Former US President Trump Voices Support For Iran Protests

Kowsari who was also a Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) commander in charge of Tehran’s security for many years, said, “If security officials do not fulfill their duties, they should be accountable to their commanders and the people."

The General was the commander of the IRGC’s Sarallah (Sar-Allah) Headquarters in Tehran and currently serves as Tehran’s representative in the parliament. 

Describing the protesters, who have been holding antigovernment rallies since the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, as “rioters,” he said there are some attempts “to weaken” the morale of government forces. 

He also slammed some former government officials who are now critical of the heavy-handed clampdown, claiming that “these people are not aware of the behind-the-scenes issues of the recent riots…They think that statements by foreigners are true and that the security and law enforcement forces have committed crimes.”

Several dissident figures from inside Iran and abroad, such as Canada-based activist Hamed Esmaeilion, Mir-Hossein Mousavi who has been under house arrest since February 2011, and exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi have called the military forces to stand behind the nation.

The Youth of Tehran Neighborhoods is an anonymous group that helped organize rallies in the capital in the past 20 days, and also called for nationwide protests.

The group has so far published eight statements and calls for protests that have led to huge demonstrations in Tehran, such as the rallies on Saturday, October 8, which breathed new life into the movement. 

It said in its latest statement that similar groups have been created in several cities across Iran to organize the protests, which have been held regularly following the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman whose death in hijab police custody ignited the uprising. 

The group warned “the mercenaries of the dictator to stop violence and bloodshed before our patience runs out."

Antigovernment protests in Iran often had no known leaders in the past five years, with all independent groups and political parties banned and disbanded long ago.

The demonstrations in Tehran and several other cities on Saturday were noisy and large, in parallel with protests in many universities.

Several trailers used as police station have been removed from the streets of Tehran Sunday morning after protesters torched a trailer in downtown Tehran during Saturday protests.

Despite curfew-style restrictions on mobile internet service that 90 percent of the population depend on to access social media and the global web, there was sufficient footage of protests that began in universities and secondary schools Saturday morning and spread to streets in the afternoon, lasting well until the early hours of Sunday.

“Hey you, this is not a protest, It’s a revolution,” young protesters are seen chanting to the police in Shahr-e Qods in one of the videos posted on Twitter. The youth also chanted “Down with the Dictator” while older protesters honked their car horns in approval.

Shahr-e Qods is an industrial and agricultural town of around 300,000 about 30km from the capital Tehran. Residents of the town are mainly migrant workers.

In the November 2019 unrest, the area was a bastion of protests. Many government offices, banks, and supermarkets were torched, and many were shot dead by security forces. There were allegations at the time that government agents were responsible for much of the destruction which gave security forces an excuse to suppress the protests with military ammunition.

This is the first time in recent years residents of working-class areas like Shahre-e Qods and Nazi Abad in the south of Tehran, have taken to the streets demanding freedom and revolution. Sources inside Iran say so many protesters had turned out that the riot police had to avoid confrontation with them.

There have been a lot of unbelievable footage of brutality against protesters by police and security forces including the ever-present plainclothesmen. A video taken Saturday in Mashhad, Iran's second most-populous city, shows several riot police beating up a protester, a “child” according to the narrator.

But there is also a video from Nazi Abad protests in southern Tehran that includes an extremely rare scene of a few riot policemen walking alongside protesters, instead of attacking to disperse them, and apparently guiding them to the middle of the street to keep them away from the sidewalks and shops.

Protesters in the same video are chanting “Mortars, Tanks, Fireworks: Khamenei is a [profanity]”.

Profanities against the Supreme Leader which were only chanted in the worst protest-riot situations in the past are quickly becoming mainstream. Protesters are continuously coming up with new and ingeniously rhyming slogans with even stronger profanities, and this time the angry slogans have spread everywhere, even to universities and schools.

