Deadly and Unconcealable Cracks in Iran Regime’s Rule
The planned presence of the Iranian regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei in the ‘joint graduation ceremony for the cadets studying in the academies of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Armed Forces’ was considered a failure, as it did not bring him the expected ‘power’ that the regime wanted to present in the middle of the nationwide protests.
During his speeches, the signs of weakness were clearly evident on his face. One of the signs was his complaints about the ruling head’s contradictions, which he could not ignore. Khamenei knows very well that they will intensify in the future.
This could be seen in this part of his speech, “At first, some (cleric) elites made announcements and statements without investigation and probably out of compassion. Some of them blamed the law enforcement agency and some blamed the system. Now that they have seen what the matter is and what happened in the streets because of their words in parallel with the planning of the enemy, they should make up for their work and clearly declare that they are against what happened and the plan of the foreign enemy.”
While many officials remained silent, only Ahmad Janati and Hassan Khomeini responded to the regime’s supreme leader’s desperate request.
Even the Islamic Association of Students of the Sharif University of Technology confronted him on the night of October 2, when the regime’s special forces and plain clothes officers attacked, surrounded, beat, and injured many of the Sharif University students.
In their statement, they wrote, “The students who sat in for the second day in a row, and exercised their right to protest following a hollow promise by the president of the university to release all the imprisoned Sharif students who were arrested last week, suddenly faced a barrage of security officers and plainclothes officers who, in a tremendous act, besieged the university and attacked students and professors with all kinds of weapons.”
They added, “Behind this blatant violence, it seems that there was a pre-planned scenario to silence the voices of protesting students, and Sharif University was supposed to be a lesson for the rest of the country’s universities and, of course, to satisfy the greed of some extremists.”
The day after Khamenei’s desperate statements, in a statement published by the state-run Setareh-e Sobh daily, cleric Mohammad Ali Ayazi said, “Some of the clerics do not accept the guidance patrol and say that this is not a way to make the society religious. Some things that are done in the name of religion are not acceptable from the point of view of some religious thinkers and researchers.”
The current situation is so against Khamenei, that even the spokesperson of the regime’s ‘Enjoining good and forbidding wrong’ headquarters stated, “We have said several times, this kind of treatment by the guidance patrol or some concerned people, would maybe have worked in the 80s, but now we can no longer force people to submit to the hijab law with violent treatment.”
This desperation among the regime’s forces is the result of the Iranian people’s resistance over the past years, especially through the involvement of Iranian women of all ages.
In a speech by Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf in the Expediency Council, it gives a clear picture of the regime’s viewpoint. He stated, “If we want to overcome this cognitive war, we first need to correct these conflicts and these different perceptions and understandings in this part of governance. This is the platform that the enemy uses because of its inefficiency and creates these problems.”
This situation has also affected the effectiveness of repression and is widening the gap between the regime’s forces and the people of Iran.
Iran: At Least 586 Death Penalties in Last Year
The international community annually celebrates October 10th as a world day against the death penalty. Human Rights organizations, activists, and the United Nations reiterate their calls on several governments to abolish this inhumane punishment.
Instead, the regime in Iran has increased death sentences, reaching over 586 cases in the past 12 months. “Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed Ebrahim Raisi as President and Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i as Judiciary chief, trying to strike fear into the society through mass death penalties,” observers say.
Notably, Raisi and Eje’i were directly involved in the extrajudicial executions of political prisoners. Raisi himself led thousands of Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) members and supporters to the gallows in Tehran during the 1988 massacre.
Details about Death Penalties
The Scale
In a detailed report about the ayatollahs’ heinous crimes from October 10, 2021, to October 10, 2022, the statistics center of the Iran Human Rights Society declared: The confirmed number of executions is 586 cases, including 565 men and 21 women. Authorities have hanged at least 13 political prisoners, including one in public. The regime also executed eight juvenile offenders. “More than 20% of those executed are Baloch compatriots,” The Iran HRS declared.The Charges
The society also provided details about the charges, including: The regime hanged 236 inmates due to drug-related charges; 285 for murder charges; 21 for rape cases; 15 for armed robbery and clashes with security agents; and 21 for political activities. Authorities also arbitrarily hanged several inmates. For instance, they hanged Hamid Qareh-Lor on September 1, who had exposed the regime’s efforts to execute his brother Ali extrajudicially on August 5.Where Death Penalties Carried Out?
