Persistent protests put survival of Iran’s theocratic regime in question

1 / 4
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei take part in a graduation ceremony for IRGC cadets in Tehran in 2019. (AFP file)
2 / 4
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Oct. 2, 2019 speaks before officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Tehran. (KHAMENEI.IR / AFP)
3 / 4
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) congratulates Ebrahim Raisi during his inauguration as president of the Islamic Republic in Tehran on August 3, 2021. (AFP file)
4 / 4
The Islamic Revolution's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (L) is met by by his supporters in Tehran by his supporters during his return to Iran after 15 years in exile in Iraq and France. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 20 October 2022
Follow

Persistent protests put survival of Iran’s theocratic regime in question

  • Belief grows that the unpopular system of clerical rule since 1979 revolution may be coming to an end
  • Participants in leaderless uprising have demanded freedom, democracy, and separation of religion and state

LONDON: Following a month of nationwide protests, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s notorious morality police, there is growing belief that the militant clerical regime, in place since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, is living on borrowed time.

Amini’s death on Sept. 16 ignited a tinderbox of pent-up frustrations in Iran over falling living standards and discrimination against women and ethnic minorities, leading to the biggest wave of mass protests since the Green Movement of 2009.

A month on, the unrest has persisted, spreading to at least 80 cities despite a “ruthless” crackdown that has left more than 200 dead.




This image grab from a UGC video made available on October 15, 2022, shows Iranian students protesting at Tehran's University of Science and Culture. (AFP)

Such is the scale, fury and determination of the protests there are now many Iran watchers and scholars of social movements beginning to talk openly about the possibility of regime change.

It certainly would not be unprecedented for a nonviolent protest movement of this scale to succeed. According to research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed in this vein as armed conflicts.

Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, including in the Philippines in 1986, Georgia in 2003, and Sudan and Algeria in 2019, Chenoweth found it takes around 3.5 percent of the population actively participating in such protests to ensure serious political change.

Such is the influence of Chenoweth’s work that the phenomenon has been dubbed “the 3.5 percent rule.”

Roham Alvandi, associate professor of international history at the London School of Economics, believes “something fundamental” has changed in the wake of the protests, which may constitute “the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic.”




Iranian students protest at the Art University in the central city of Isfahan in this image grab from a UGC video made available on October 15, 2022. (AFP)

In the immediate aftermath of Amini’s death, the protests primarily focused on the morality police and their strict dress code for women. Videos of these early demonstrations shared on social media showed women removing and burning their headscarves in acts of defiance.

 

 

Soon, however, the focus of the protests grew to include a whole range of other grievances, from tumbling living standards as a result of crippling Western sanctions, to the denial of basic rights for ethnic minorities.

However, it was the decision by workers at the Abadan and Kangan oil refineries and the Bushehr petrochemical plant to join the protests that galvanized the belief that the regime could be on its last legs.




An image grab from a UGC video made available on Twitter on Oct. 10, 2022 shows 
employees of the Asaluyeh Petrochemical Refinery in Bushehr province protesting Mahsa Amini's death. (AFP) 

Strike action played a critical role in Iran’s 1906 and 1979 revolutions, Alvandi told Arab News, arguing that it could now serve to “paralyze the Islamic Republic and show the powerlessness of the state in the face of this movement.”

Sanam Vakil, deputy director and senior research fellow for the Middle East North Africa program at Chatham House, concurs with this assessment, telling Arab News a series of strikes comparable to those experienced in 1979 could be a “key ingredient, crippling the economy and showcasing a broader base of support.”

However, Vakil says there are several factors that could determine the success of the movement. Chief among them is leadership.

“The strength and weakness of the movement is its lack of clear leadership,” Vakil tld Arab News. “It is a strength because without a clear structural organization and leader it will be hard to stamp it out completely, but those components are also very necessary if this movement is going to be a real challenge to the regime.”

And although the protests of 2009 and 2019 may have been bigger in terms of numbers taking to the streets, analysts have pointed to the cross-generational character of the movement and the sheer number of cities and regions that are taking part.

“It’s not often you have schoolchildren telling the Iranian president to get lost,” said Vakil.

 

 

Yassamine Mather, an expert in Iranian politics at Oxford University and the editor of the academic journal “Critique,” believes this wide base of support spanning many segments of Iranian society is a key strength which raises the possibility of regime change.

“It is also a strength that they have gone beyond the hijab and are addressing other issues — repression, political prisoners, the high price of basic foods, unemployment or lack of secure employment, and corruption,” Mather told Arab News.

“And then there is support from oil workers in specific areas, such as Assalouyeh, as well as support by Hafttapeh sugarcane workers, a syndicate of Iran’s teachers, and sections of the legal profession. In Tehran, lawyers have been demonstrating this week.

FAST FACTS

Mahsa Amini, an ethnic Kurd, died on Sept. 16 after being arrested for allegedly violating the regime’s strict hijab rules.

