Student Protest Movement In Iran Shows Defeat Of Regime Ideology
An expert says antigovernment protests and strikes at Iran’s universities and schools show the regime's failure to instill its ideology in over four decades.
An expert says antigovernment protests and strikes at Iran’s universities and schools show the regime's failure to instill its ideology in over four decades.
Azadeh Davachi, a researcher at, in an interview with Iran International November 6 said acts of protest and slogans by students since September have refuted the ideology the Islamic Republic attempted to teach youngsters throughout 43 years of its existence.
“What the Islamic Republic wanted to inculcate in students’ minds through the schoolbooks have resulted exactly in the opposite. Students remove headscarves and tear down the photos of regime leaders in classrooms. Despite so much crackdown and threats, girls enter school without hijab, chant slogans, record it using cell phones and publish the videos on social media. This means a heavy defeat of the Islamic Republic’s ideology,” underlined the pundit.
Schoolchildren in Iran kept up with daily protests on Sunday chanting slogans and staging strikes to show anger at government crackdown against older protesters.
University students insist they will go to campuses despite all the restrictions imposed but will stage strikes there and not attend classes.
Students at almost all universities in Tehran as well as in some other cities have called for sit-ins and strikes demanding the immediate release of their peers detained earlier.
Security forces have beefed up measures in recent days at campuses to search students when they enter and take away their mobile phones not to let them record videos.
Many students have been arrested since the beginning of anti-regime protests in September. Some are kidnapped by security forces, and often nobody knows their whereabout for days.
In an appalling move, Tehran University of Arts has announced that all drama graduate students will be suspended and cannot take the final exams.
However, students emphasize that they will not stop their strikes until their demands are met. Several professors have also announced that they will refuse to teach until the dismissal of students is canceled and they return to classes.
Davachi believes that the perseverance of students in holding strikes and protests 50 days into the nationwide demonstrations is of great significance, as social and civic movements in Iran have always depended on student movements.
This researcher at Deakin University of Melbourne told Iran International that an important factor differentiating this movement with previous ones is that the slogans are more radical at universities and schools.
“Student actions can strengthen other civic movements and reinforce the popular protest movement. Students’ slogans this time is very similar to those of people on the streets. Therefore, students and older protesters are somehow supporting each other,” added Davachi.
She went on to say that the demands made by students is what the youths want as they are a large group among Iran’s population.
She further noted that the clerical rulers assumed they have raised a new generation at schools who are very committed to their values, but the recent events at universities and schools proved exactly the contrary.
Women play a very significant role in the protest movement, she reiterated, saying “if the uprising of the nation against the regime proves victorious, women will not let their demands be marginalized like in the 1979 revolution and they will play a very crucial role in a free Iran.”
In video-taped remarks released on the internet Sunday, former lawmaker Hamid Rasaei, a hardliner cleric, claimed all security bodies he has spoken to “point in the direction of the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council” as the culprit when it comes to failure in suppressing the protests.
Rasaei also accused President Ebrahim Raisi of not taking timely action and constantly postponing Shamkhani’s replacement.
Shamkhani has kept a very low profile since the protests began. There were rumors among the political elite in Tehran that Major General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Armed Forces, would soon replace Shamkhani as the Secretary of the SNSC, an informed source told us recently.
The demand for Shamkhani’s removal from office may be an indication of serious incongruities among the Islamic Republic’s many intelligence and security bodies vis-à-vis protesters.
So far, the IRGC has not resorted to large scale operations against protesters as it did in November 2019 when it immediately used lethal military force, killing at least 1,500 and arresting thousands within a few days.
This time the IRGC has only deployed its plainclothes agents in the field, leaving the official handling of the protests to the police and its special forces. There has also been less use of assault rifles against protesters, but shotguns and beatings have claimed the lives of at least 318 so far according to Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
The protests should have ended after Commander of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Major General Hossein Salami’s warning last week that demonstrators should cease and desist, Rasaei insisted in his remarks.