Damning details about the location of executions revealed that authorities hanged at least 86 inmates in Sistan & Baluchestan province. Notably, this number doesn’t show the dimension of the regime’s atrocities against the Baluch minority in Iran. Indeed, many Baluch inmates were hanged in exile and banned from last visiting their family members. The regime also hanged 83 inmates in Alborz province, 76 in Fars, 42 in Isfahan, 28 in Razavi Khorasan, 20 in Qom, 20 in Golestan, etc. The location of several executions is unknown.Arbitrary Killings on Iran’s Streets
Furthermore, the State Security Forces, Revolutionary Guards, Ministry of Intelligence agents, and other armed forces arbitrarily gunned down dozens of citizens in the past year. According to the MEK, the regime has murdered more than 400 protesters and bystanders during recent nationwide demonstrations. This number is excluded from the annual death penalty. Authorities also targeted dozens of unarmed porters in the Kurdish area and fuel carriers in Sistan & Baluchestan, leading to many victims. Moreover, interrogators have killed several inmates under torture in the regime’s notorious dungeons. Read More: Iran’s Narcotic Forces Open Fire and Kill Civilians in South-Eastern IranInternational Condemnations Against Death Penalties in Iran
In his report to the UN Human Rights Council in July 2022, Professor Javaid Rehman, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, wrote, “the extent of arbitrary deprivation of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran is of serious concern. On the one hand, the national legal framework justifies arbitrary deprivation of life in some areas, such as extensive grounds for the imposition of the death penalty and the use of force by security forces in ways that are incompatible with international law. “In other areas, violations are a result of practices and acts contrary to the national legal framework itself, such as the use of torture, the lack of timely access to medical care in detention and failure to take appropriate measures to address the general conditions in society that may give rise to direct threats to life or prevent individuals from enjoying their right to life with dignity.”Iranian Dissidents Call on Civilized World to Hold Tehran Accountable
For decades, Iranian dissidents have called on the international community to hold the regime to account for egregious crimes. Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), emphasized the abolition of the death penalty in her ten-point plan for a free Iran. “On the World Day Against the Death Penalty- Criminal executions are a sign of the mullahs’ desperation in the face of an explosive society, but they will not escape inevitable overthrow,” she insisted on her pledge for an Iran without the death penalty.On the World Day Against the Death Penalty- Criminal executions are a sign of the mullahs’ desperation in the face of an explosive society; but they will not escape inevitable overthrow.#StopExecutionsInIranhttps://t.co/Kig1vW8r6y pic.twitter.com/WA3T34HJZA
— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) October 10, 2022
Iran: Disadvantage of Internet Shutdown Is More Than Annual Oil Revenue
In a damning report on October 4, the semi-official Tejarat News website revealed that the disadvantage of 11 days of the internet shutdown in Iran is equivalent to the country’s entire oil revenue of 2021. At the same time, authorities have claimed that U.S. sanctions are the primary reason for the country’s dire economy.
The website wrote, “In mid-September, the internet was cut off in Iran. Netblocks—the global internet’s observatory body—has declared that every hour of internet shutdown in Iran costs $1.5 million in financial disadvantage, 450 billion rials, to the country, meaning 10 trillion rials per day, and 110 trillion rials in the past 11 days.”
To have a better understanding, it is worth noting that Iran’s total oil revenue in 2021 was around 100 trillion rials. Therefore, an 11-day internet cut-off far exceeded, and destroyed the country’s oil revenue in a year.
Tejarat News added, “Furthermore, the internet blackout affected the business of many people. According to several reports, at least one million occupations have been created on Instagram alone.”
The Online Businesses Union secretary Reza Olfat-Nasab provided surprising stats, saying that “The livelihood of ten million citizens is currently dependent on cyberspace.”
On October 4. the Etemad daily wrote, “Now, the internet shutdown has aimed at this group’s business and livelihood, and they do not know even would resume internet access again or not, would filtering lift or not?”
