Iranian Regime Cracks Down As Protesters Wreak Havoc Across The Country

We can still raise the alarm:

 

Consequences.
EU Considers Designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as Terrorists. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Sunday that Germany and the EU are considering designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group. Her comments came after the head of the Guards signaled an escalation to the crackdown on anti-government protests in Iran. Iran’s foreign ministry said the German plan amounts to “intervention” in Iran’s “internal affairs” and that any moves against the Guards would be “totally illegal.” Baerbock also said there are currently no negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Reuters

 

They always were...lol. This isn't the first time Iran has cracked it's authoritarian whip on it's populace.

 

This could lead to a harder crackdown if the killer was a protesters:

 

It turns out there have been some instances of police joining the protests:

 

Do the mullahs have it coming:

 

Like unto players kneeling at NFL games:

 

I would doubt that the protestors, typically, have guns (& the Shi'ite cleric was found shot). I smell an attempt by the regime to try to play the different societal groups, which have cooperated in a notably harmonious fashion, for these protests, against one another. It's the oldest trick in the book.

 

After being remiss in following up, after the first article I'd posted, I'm going to resume here, though I'm still using my original batch of articles, that are now a little less current.

Article #2, is from the Washington Post. It's s
good, brief summary, touching on various elements of the historic background (article titled, "The history of womens' protests in Iran").

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/03/iran-protests-hijab-women-mahsa-amini/

<Snip>
While these protests started over women’s freedom of dress, Iranians have joined across lines of age, gender, ethnicity and class. Collectively, they’re expressing their anger and loss of patience with the theocratic state. As in the past, Iran’s security forces have cracked down hard...

Iranian women’s rights movements have long demanded equal access to the public sphere — the street, parks, city councils, the parliament and more.

In fact, just weeks after Iran established its theocratic regime, on March 8, 1979, women took to the streets of Tehran to protest after rumors spread that the government would enforce mandatory veiling. As a result, the regime could only insist on hijab in steps, and couldn’t fully enforce mandatory compliance until 1981...

Outside formal state institutions, women have for decades been relentlessly agitating for gender equality and greater access to the public sphere. Initially, women’s rights activists and self-identified feminists were the ones who demanded reform of discriminatory rulings, including on forced hijab.

But particularly within the past decade, young women who lack formal ties to feminist movements have joined into such activism, feeling powerful enough to non-violently protest such gendered restrictions. For instance, the Girls of Revolution Street protests began in 2017 when Vida Movahed, a 31-year-old mother, removed her headscarf and waved it in the air on top of a platform on Revolution Street in central Tehran. Many other women followed suit despite the threat of arrest and harassment, removing their headscarves in nonviolent protest. Their images and videos spread quickly through social media. Many men showed their support by posting either selfies showing them donning the hijab themselves, or by appearing in social media expressing their support for their unveiled family members...

Many women activists whom I interviewed welcomed the nationwide discussions that followed Iranian women and girls’ peaceful protests against mandatory veiling. They also supported the responses of some bold women parliamentarians, themselves products of the Islamic regime, who expressed, often in coded terms, the need to respect women’s dignity and basic rights.

Those debates worried many ultraconservative elites. While preparing for the 2020 parliamentary elections, these conservatives either banned these outspoken women from running or opened judicial cases against them to discourage them to stand for elections.

Given that crackdown, many women activists pushed to boycott the 2020 parliamentary elections, alongside other opposition activists dismayed by the mostly conservative candidate slates. As a result, only 42 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in that election, the lowest turnout since the 1979 revolution. Nearly all incumbent women MPs were replaced with conservative women who have poor records on women’s rights. The regime doubled down on that approach in the 2021 presidential election, which the state-favored hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi won. Since then, the morality police and other security forces have once again been enabled to crack down on Iranians’ civil rights with impunity.
<End>

That is some interesting background, especially as it seems to contradict another of my yet to be shared articles, which claims that the hijab was something which Iranian women wanted to start wearing, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, as a sign of liberation from Western influence, or something like that, in the same way that their not wearing the hijab, is now seen as a statement of personal freedom, & opposition to that Islamic religious rule. We'll have to keep that in mind, when I get to that other article. It is possible, that the two authors are merely referring to different segments of the female population.

