Mullahs’ blunder amid protests, int’l sanctions

Mervat Zakaria

Protests have been raging in Iran since before 1979, as people used to demonstrate against the Shah’s regime, its authoritarian policies of suppressing rights and freedoms, the security grip on clerics and the fact that the majority of oil profits only benefited foreign companies operating in Tehran at that time.

Since then, protests in Tehran continued, most notably the demonstrations of Iranian students in 1999, the green revolution in 2009, until the protests in late December 2017 and the beginning of 2018 until the end of 2019.

Iranians also staged protests in 2020, with anger at the government intensifying after it admitted it shot down a Ukrainian airliner it mistook for a hostile aircraft amid heightened tensions with the United States last week, killing all 176 people on board.

The protest phenomenon became one of the most prominent features of political life inside Iran after the revolution of 1979; the protests renewed again with late 2017 and early 2018 against the background of economic decline, especially after the Iranian nuclear agreement was concluded in 2015, and the protests of November 2019, erupted after a decision by the Economic Coordination Council between the three authorities to raise the prices of fuel, which comes after the negative repercussions of Tehran’s exit from the Iranian nuclear agreement, which led to the exit of dozens of multinational companies from the Iranian market, and the end of many foreign investment projects.

The protests have continued on the streets of Tehran with security forces reportedly shooting live rounds and tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators at Freedom Square.

Video footage sent to the Center for Human rights in Iran, verified by the Associated Press, showed the aftermath of the incident with protesters fleeing the scene and one woman apparently was shot in the leg. Other footage showed pools of blood near the woman.

The Iranian authorities have acknowledged conducting arrest campaigns against people who caused this incident, which is the traditional method that Tehran has always followed in such situations without searching for the defect within its decision-making bodies.

As a result, there was a growing intensity of anger among protesters against the Iranian authorities, especially clerics, until the matter reached the point of demanding the departure of the regime’s head himself.

The Iranian regime is still dealing with its internal crises with the same logic it followed in 1999, about two decades after the Iranian Revolution, as well as relying on the principle of foreign conspiracies and monitoring enemies such as the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Internal crises are expected to continue in Iran, as the regime has not been able to develop alternative decision-making mechanisms commensurate with the new regional and global challenges, otherwise falling will be its long-term destiny.