Online Businesses Under Systematic Corruption
In September 2021, Etemad quoted the Statistic Centre of Iran as saying, “The business of 11 million Iranians depends on the social network; 83 percent of online businesses are on Instagram.”
Indeed, online occupations are the outcome of a sick economy. Contrary to other developed nations, Iran is suffering greatly from a lack of industrial infrastructure. The government’s mismanagement and profiteering policies have eliminated any chance for agricultural, agro-industrial, and industrial growth.
In this respect, online businesses are highly fragile in Iran, and the government’s oppressive measures, in a bid to counter public grievances, threaten the livelihood of millions of families. Remarkably, the parliament had long debates about censorship of social media in September 2021, which turned out futile, fearing public backlash.
On December 9, 2013, the Revolutionary Guards’ first chief-in-command Javad Mansouri refused former president Hassan Rouhani’s brags about negotiating with the West and refining the financial situation, stating, “Our country’s conditions would not improve, and our problems won’t be resolved.”
Mentioning that not even the nuclear deal with the world powers would not solve the government’s dilemmas, Mansouri said, “The core of our [economic] difficulties are internal. If Iran’s sky rained gold, but we don’t enjoy meritocracy and the rule of law… our situation won’t be changed.”
Notably, high-ranking officials in Iran, including Supreme Leader Khamenei, President Raisi, Parliament Speaker Qalibaf, and Foreign Affairs Minister Amir-Abdollahian, among others, ceaselessly blame the U.S. and its allies for ‘unjust’ sanctions. They claim the restrictions endanger the lives of Iranian patients—while former Foreign Ministry spokesperson Abbas Mousavi has already rejected claims about sanctions on medicine and food.
Nevertheless, authorities in Iran have deliberately ignored the reality that shutting down the internet has significantly harmed the country’s economy. Their bloody response to peaceful demonstrators, and cutting Iran off from the outside world, has once again proven that the theocratic state ruling Iran does not care about the people, their livelihoods, businesses, national interests, or the economy.
The behavior of the regime’s mullahs should sound alarms for the U.S. and other signatories of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that lifting sanctions or economic incitements is not Tehran’s priority. The world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism is lengthening nuclear negotiations to acquire at least one nuclear weapon, reaching an unbacked point.
Furthermore, as former President Hassan Rouhani and his allies bragged about the JCPOA, the nuclear deal and its privileges did not benefit the people of Iran. Instead, the government siphoned billions of dollars into the pockets of proxy groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah.
The mullahs purely see the negotiation as a guarantee and political coverage for their illicit activities, which are not limited to their nuclear-bomb-making programs. These activities include warmongering, regional ambitions, terrorism, ballistic missile projects, and, more importantly, insurance for their brutal dictatorship inside the country. In a nutshell, the international community, particularly the U.S., should stand with the people of Iran who refuse the theocracy’s policies entirely. An Iran free of authoritarian mullahs would be a reliable ally for the civilized world, which would lead countries in the Middle East and North Africa to stability and peace, rather than being left to face endless conflicts, bloodshed, insecurity, and terrorism."#Hezbollah's budget, salaries, expenses, food & drink, weapons, and missiles come from the Islamic Republic of #Iran. Do you want more transparency?" said Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of Lebanese Hezbollah in June 2016.pic.twitter.com/U9QHfpj7tb
— Iran News Update (@IranNewsUpdate1) September 23, 2020
For Iran’s Revolution, There Is No Turning Back
For almost three weeks, people from all walks of life have raged against Iran’s theocratic regime. From the metropoles to the small cities, the majority of the Iranian population has been involved in the protests, which has significantly changed the face of the country’s society.
Fear is being defeated slowly, as the major chant of the people has become ‘Death to the dictator’ and ‘Death to Khamenei.’
We have reached the point where arrests, tortures, and repressive measures will not hold the people from the path towards freedom. Like wildfire, a new revolution is sweeping across the country and finding its way into every Iranian city. This revolution has united the people. From the Baluchis to the Kurds, they are sending a message of solidarity as the country fights to defeat the regime.
At the forefront of this revolution are the county’s brave women, who have been repressed for over four decades by the worst misogynist regime in history after World War 2.