Students at Sharif University of Technology, one of the country’s most prestigious, chanted a slogan of this type against Khamenei on October 3 that quickly became popular among all protesters. “You are ‘dirt and rubble’: You deserve this [profane word],” students at another prestigious university in Isfahan chanted a few days ago while all raising their middle fingers.

This degree of profanity is unprecedented in Iran where four-letter words are normally avoided in most social and even private contexts, particularly in the presence of women and children.

“In our society sexually charged swearwords are only uttered when conflicts are at their highest and most serious levels … One should ask the authorities to explain what they have done to make the other side [people] so angry and uninhibited,” Asr-e Iran, a moderate conservative website said Sunday in a commentary entitled “Why Sexually Explicit Slogans Are Chanted On Streets, Universities, And Schools.”

The economists warned the government to either listen to the protesters and pave the way for a peaceful transition from the current dangerous juncture, or wait for the people's anger to turn into hatred and violence as the driving force of social developments in Iran.

Massoud Nili, of Sharif University of Technology, Mohammad Tabibian the founder of Planning and Management Research Center, Mousa Ghaninejad of the Donya-ye Eqtesad Research Center, Mohammad Mehdi Behkish from Allameh Tabatabai University, and Hassan Dargahi, from Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran explained in a statement released in Tehran on October 7, "Why the Iranian society has been turned into an explosive store where recent sparkles can rapidly lead to an extensive blaze."

The economists observed that generational changes in the Iranian society have increased the number of young and educated Iranians, while the rise in the number of educated women has empowered the Iranian society in a way that it is not comparable to the years before the 1979 revolution.

"The Iranian society now is more urban, more educated and a main part of it is within an age range that increases the country's social energy. Meanwhile, the society's access to information [Internet] is a key factor that leads to to social developments. Individual Iranians can have access to any information they might need and at the same time, their academic level has increased their awareness in an amazing way," the statement maintained.

Based on this assessment, the economists addressed the government and said: "Running such a society requires respect for a set of rules including "taking care" of the society and "respecting its demands and tendencies." These rules, said the statement, are even more significant when we are talking about women.

"Meanwhile, with the rise in the educational and academic level, urbanization and access to information especially for women, there will be rising demands for more welfare, political participation, financial and political transparency and in a nutshell, for better governance. Nonetheless, during the past decade, particularly since 2017, what we have seen in the areas of welfare, political participation and financial and political transparency is that the government has moved in the wrong direction and against the demands of the people," the economists added.

They also highlighted the fact that the past four years have been the worst in economic terms, as low-income Iranians have been pushed more rapidly below the poverty line, while the government has used violence against protesters. "Mismanagement by the government has shifted the protests from anger to hatred," the economists said and warned that in this way, "even if decision-makers manage to suppress popular anger, this does not mean an end to protests. On the contrary, this will lead to a permanent tension between the society and the government in Iran."

The economists further warned that Iran is no longer capable to handle any new complications. They suggested that the only way out for the government is to accept cultural and social differences and diversity and seek to tackle the country's massive economic problems and foreign policy challenges. They also suggested that government should encourage and tolerate criticism in a bid to reduce tensions.

Pahlavi said on Saturday that "The Islamic Republic has been overthrown in your minds and hearts, and will soon be overthrown in Iran's streets as well."

“The secret of victory is unity, solidarity and continuity. Complete the street protests with widespread strikes,” he said. 

Earlier in the week, the son of the late Shah of Iran said, “Multiple reports indicate the spread of strikes from cultural and educational sectors to the service and industry sectors,” calling it “a step in the right direction.”

In an interview with Jerusalem Post October 3, he described the current uprising in the country as the beginning of a revolution, saying, “We are indeed in more than tumultuous times in my country. We are in revolutionary times.”

“The popular uprisings we are seeing in hundreds of cities and towns across Iran have a very clear goal: the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the establishment of a secular democracy based on human rights,” he said.

As protests in Iran – sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody -- continue into their fourth week, pundits and politicians speculate that Iranians are more angry than scared, more hopeful than frustrated.