forgone conclusion by any means. The regime, as we have seen, will not go quietly. Even keeping the current system in place but acquiescing to major reforms is in the mind of the Mullahs a capitulation they must avoid at all costs.
The IRGC has 350,000 members, all of whom are highly motivated true believers who are prepared to kill and die to make sure Iran stays an Islamic Republic. Furthermore, there are powerful foreign stakeholders with a significant interest in ensuring the current regime stays afloat – namely, Russia and China. It is an open question if Beijing or Moscow (the latter being a bit entangled in its own conflict at the moment) would come to Tehran’s aid.
But one thing is certain: these protests, more than any other in recent history, have laid bare the weaknesses of the Iranian regime and its complete reliance on force to control a population that despises them.
Marching in Berlin in solidarity for the Iranian people