This current situation was predictable, due to the country’s bleak economic situation, runaway inflation, extremely high prices, and a population close to the poverty line. Adding to the crises is the recent elimination of subsidies, growing unemployment, the emigration of the country’s elites, and a frustrated and futureless new generation which, according to the Persian calendar, have called themselves the generation of the ‘1380s’. Their average age is 20.
Seeing the fate of their parents, these youths are unwilling to accept any more of this current situation, while the Iranian regime wastes the country’s entire wealth on malign activities and precedent its security to the people’s prosperity. As a result, the Iranian people have decided to revolt, even at the cost of their own lives.
The regime thought that it could quell the people’s uprisings with violence as they have in the past. However, with the current unrest approaching its third week, times have changed. On October 3, the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei took to warning the people of the brutal repression that was to follow as retaliation to their uprisings.
Dictatorships have historically denied or accepted the collapse of their totalitarian rule, even in its latest moments, but what history has shown is that nothing is more powerful than a rising nation.
For now, the regime can still count on its Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the infamous ministry of intelligence, and the Basij militias. Tyrannies often fall when losing the power of their repressive institutions and tools, so it is only a matter of time in Iran’s case.
For many years, Khamenei has been trying to push the country’s political body to a younger generation, which he dubbed the ‘Young Hezbollahi’ government. What he did not consider though is the lack of a generation that is ideologically loyal to the regime’s principles, as set by the regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini. This can be seen in the lifestyle of many of the regime’s children, many of whom are currently living abroad in extreme wealth.
On October 3, discussing this new generation that has now revolted against the regime, the state-run Etemad daily wrote, “This generation has practiced fighting and winning in video games. The main issue is the recognition of life for all Iranian people, which is expressed in the voice of these youths. They want a good life not only for themselves but for their parents and all Iranian generations. They have seen deprivation in the eyes of their mothers and felt the pain of their fathers’ unsuccessful efforts to live a minimal life.”
They added, “This generation questions the basis of system values and chooses different values, criteria, and patterns. Patterns are taken from the communication space of the new world and virtual space. The new generations realize that women all over the world and throughout history have tried to pursue their demands, but none of these global demands have had anything to do with the hijab. The rights they demand are much more important than the hijab and cover a wide range of basic issues.”
The daily then warned the regime’s officials, writing, “In fact, when the concern is not to improve the lives of the people, a significant part of whom are young people, it is natural that this frustration will continue and lead to protests. Every decade and every generation you look at, the quality of life has declined. That is, the quality of life in the 80s was far better than in the 90s, and the quality of life in the 2000s was better than in this decade.”
Speaking about the root of this situation, the Etemad daily added, “Young Iranians want a normal life, and although some of its statements are economic, its roots are social. It means minimum welfare, social security, bright future, and based on this foundation, other social, and cultural demands are mounted.”
They concluded their piece by stating, “In fact, these protests are not only the protest of this generation but also a symbol of all the restrictions that have been created in the political and social context over many decades. The recent protests are also the natural result of the behavior of a governance system that has no concern for improving the quality of people’s lives.”
Iran, the Resurrection of the Concept of ‘Revolution’
These days, Iran’s political and social environment has witnessed massive storms, which have changed the meaning of all concepts. The weight of the regime, its opposition, and the concepts, like overthrowing the Iranian regime, have all changed and evolved over the past few years.
We all know that the ‘Velayat-e Faqih’ rule, imposed by the regime’s mullahs, was never the will or choice of the Iranian people. The reason for that is very simple.
Ruhollah Khomeini, the regime’s founder, ignored all forms and mechanisms of democratic rule from the beginning. He forbade the formation of a constituent parliament with the participation of elected representatives. Instead, he created the so-called ‘council of experts’, which had the mission to implement Khomeini’s desired constitution based on his own medieval and inhumane thoughts.
When he came to power, he introduced himself as the representative of God on earth, therefore he was even not faithful to his own written laws. In a previous speech, he even stated that he may say something today and change it tomorrow.
He knew much better than anyone else that his system would have no supporters, both domestic and international. Therefore, he decided to wipe out and slaughter all the progressive forces of the country, especially the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and the Organization of Iranian People’s Fedai Guerrillas, the two major organizations that fought with the Shah’s regime.