Iranian officials claimed she had suffered a heart attack, but reports indicated she died as a result of a severe beating on the day of her arrest.

“Not to mention that many of the protesters are young. In some cases they are schoolchildren, so they are not easily scared. It helps that the regime has failed to launch either sustained or successful pro-government counter demonstrations.”

Mather also pointed to an apparent sense of mounting disunity at the top following the decision by former parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani to publicly deviate from the regime’s line that US and Israeli intelligence efforts had manufactured the protests.




A bin burns in the middle of an intersection during a protest for Mahsa Amini in Tehran on September 20, 2022. (AFP)

Speaking to an Iranian news site, Larijani said an “extremist” government policy on the hijab had engendered an extremist counterreaction among the Iranian public, and called for greater tolerance.

“Reformists within the regime trying to distance themselves from hardliners, some calling on security forces to side with the ‘people who are protesting,’ have probably come a little too late,” said Mather.

“The fact is, protesters are distancing themselves from the regime itself and the slogan ‘death to the dictator, be it Khamenei or the Shah’ is now very prominent.” 

Iranian opposition groups in the diaspora are watching closely as events unfold in Iran, but fear the regime is unlikely to collapse without putting up a fight.

Elham Zanjani, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran Women’s Committee, told Arab News it was “certainly possible” that the protests could lead to regime change, but far from inevitable.

“The vast majority of the Iranian people are against the regime, they are chanting ‘down with Khamenei,’ ‘We don’t want the mullahs nor the Shah,’ and they have little doubt that what they are looking for, freedom and democracy, separation of religion and state etc., won’t see the light with this regime in power,” said Zanjani.




Sympathizers of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) demonstrate near the Iranian Embassy in Vienna, Austria, on Sept. 26, 2022. (AFP)

“But one cannot underestimate the regime’s dreadful potential of repression, as they showed in November 2019, killing over 1,500 protesters in five days.”

Indeed, sheer brute force could well be enough to ultimately stifle the movement.

“There is also the issue that there is neither an obvious alternative nor a strategy about who or what would replace the current regime,” said Mather. “Mixed with this you have the ability of the security forces to kill, injure and arrest protesters.”

Help from external powers is also likely to taint the movement and lend weight to the regime’s claims of a foreign conspiracy.




Demonstrators chant slogans in front of the US Capitol during the "March of Solidarity for Iran" in Washington, DC, on Oct.15, 2022. (AFP)

“Support by Western governments — this is also a potential weakness as it invokes ideas of ‘color revolutions,’ and notions of foreign interventions with the aim of dividing Iran into small regional states,” said Mather, referring to the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s along predominantly ethnolinguistic lines.

For Zanjani, however, international support remains an important factor for the ultimate overthrow of the regime. Such support ought to include punitive measures to prevent the regime employing further oppressive measures against peaceful protesters.

“We must overcome, one way or another, this evil repressive power,” Zanjani told Arab News.

 


Iran says two French detainees held in good conditions

Updated 56 min 53 sec ago
Follow

Iran says two French detainees held in good conditions

  • In recent years, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, mostly on charges related to espionage and security

DUBAI: Two French citizens detained in Iran since May 2022 are in good health and being held in good detention conditions, Iran’s judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said on Tuesday, according to state media.
Last month, France’s foreign ministry said the conditions that three of its nationals were being held in by Iran were unacceptable.
“According to the relevant authorities, these two people have good conditions in the detention center and are in good health, so any claim regarding their conditions being abnormal is rejected,” Jahangir said.
The spokesperson was referring to Cecile Koehler and Jacques Paris, who he said were arrested on charges of espionage and will have their next court hearing on Nov. 24.
Jahangir did not mention the third French national detained in Iran. French media have disclosed only his first name, Olivier.
In recent years, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, mostly on charges related to espionage and security.
Rights groups have accused Iran of trying to extract concessions from other countries through such arrests.


Israeli airstrikes kill at least 30 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

Updated 05 November 2024
Follow

Israeli airstrikes kill at least 30 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

  • Airstrikes in Gaza kill at least 30, Palestinian medics and media say
  • Israeli military says it ‘eliminated terrorists’ in latest operations

CAIRO: Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 30 Palestinians since Monday night, Palestinian media and medics said on Tuesday, as the Israeli army tightened its siege on northern areas of the enclave.
An airstrike damaged two houses in the town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, where the army has carried out new operations since Oct. 5, and killed at least 20 people late on Monday, the Palestinian official news agency WAFA and Hamas media said.
The Gaza health ministry did not immediately confirm the toll. Four other people were killed in the central Gazan town of Al-Zawayda around midnight on Monday, medics said.
Palestinian health officials said six people had also been killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City and Deir Al-Balah in the central area of the narrow enclave.
The Israeli military said, without giving details, that its forces had “eliminated terrorists” in the central Gaza Strip and Jabalia area. Israeli troops had also located weapons and explosives over the past day in the southern Rafah area, where “terrorist infrastructure sites” had been eliminated, it said.
Palestinians said the new attacks and Israeli orders for people to evacuate were aimed at emptying two northern Gaza towns and a refugee camp to create buffer zones.
Israel says its forces have killed hundreds of Palestinian gunmen and dismantled military infrastructure in Jabalia in the past month.
More than 43,300 Palestinians have been killed in more than a year of war in Gaza, the authorities in Gaza say, and much of the territory has been reduced to ruins.
The war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.


