The protests in Iran continue with undiminished force. Despite hundreds of arrests and ups and downs, rallies are taking place daily across the country. According to activists and the regime’s opposition, at least 400 people including 23 children have been killed during the protests, according to activists.
Most of the demonstrators who have been arrested have not yet been entitled to lawyers. Not even their families are informed about the whereabouts of those arrested.
During the anti-government protests, demonstrators are increasingly painting graffiti on the city’s walls, which are slogans against the regime. In several districts of the capital Tehran and other cities, inscriptions such as ‘Death to the dictator’ could be read on the walls in the past few days.
In addition, the people attacked many of the regime’s headquarters with Molotov cocktails which are used for their repression. This all started when a young girl named Jina Mahsa Amini died due to police violence. Since then, thousands of people in Iran have been protesting the regime’s medieval values and laws.
The protests have since spread internationally. In all major countries around the world, people are taking to the streets to draw attention to human rights violations in Iran.
But this is not the only issue about the Iranian regime that has raised global attention in the past few weeks. Caught in the middle of its internal crisis, the regime has decided to support the Russian army with kamikaze drones which are now used against Ukraine’s cities and its defenseless citizens.
There had been reports as early as mid-July that Iran was preparing a mass delivery of drones to Russia. US President Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, publicly stated that their information shows that the Iranian regime is preparing to quickly deploy several hundred unmanned aerial vehicles.
This is not something that we should be surprised about due to the regime’s nature of support for global terrorism. Because in international relations this regime does not belong to the peace camp. Its interference over the past four decades has brought misery and war to many countries in the Middle East.
According to media reports, Iran also wants to export missiles to Russia soon. Experts see the first use of Iranian combat drones outside the Middle East as a radicalization of Iranian politics.
Tehran’s opponents in the region know the danger. The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have used Iranian drones to attack Saudi oil facilities and Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in recent years. US troops in Syria were also attacked with Iranian drones.
And as usual, the regime in Tehran denies all its malign activities, it is also denying supplying such weapons to Russia. But the debris from the drones shot down in Ukraine is difficult to deny. And footage on social media confirms the suspicion that Tehran is not telling the truth and the comments of the spokesman of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday are an outright lie and the EU doesn’t believe in Iran either.
According to media reports, the Ukrainian military said that soldiers of the regime’s Revolutionary Guards were stationed on the Russian side of the front in eastern and southern Ukraine as instructors or drone pilots.
They are so-called kamikaze drones of the Iranian regime called Shahed-136. These weapon systems can carry explosive charges weighing up to 60 kilograms at a range of up to 2,500 kilometers. They work via GPS and can fly unmanned to any programmed target if it does not move.
Most of these drones are produced in Iran, but recently also in Tajikistan. On May 17, the regime opened a drone factory in this country.
The situation is politically particularly sensitive as the regime itself is currently grappling with domestic unrest. EU officials also conclude that if the Ukrainian information is correct and that Iran’s regime is supplying arms to Russia, sanctions will be unavoidable.
On Wednesday, October 19, 2022, according to Politico, EU ambassadors agreed on new sanctions against Iran over their arms sales to Russia.
As early as April, just under seven weeks after the start of the Russian attack on Ukraine, the British ‘Guardian’ reported that the Iranian regime was smuggling ammunition and weapons to Russia, including mobile anti-tank weapons, anti-tank missiles, and Brazilian rocket launchers.