In order to combat the progressive forces, Khomeini founded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is mainly responsible for the protection of the supreme leader. This institution also advances several objectives in parallels, such as bloody domestic repression and terrorism, hostage-taking, crisis-making, and warmongering outside of Iran’s borders.
Alongside its repressive forces, the regime’s propaganda, mainly its radio and television organization, known as IRIB, is responsible for publishing the narrative that nothing significant is happening in Iran and that the country under the rule of the mullahs is an island of stability, as the regime’s foreign minister recently claimed.
The purpose of this is to despair the people and diminish any hope about any changes towards a free and democratic Iran, while also wiping the people’s heads of this thought.
However, thanks to the presence of organized resistance over the past four decades, the regime’s mission to keep the Iranian people in the dark has been not realized, and all the regime’s dreams of a solid, continuing rule are now fading away.
When we speak about a fundamental change, we should analyze the changes in the ongoing protests. The most important request of the people, the overthrow of the regime, has finally become attainable.
Many people and analysts have introduced this current situation, not as a ‘national uprising’ but as a ‘revolution’, akin to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah’s regime.
This evolution is happening because of the collapse of the walls of fear, the regime’s disbelief in the overthrow, and the resurrection of the keyword ‘revolution.’
The people, especially the youths, have realized their miraculous power in shaping the destiny of their country. No one is afraid of the anti-riot police, the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, the plain cloth agents, or the regime’s infamous Ministry of Intelligence. Brave Iranian women and girls have been standing face to face with the regime’s forces and have planted fear deep in their hearts.
This fundamental change, if we don’t pay attention to it, will go astray in the analysis of political and social events in Iran. The only way forward is to recognize the people’s right to self-defense and keep it going.
Iran Regime’s Response to Protests Censorship and Violence
The Iranian regime’s leadership has reacted to the ongoing wave of protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old who died in police custody over a week ago after being subjected to violence. The shutdown of the internet in Iran is one of the main aspects that is allowing the regime to increase its acts of violence against innocent civilians.
Since Wednesday, especially, the internet has been severely restricted across the country. Mobile networks are largely switched off according to reports from the organization NetBlocks, an organization founded in 2017 to monitor internet freedom. Access to Instagram, the only major social media platform still permitted in Iran, has still been restricted.
Iran is now subject to the strictest internet restrictions, as a result of the November 2019 massacre. According to human rights organizations, around 1,500 people were killed in protests against rising petrol prices in late 2019. These days, the situation in Iran is very tense. Many people are angry and desperate and feel like to have little to lose. They are suffering greatly from the current economic crisis and from everyday reprisals.
The recent death of a young woman, who was detained for allegedly violating the compulsory headscarf rules, has erupted anger and resentment at the political system. It is a deep internal crisis, and the government has had no other answer to resolve the issues than to conduct further repression of Iranian citizens.
The regime is a political system that is at constant war with its own people. The shutdown of the internet has a clear purpose: to hide the fact that the police and security forces will crack down on the demonstrations with all their might and massacre protesters, and prevent the world from seeing pictures of what is happening.
Restrictions on international Internet access can be judged from two perspectives. This issue can be viewed both from the perspective of citizenship rights and from the perspective of economic benefits.
The developments of the last decade have made the right to access the Internet practically one of the rights of the country’s citizens. That is, just as governments consider access to drinking water, electricity, telecommunication network, and public education as their duty, they should also consider the development and continuation of Internet access as their inherent duty and invest in it.
For this reason, limiting this right can be seen as a form of depriving citizens of their fundamental rights. From the economic perspective, the internet shutdown will only increase the growing poverty levels in the country. At the moment, one in five people in Iran is currently living under the poverty line.
The state-run Donya-e Eghtesad daily pointed out some of the definite losses and disadvantages of the Internet shutdown in everyday life and wrote, “Certainly, one of the first consequences of such decisions is the reduction of sales of online businesses. It should be noted that being connected to the internal Internet (i.e., conditions where access to external services is not established, but internal services are working) does not solve this problem.”
They stated, “A significant number of people do not understand the difference between the domestic Internet and the international Internet, and when they cannot use the Google search engine, they assume that the Internet is completely disconnected.”