Sudan paramilitaries kill 10 civilians: activists

Updated 05 November 2024
Follow

Sudan paramilitaries kill 10 civilians: activists

PORT SUDAN: Ten civilians were killed in the central Sudanese state of Al-Jazira, pro-democracy activists said on Tuesday, in an attack they blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The Madani Resistance Committee, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid across the country, said the RSF carried out the killings on Monday night in the village of Barborab, about 85 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of the state capital Wad Madani.


Gaza aid situation not much improved, US says as deadline for Israel looms

Updated 05 November 2024
Follow

Gaza aid situation not much improved, US says as deadline for Israel looms

  • Washington told Israel on Oct. 13 it had 30 days to take steps to address humanitarian crisis in Gaza
  • Israel on Monday announced cancelling agreement with UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA)

WASHINGTON: Israel has taken some measures to increase aid access to Gaza but has so far failed to significantly turn around the humanitarian situation in the enclave, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday, as a deadline set by the US to improve the situation approaches.
The Biden administration told Israel in an Oct. 13 letter it had 30 days to take specific steps to address the dire humanitarian crisis in the strip, which has been pummeled for more than a year by Israeli ground and air operations that Israel says are aimed at rooting out Hamas militants.
Aid workers and UN officials say humanitarian conditions continue to be dire in Gaza.
“As of today, the situation has not significantly turned around. We have seen an increase in some measurements. We’ve seen an increase in the number of crossings that are open. But just if you look at the stipulated recommendations in the letter, those have not been met,” Miller said.
Miller said the results so far were “not good enough” but stressed that the 30-day period had not elapsed.
He declined to say what consequences Israel would face if it failed to implement the recommendations.
“What I can tell you that we will do is we will follow the law,” he said.
Washington, Israel’s main supplier of weapons, has frequently pressed Israel to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza since the war with Hamas began with the Palestinian militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel.
The Oct. 13 letter, sent by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, said a failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing the measures on aid access may have implications for US policy and law.
Section 620i of the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits military aid to countries that impede delivery of US humanitarian assistance.
Israel on Monday said it was canceling its agreement with the UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), citing accusations that some UNRWA staff had Hamas links.
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said Israel had scaled back the entry of aid trucks into the Gaza Strip to an average of 30 trucks a day, the lowest in a long time.
An Israeli government spokesman said no limit had been imposed on aid entering Gaza, with 47 aid trucks entering northern Gaza on Sunday alone.
Israeli statistics reviewed by Reuters last week showed that aid shipments allowed into Gaza in October remained at their lowest levels since October 2023.


Israel issues 7,000 new draft orders for ultra-Orthodox members

Updated 05 November 2024
Follow

Israel issues 7,000 new draft orders for ultra-Orthodox members

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant issued 7,000 additional army draft orders Monday for individuals from the country’s ultra-Orthodox community, historically exempted from mandatory service until a June Supreme Court decision.
Gallant approved the Israeli army’s “recommendation to issue an additional 7,000 orders for screening and evaluation processes for ultra-Orthodox draft-eligible individuals in the upcoming phase, which is expected to begin in the coming days,” the defense ministry said in a statement.
The order comes after a first round of 3,000 draft orders were sent out in July, sparking protests from the ultra-Orthodox community.
Monday’s orders come at a time when Israel is struggling to bolster troop numbers as it fights a multi-front war, with ground forces deployed to fight Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“The defense minister concluded that the war and the challenges we face underscore the (Israeli army’s) need for additional soldiers. This is a tangible operational need that requires broad national mobilization from all parts of society,” the ministry said.
In Israel, military service is mandatory for Jewish men for 32 months, and for 24 months for Jewish women.
The ultra-Orthodox account for 14 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, according to the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), representing about 1.3 million people.
About 66,000 of those of conscription age are exempted, according to the army.
Under a rule adopted at Israel’s creation in 1948, when it applied to only 400 people, the ultra-Orthodox have historically been exempted from military service if they dedicate themselves to the study of sacred Jewish texts.
In June, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the draft of yeshiva (seminary) students after deciding the government could not keep up the exemption “without an adequate legal framework.”
Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,374 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to Gaza health ministry figures which the United Nations considers to be reliable.
Since late September, Israel has broadened the focus of its war to Lebanon, where it intensified air strikes and later sent in ground troops, following nearly a year of tit-for-tat cross-border fire with Hezbollah.