In his speech on October 29 Salami had accused the US, Israel, and European powers of fomenting unrest in Iran. “Stay away from the streets,” he told the Iranians in a threating tone.
Rasaei demanded that the incumbent Secretary of the SNSC and former President Hassan Rouhani who appointed him to the post in 2013 be held to account for the “current circumstances”. He also criticized Shamkhani for his “inefficacy” in suppressing the November 2019 protests in an optimal manner and demanded accountability about allegations of financial corruption against him and his family members.
The secretary of the SNSC is appointed by the president with the consent and express approval of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who also appoints the SNSC secretary as his own representative in the council. Shamkhani has held both positions since 2013.
“Tolerance and dallying are enough,” lawmaker Hossein Jalali told the SNSC and security bodies in a speech in the parliament Sunday where some other ultra-hardliner lawmakers blasted Shamkhani and other security and judicial bodies for indecisiveness. They also demanded that some protesters to receive the death penalty.
Jalali also referred to Molavi Abdolhamid, the leader of Sunni Baluch community, in his speech and alleged that Shamkhani has failed to act against him because “he has given priority” to his “friendship” with former reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
“Preserving the regime is the highest priority, even more important than preserving the life of the 12th Imam of Shiites who is believed to be in occultation,” he told Shamkhani. Many can consider this remark as religious sacrilege since the hidden Imam is supposed to be represent the continuation of Prophet Mohammad’s rule.
Shamkhani, an admiral of the Navy, served as defense minister in Khatami’s first cabinet (1997-2001). Despite having run against the president in the 2001 elections, Khatami reinstated him in his second cabinet, but their relations soured considerably.
The parliament, elected in a non-competitive election in February 2020, is packed with hardliners and Revolutionary Guard officers.
In a statement that was read out in the parliament on Sunday, the lawmakers called the protesters ‘mohareb’ -- which literally means warrior in Arabic, but in Islamic law or sharia it means ‘enemy of God’ that carries the death penalty. They also compared the protesters to members of ISIS, who "attack people's lives and property..."
The Iranian regime has so far charged several people with ‘moharebeh,’ “corruption on earth,” “assembly and collusion against national security” and “confrontation with the Islamic Republic” for participating in the protests.
Describing the current wave of popular protests as “riots,” the MPs claimed that “the US and other enemies” are inciting violence, organizing rallies, and providing financial support and weaponry to commandeer the protests. They also said “thugs and mobs” have killed tens of people and disrupted the security of the country.
Echoing the Islamic Republic’s propaganda line, the lawmakers said that “the enemies have been defeated in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen” therefore they organized the “riots” as a reaction to “victories of the Islamic Republic.”
Without mentioning any individuals or groups, the hardline lawmakers also asked the judiciary to take legal actions against “the politicians who incited the rioters.”
Earlier in the parliament session, Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf) said that main elements of Mossad, CIA and their allied groups are behind the unrest in the country.
Late in October, hardliner MP Mohammad Esmail Kowsari, also a high ranking IRGC officer, implicitly threatened that the government will respond differently to the ongoing protests from now on.
While protests continue across Iran, the Islamic Republic’s Judiciary has also announced that it has indicted over 1,000 people who were arrested during the demonstrations.
Authorities have been claiming that “separatists” and “instigators” are behind the efforts to overthrow the government and break Iran into areas controlled by ethnic groups, a claim routinely denied by Iranians on streets and social media.
The claim that protests are instigated by foreign enemies was first made by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and loyal officials now repeat his conspiracy theory.
President Ebrahim Raisi on October 25 accused “enemies of the Islamic Republic” of fomenting the protests, echoing what Khamenei said a day earlier. Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf in turn vowed that parliament would take action to change the ways of the morality police in a bid to calm the protesters.