The daily further added, “Especially, they do not keep the domain addresses of Iranian sites. There are estimates that Iranian sites spend about 3000 billion rials annually for SEO only on Google to be seen higher and better by customers when searching for goods and services. When Google is down, all these costs are wasted.”
In a national survey conducted by the Iranian Student Opinion Center (ISPA) in the summer of 2021, among the urban and rural populations, for those over 18 years of age, 79% of people said that they use social media; 71% via WhatsApp, 53% on Instagram, and 40% used Telegram. In contrast, the most used internal social media site is Rubika, which only 8% of people have used.
In the same survey, 50% of the society said that they prefer to use only foreign social media apps, while only 2% said that they prefer to use domestic social media apps.
These numbers show that similar domestic tools have not been welcomed by the public, mostly due to the citizens’ mistrust of the regime. This is because nearly almost all of the working IT companies in Iran are cooperating with the regime and their apps are being used for surveillance, or they have functional and quality problems.
In such a situation, it is only natural that the blocking of messenger apps and external social network sites will seriously harm businesses and increase people’s livelihood difficulties.
It should be concluded that the internet shutdown is a double-sided blade for the regime. While helping it to create passing security measures, from a pervasive perspective, it will only increase dissatisfaction among citizens and flame new protests.
Iran’s New Generation Seeks Nothing but Regime Change
In a silly and desperate statement, the Iranian regime’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian claimed that nothing special is going on in Iran, despite the country being in an uproar following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody. Amini had been detained for not adhering to the regime’s mandatory hijab rules.
In a recent publication, the NPR media outlet stated, “Amir-Abdollahian acknowledged the tragedy of Amini’s death, but said such incidents happen around the world and downplayed the significance of the nationwide protests.”
In an interview, Amir-Abdollahian said, “I’m assuring them that there is not a big deal going on in Iran. There is not going to be regime change in Iran. Don’t play to the emotions of the Iranian people.”
The question is, what is the reality of the situation and what is the regime facing?
Angry demonstrations are ongoing in dozens of cities across Iran in the most extensive public protests since the 2019 uprising. Iranians have come to the streets to condemn the murder of Mahsa Amini, but they are being faced with violent attacks by the regime’s security forces.
Despite the Internet restrictions in Iran, the conflict between the angry citizens and the security forces has not subsided. People have set police cars on fire in Tehran and chanted slogans against the Iranian regime in dozens of other cities from Qom, Mashhad, and Tabriz, to the south of the country.
In response to these protests, the Iranian regime’s President Ebrahim Raisi has pledged to deal with these demonstrations decisively, and the Ministry of Interior drew the line that it will stand up to the protesters.
Widespread frustrations from the devastated economy to the alienation between Iran’s regime and many of its younger citizens have kept the protests active and ongoing.
This time, the main characters on the ground are not the poor people of the January 2018 protests, nor the middle-class people who mourned because of the Ukrainian plane shot down by the regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
These unexpected new protesters are Iranian youths, dubbed ‘generation Z’, and they have imposed a serious challenge on the regime. They have decided to take to the streets and revolt, using this as their main tool to implement their policies and demands.
They have completely shocked the regime with their fearlessness and bravery, and caused concern as they do not care about, or believe in, any of the regime’s factions.
The truth is that the ecosystem of generation Z is the media, especially social media. Through this, the youths are well educated, and they have a much brighter perception of freedom and new thoughts. With their minds opened to the wider world, they refuse to believe the regime’s media, whose articles are routinely filled up with the lies and propaganda of the regime’s mullahs, who are stuck in the Middle Ages.
The pain of livelihood issues has not affected only their fathers; They are also mourning their own livelihood conditions too. The future for these youngsters has become unclear to them, and in their view, a home, a good profession, and marriage are difficult prospects to achieve.
They have been influenced by cultural industries. They see no reason to be limited and restricted from things in their lives and have therefore decided to prevent the regime from disconnecting them from the outer world.
The youths of Iran want to be like their peers in other nations to be free. The fact is that with the help of international media, they have learned how they can live differently from what the regime has offered them and their generations before. They are the children of the 21st century, a century of the explosion of information and digital relations.
