Since the early days of protests many Iranians say on social media: “If protests stop, regime will kill us all”. While unrest still continues, the government has stepped up “legal” killings.
Nearly 80 days into the protests, the regime seems exhausted and frustrated over its inability to quell the uprising, resorting to more executions, harsher sentences, extrajudicial detentions and intimidations.
Remarks by a member of the parliament national security committee, Shahriar Haydari, published on Friday show that the regime might be changing course in dealing with the unrest that convulsed Iran following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini. Trying to project the idea that the protests have come to an end, he said that about the 90 percent of the people who were out on streets were protesters and only 10 percent were “rioters” a term that the authorities, including the Supreme Leader and the president, have been using to describe the popular uprising.
The change in the discourse may seem like an acknowledgment of the demands of the people in face of the dire economic conditions and lack of freedoms, but it can simply serve as a pretext for the regime to execute the “10 percent,” whom Haydari described as “rioters, thugs, terrorists, and agents of foreign intelligence services.” The Islamic Republic has ways to bend the laws of the country to execute people for on trumped up charges in the absence of due process of law.
Despite growing warnings by foreign countries and international organizations over the crackdown on dissent, the Islamic Republic has intensified repressive measures with reports of accelerated death sentences and executions. The clampdown is especially harsh in Kurdish and Baluch majority regions in western and southeastern parts of the country.
In recent days, Baluch local media reported that two minors – identified as Mohammad Rakhshani and Ali Rakhshani -- are in danger of imminent execution. However, the reports were denied by the prosecutor of Sistan-Baluchistan province. But there are other confirmed reports that at least seven residents of the province – all from the persecuted Baluch ethnic minority – were executed last week.
Social media is also full of audio footage or reports of prisoners who are in critical condition and the regime denies them the necessary medical care to keep them alive. Many of the protesters have been arrested after being injured by shotgun birdshots as well as being beaten by batons or suffering tear gas attacks. Almost none of them are taken to hospitals as there are numerous videos of ambulances transferring the injured directly to detention centers. Some of the protesters have been injured during interrogations and torture after they were arrested. One of the strategies of the regime forces is to keep them in such a bad condition for a long time that they cannot participate in rallies again, even after their probable release.
It seems that the regime has started to release celebrities or prominent dissident figures as a show that it is managing the situation but intensifying pressure on ordinary people whose arrest or deaths would not get a large media attention in the international community.
Nonetheless, documents revealed by hackers who tapped into the database of the IRGGC-linked Fars news agency indicate that Ali Khamenei secretly told his inner circle and military commanders that an end to the protest is not in sight.
Meanwhile, according to the leaked audio file of a recent insiders’ meeting at the Basij Militia HQ focusing on the protests, a top IRGC commander has acknowledged that the protests continue to go ahead with full force.
Khabar Online, a moderate conservative news website in Tehran, in a report Wednesday probed into the continuity of the nationwide uprising in Iran and asked whether the Iranian government and Parliament (Majles) have a true understanding of the nature of the protests that have continued for some 75 days so far. The report also tried to shed light on why the use of force is the government's solution for all problems.
To put the bottom-line upfront, the report concluded that one of the main reasons for continuing protests is in fact the government and the parliament's lack of understanding of the situation. Even insider analysts over-emphasize the role of the current economic crisis as a driving force fueling public outrage. The article said that any good analysis should review the course of events in the past 25 years.
The reformist government that came to power in 1997 was unable to institute any political and economic reforms because hardliners obstructed all routes and created many crises for the government. In mid-2000s the government was handed over to conservatives who ruled out political reforms altogether. The nuclear program pursued by hardliners led to US and international sanctions against Iran.
Moderate Hassan Rouhani's victory in 2013 was aimed at eliminating grievances about the economic situation by bringing about a breakthrough in the nuclear issue, but hardliners played the same obstructive role with the resulting economic crisis fuelling protests in 2017-2019.
US-based sociologist Asef Bayat told Etemad newspaper recently that "The current protests have brought together the middle and lower classes as well as ethnic groups such as Kurds, Azaris, and Baluchis with the slogan of 'Woman, Life, Freedom'. This has given a new characteristic to the protests while at the same time concerns about women and their dignity are at the center of the movement." Bayat added, "It looks like the people are determined to take back their lost youth, lost life and lost joys and are looking for a decent, ordinary life denied by the government which has no idea about the powerful quest for normal life."
Bayat attached high importance to how Iranian women felt humiliated by the government, its compulsory hijab rule and its morality police as a factor in the protests. She said it was a similar humiliation felt also by men that brought them to the streets in protest.
Another Iranian sociologist, Yousef Abazari highlighted the emergence of a new generation that cannot stand the dictatorship of existing rulers.
The scholars said that because of all kinds of restrictions, and general mismanagement, society has left behind all peaceful stages and has entered a phase characterized by anger while the government's only solution is suppressing this anger. This, they said, can only deepen and strengthen the sulking between the people and the government