“Death sentences against people for exercising their right to freedom of expression, after the killings of peaceful protesters, abductions and gunning down children, and other atrocities, indicate a government that is out of control and willing to quash protests at any cost,” said a statement by Center for Human Rights in Iran.
The Norway-based human rights organization also expressed concern regarding the fate of the detained protesters saying, “dozens of them have been charged with the security-related charges of ‘moharebeh’ and ‘corruption on earth’ which carry the death penalty.”
The Islamic Republic’s history and current evidence indicate that they intend to use the death penalty as a tool of political repression to intimidate their opposition.
Earlier in November, 40 Iranian lawyers issued a statement saying most people no longer want the Islamic Republic and called on their peers to speak up and defend the people.
Iran has been gripped by protests since the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin who had been arrested on September 13 for allegedly breaching the Islamic dress code and died three days later from severe head trauma. Protests spread fueled by public outrage over a crackdown that led to the deaths of other young men, women, and children. Now in their seventh week, the protests show no sign of ending.
In a letter obtained by Iran International, the group criticized the IAMA’s Board of Trustees and the Board of Directors for their lack of action in support of the Iranian protesters, on the pretext that the IAMA must remain 'apolitical'. The five signatories all are past or former officers of IAMA’s leadership.
The doctors argued that “defending basic human rights, social justice or public health issues are not political matters,” announcing their decision to disassociate themselves from the “dominating leadership” of IAMA.
"In recent turmoil in Iran where people are fighting for their basic human rights, and our medical and dentist colleagues in Iran are shot at, injured, detained and a few, so far, have lost their lives, we need to show our solidarity as a medical community," read the letter.
They said the Association should never be “silent or indifferent” in the face of the Islamic Republic’s human rights violations, particularly pertaining to public health, adding that there is “a strong resistance from a fraction of the Board members, particularly, from the founder” for taking any action. They said the members want to support their fellow physicians in their basic rights to protest in Iran but “the same fraction preferred to look another way.”
“We will start a new Medical and Dental organization, which, beside the scientific activities, humanitarian tasks, it can also give us the freedom and space to stand for human rights activities and social justice anywhere in the world, including the US and Iran, without fear of stigma,” they said, welcoming all healthcare professionals who share their visions to join them. “We must stay united and focus on the issues that our birthland is suffering from right now.”
Referring to the ongoing crackdown on the uprising, ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, they said “our birthland Iran, needs us, the brave people of Iran need us, the physicians and dentists in Iran need us, so, we must do something and will do our best to help them, to raise their voices inside and outside Iran and show our solidarity with them.”
The association has some apparent links to the clerical regime, as was revealed by a meeting of its former head Dr. Shervin Mortazavi with President Ebrahim Raisi during his visit to New York City.
Late in September, the IAMA issued a statement saying that the association will no longer be silent in the face of appeasement of and association with “this evil regime,” announcing the firing of Dr. Mortazavi.
“We, as IAMA members, like other Iranians all over the world, strongly condemn what has happened to Masa Amini, a young innocent girl as a distinct violation of human rights,” it said at the time.
There are more than 10,000 medical doctors of Iranian origin in the United States.
During a protest rally of doctors in Tehran late in October, at least one surgeon -- Doctor Parisa Bahmani -- was shot in the head and killed by security forces. She was killed during the gathering of doctors in front of Tehran Medical Council, after government forces opened fire on demonstrators.
Later in the month, a group of 130 neurosurgeons called on the Islamic Republic to stop violent crackdown on protesters, especially on “children and teenagers.”
Up to now, the Islamic Republic has not taken responsibility even for a single death during the demonstrations. Iran’s government either says victims died when they fell off the roofs, committed suicide, had some background disease, or lost their lives in car crashes.
The regime has killed over 304 people, including 41 children and 24 women, during the protests since mid-September. The Oslo-based Human Rights Organization said Saturday that the number of yet-to-be-verified reports of casualties is much more than this.