The truth is that the regime has no examples of life for the new generation to follow. Instead, they are just trying to force them to accept their old and medieval patterns, but this generation is not accepting them. They demand a regime change. They are filled up with the regime’s theocratic rules. Now cries about the overthrow of the regime can be heard all over the country.
The regime is facing a serious transformation, which will definitely lead to its demise. This is because, unlike older generations of Iranians, generation Z has decided to reach its goals by facing the regime on the streets. At this point, further repression of society, at the hands of the regime, will only have negative effects and radicalize the situation.
Iran’s Youths Broke the Spell of Fear
One of the main characteristics of the recent protests in Iran is the courage and fearlessness of the people, especially youths, revolting against the regime forces.
The behavior and resistance shown by the women of Iran have been exemplary. They have learned that the only solution to liberate Iran from the regime is by portraying their resistance against the Iranian regime’s rule at any price, by overcoming their fears and taking back their fate, which has been taken away from them for decades.
In many videos published on social media, protesters have been seen attacking the regime’s forces and hunting them, despite being not armed.
Now, the time has come where the regime’s mullahs and repressive forces should be afraid of the consequences of their actions over the past decades. Reaching this point is a qualitative session in the people’s fight against the tyrannical regime, who have ruled Iran by relying on intimidation, repression, terror, and violence.
When fear tactics do not work; the inevitable result is the dismantling of the tyranny and totalitarianism of the mullahs.
Over the past six years, with heavy sacrifice, courage, and non-stop struggle, the Resistance units of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) have shown their power and have despaired the regime. Risking their lives, the organization’s members and supporters have paved the way for a new uprising and encouraged the Iranian people to withstand the regime.
We are now witnessing the formation of hundreds, if not thousands, of Resistance Units up and down the country and in each and every city. The people have learned from their past, and by implementing new tactics they are defeating the regime’s forces. The streets and alleys are in their control as they divide and fatigue the regime’s forces.
Learning from these Resistance Units, many people, including youths, are burning down the regime’s propaganda and other symbols installed in the cities across Iran.
On September 24, the state-run Tabnak daily wrote, “There are organized entities that destroy places, burn them and escape, and repeat the same on other places, which shows that they are organized who commit these actions.”
Astonished and scared about the blazing development of the continuing uprising, Mohsen Mahdian, a member of the regime’s revolutionary Guards (IRGC), said, “I want to tell you that the events that happened in these two days are unprecedented. These protests were unprecedented in the last 40 years. Why unprecedented, because there has never been a period of protests in such a way that you can see violence and disturbance from the first hour.”
He added, “The real story is not the hijab, the story is not about the morality police or the death of Mahsa, they are targeting the system. And this is obvious in their slogans if you analyze them logically over the past two days. You will understand that the slogans are clearly saying that our problem is not the issues that have been said, it is the principle of the rule.”
Iran Is on the Brink of a Revolution
The wall of fear has been broken. In many cities across Iran, women are taking to the streets, leading the protests against the Iranian regime, and fearlessly standing in front of the armed security forces.
The protests began with the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The regime’s morality police arrested her on September 13 for allegedly improperly wearing a hijab, the mandatory head covering imposed upon Iran’s women. Two hours after her arrest, she was taken to a hospital where, three days later, she succumbed to skull injuries that had been sustained during her detention.
It is not just the violent death of the young woman that has driven women and men to take to the streets to protest. Their anger was also fueled by the authorities’ unabashed attempts to cover up the cause of Mahsa’s death. The moral police claimed that an ‘unfortunate heart failure’ is what took her life.
Thanks to the appeasement policy of the Western powers, who are trying to save the regime from a demise in a new nuclear agreement, very few protests in Iran have made it to international news. In the past year, there are said to have been more than four thousand protests across the country, most of which were only local and were reactions to economic hardships and widespread dissatisfaction.
In their entirety, however, they undermine the legitimacy of the rulers. This also applies to the most recent wave of protests. It is about the core of the mullahs’ regime.
The protests, which have spread like wildfire in many cities across the country over the past week, according to reports, protests have spread to at least 146 cities and all 31 provinces throughout the country. Over 180 people have been killed by the regime’s repressive security forces.
