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.
