PARIS — Despite a slackening of road exercise within the face of a brutal crackdown, Iranian protesters are nonetheless difficult the Islamic regime 4 months into their motion, observers say.
There have been fewer every day road protests nationwide since November because the authorities search to quell the protests with strategies together with capital punishment, which has already seen 4 protest-related executions.
But the anger unleashed by the demise in mid-September of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for violating the Islamic republic’s strict costume guidelines, has not subsided.
At a time of financial disaster, it nonetheless poses a possible menace to the regime.
Meanwhile protests have taken on totally different types, notably together with strikes.
Mass road actions proceed in some areas, and there have been tentative indicators of division inside the regime.
“With the number of protests diminishing since mid-November 2022, it appears that a stalemate has set in, with neither the regime nor the protesters’ side being able to overwhelm the other,” stated Ali Fathollah-Nejad, Iran professional with the American University of Beirut’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs.
“Revolutionary processes usually entail phases of both relative calm and uproar.
“Now, with a dramatic lack of the worth of the Iranian foreign money because the flip of 12 months, economy-driven protests might be anticipated, which because the previous exhibits, may rapidly flip political,” he told AFP.
The enqelab.info site, which monitors the extent of protest activity, said that while the number of street protests has decreased, the number of strikes and other acts of dissent such as writing slogans or damaging governmental banners has increased.
“The nationwide rebellion is alive, although the way by way of which persons are expressing their dissent has remodeled as a result of authorities’ deadly crackdown in the course of the fall,” it said in a statement to AFP.
‘Protests not over’
According to Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights, at least 481 people have been killed in the crackdown and at least 109 people are facing execution in protest-related cases, in addition to the four already put to death.
On Sunday, 30 women political prisoners in Iran, including a Franco-Iranian academic and the daughter of a former president, demanded an end to protester executions.
The demonstrations began as a movement against the obligatory hijab rule for women but rapidly became a challenge to the entire system, calling for an end to the Islamic republic created after the 1979 ousting of the shah.
“Protests haven’t stopped within the face of the violent crackdown,” said Roya Boroumand, co-founder of the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center rights group.
“They have actually subsided… We are additionally seeing instances of extrajudicial killings and, naturally, residents are extra cautious.”
But she said actions were continuing, including regular street protests in the vast and impoverished southeastern region of Sistan-Baluchistan, as well as strikes by oil workers and protests marking death anniversaries of protesters.
One notable example was a protest this month outside the walls of Rajaishar prison in Karaj near Tehran, when rumors emerged that inmates Mohammad Ghobadlou and Mohammad Boroghani were about to be hanged over the protests. Both men are still alive.
“These protests, whether or not they subside or not within the brief time period, aren’t over,” said Boroumand.
In the face of the challenge, there has been little sign the leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is ready to offer meaningful concessions—and it could yet ratchet up the repression further.
‘Distrust among insiders’
Khamenei this month named former Tehran police chief Ahmad Reza Radan as commander of the national police force. Radan is a hardline figure seen as having played a key role in the suppression of 2009 protests over disputed elections.
Meanwhile, the crackdown on the protest movement has only increased Iran’s isolation from the West, with talks on reviving the 2015 deal on its nuclear program in deep freeze.
Iran is also furious that the United Nations, at the instigation of Western countries, has launched a fact-finding mission into the crackdown.
Simultaneously, Iran has been increasingly running into the arms of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, similarly isolated by the West over its invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv and the West accuse Tehran of supplying Moscow with plentiful cheap drones to use in attacks on Ukrainian territory.
But some analysts detect the very first signs of fissures emerging over how to handle the protests within the regime, which despite all the bloodshed has yet to employ its full arsenal of repression.
In an extraordinary development many observers are still at a loss to fully explain, Iran this month executed former deputy defense minister Alireza Akbari, who had gained British nationality after leaving his post, on charges of spying for the UK.
Cornelius Adebahr, non-resident fellow at Carnegie Europe, said the “sudden verdict” may point to a “energy wrestle” within the elite over how to deal with the protests.
Akbari was seen by analysts as close to Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Shamkhani and other figures who have argued for some moves to address protesters’ grievances.
“Although no obvious cracks dividing the institution might be noticed 4 months into the protests, there are indicators of fissures,” said Fathollah-Nejad, describing the execution as “one other signal that mistrust has set in amongst regime insiders.” — AFP