With a mixture of pity for the protesters’ anger and a threat not to take it too far, the regime hoped that the protesters would go home after a few days.
However, with no signs of the uproar easing, the power apparatus is discarding its restraint and starting to threaten the demonstrators. The regime is thus heading for a bloodbath because the predominantly young demonstrators are by no means willing to retreat as the videos from Iran over the past nine days have shown.
Protests that undermine the legitimacy of the regime, now challenging the ruling axis of the mullahs and the Revolutionary Guards, have continued throughout the country.
This wave of protests is growing into a broad social movement that threatens to endanger the very existence of the medieval regime because it is finding support from all social classes in society.
Iran’s young people, want to live in freedom and in a secular country. The unequal showdown has begun, but as history has shown, it seems inevitable that the people will finally win the battle against tyranny, even if they are forced to pay a huge price and make many sacrifices.
Iran’s Regime Claims To Fill Global Energy Gap Despite Crippled Petroleum Sector
In recent weeks, the Iranian regime’s officials have been constantly exaggerating their huge capacity in oil and gas reserves and promising to provide energy to the world. The regime is desperately hoping to compensate for the shortage of gas and oil across the globe, which is due to the war in Ukraine.
According to the state-run Mardom Salari daily, Javad Oji, the regime’s oil minister, spoke during the 32nd meeting of OPEC+ last week, saying that the world needs the increase of the regime’s oil production, and they are ready to guarantee the energy security of the world.
The spokesperson of the regime’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Iran, as one of the main countries owning oil and gas, has the capacity to cover some parts of the world’s oil and gas necessities. Some of the regime’s MPs have also repeated the same claims.
Despite having the second biggest gas resources in the world, the regime has never been able to find a proper place in the global gas market. This has many reasons. The main reason is the widespread corruption in the regime, which has effectively crippled the hydrocarbon industry.
One of the most famous cases of corruption in the country’s oil industry was the embezzlement of $7.4 billion. According to the regime’s state media, most of the defendants were chief executives of the regime’s petrochemical producers and exporters, which are all under the control of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
The country has been struggling for many years to meet even its domestic fuel needs, let alone being able to secure the global energy shortage.
The optimization of gas consumption, both in power plants and factories and in the sources of consumption, was not taken very seriously and this greatly increased gas consumption in the country.
The balance of gas production and consumption in Iran has become almost negative, and last year’s gas cut in industries and factories was not applicable for domestic gas.
Another issue is that due to the decrease in investment in gas fields, because of the sanctions, and the drop in gas pressure in fields that are already developed but require new investment, the regime is actually facing a drop in its gas production.
In order to circumvent the sanctions, the regime has been smuggling oil and gas to neighboring countries for many years, mostly Iraq and Turkey, at a much lower value than the world-determined oil and gas price, which has caused large damage to the country.
False promises and over-optimism are nothing new in the regime, particularly where the regime’s oil industry is concerned. In 2020, the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and former president Hassan Rohani promised that they would replace the oil revenue with other sources and that the country would be able to withstand the sanctions. In general, the regime’s oil income has been compromising about 80 percent of its budget over the past forty years. Therefore, such a claim without the proper infrastructure is baseless.
According to the IMF, Iran is now producing about 1 million barrels of oil, while the regime’s officials, in the most optimistic view, have claimed that the regime will be able to produce 3.9 million barrels of oil per day. Of this, they would only be able to export 1.8 million barrels and use the rest for domestic consumption.
The amount of oil being churned out through Russian oil production was more than ten million barrels per day, which has decreased slightly during the sanctions against them. Still, Russia remains the largest oil producer in the world, along with the United States and Saudi Arabia. In comparison, Iran’s oil production and export capacity are still far below that of Russia, so there is no way they would be able to fill the gap in the world energy market.
At the same time, the regime is still struggling with an economic crisis. According to the World Bank report of April 2022, “Only a third of the pandemic-period jobs losses have so far been recovered. Oil revenue shortfalls led to a growing budget deficit, adding to inflationary pressures through the government’s deficit financing operations. Iran’s economic outlook is subject to significant risks.”
Also, a paper published by IMF researchers this month stated, “High and volatile inflation has been an endemic economic and social issue in Iran that has contributed to rising poverty and social tensions.”