One final quote:
<Snip>
Iranians have lost patience with the regime. That’s in part because of the conservative takeover and in part because the sanctions are pressuring them economically and socially. They’ve repeatedly protested those economic pressures over the past few years.

But this protest is different. Women are leading this time, for the first time in years. Mahsa’s killing has brought many into the streets to utter their grievances. Various identity groups are joining as they haven’t before: ethnic minorities, youth, women, the unemployed, workers’ unions and more. The women’s demands are becoming part of wholesale challenges to the Islamic Republic itself, making mandatory hijab a symbol of the repressive regime more broadly.

These protests may not force major concessions; escalating government violence and repression may shut them down or force them to change form. But they reveal that Iranian women’s continuing protests are closely tied up with broader movements for democracy and rule of law.

 

Most typical protestors chanting "Zan, Zendegi, Azadi" (Women, Life, Liberty) do not have guns. They are the ones who give the protests the support that makes it hard for the regime to suppress.

The folks operating under the cover of these protestors are well connected to terrorist groups based outside of Iran, who are in turn working closely with foreign governments and special interest groups. The have access to arms, both for agents who carry out targeted acts of terrorism in the center as well as for the different ethnic militia groups that are being fed and supplied through cross-border operations. Their agenda is no secret either:
https://www.memri.org/reports/islam...e-only-if-its-ethnic-minorities-are-supported

 

How does that explain the killing of a lone, Shi'ite (majority) cleric, in a Sunni (minority) dominated area?

 

You are not properly exposed to the facts. There have been numerous terrorist acts against all sorts of government and non-governmental figures and institutions in these areas, attempting to both undermine the authority of the government in these areas and creating the circumstances for creating ethnic and religious tension in these regions. All while the border regions are being used to try to smuggle arms to cells created in these regions to fuel things in their desired direction.

 

Thanks for the article; it seems very informative though, much of it, I have only skimmed, thus far. However, part that did catch my attention, was this:

<Snip>
Since the mid-2000s, following a series of violent clashes between the regime and the ethnic groups, Iran's military and political elites have identified a "hybrid war" scenario that would threaten the regime's survival in the future, in which widespread national protests may coincide with an external military attack.[10] In order to tackle this, since the early 2010s, Iran has been changing its defensive/deterrent doctrine, adding an offensive dimension by adopting "hybrid warfare." Dubbed "forward defense" doctrine, it implies that Iran should fight its opponents outside its borders to prevent conflict inside Iran.[11]
<End>

This says that Iran has made pre-emptive strikes, a central part of its overall "defense" policy. Pre-emptive, or "forward defense," is just the idea of attacking one's perceived enemies, before they attack you. But it presupposed the idea, that these "opponents" do intend to attack your country. That is to say, it is a policy which compels Iran to start s**t, where there's no stuff, yet, going on, to threaten it. It justifies unprovoked attacks, based on nothing but paranoid suspicions. I note that there are no examples (that I saw) to substantiate this fear; it is described, as you see, above, as only a scenario, a feared possibility. This sounds very much like Putin's justifications (or one of them, anyway) for invading Ukraine. And it is a policy, which makes it impossible for that nation to live at peace, and in conformance with international law, if its national defense policy is predicated upon the idea that powerful nations are all plotting against it, so that it must confront them, "outside its borders." Though I doubt it was your intent, this article considerably darkens my view of Iran.

Continuing, with the <Snip>

In July 2022, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri warned against a tough and complicated "hybrid warfare" that the enemies have waged against the Islamic Republic.* Therefore, he stressed "the necessity for constant improvement of Iran's deterrent power," in order to encounter external "military threats" and internal "security threats" at the same time.[12]

In fact, Iran's military doctrine of "forward defense" – engaging enemies outside of Iran – demonstrates its vulnerability at home for Iran worries about losing its strategic "hybrid warfare," when engaged internally if an anti-regime revolution breaks out across the country. The Iranian society and ethnic conglomerate are very fragile and prone to collapse under a more or less foreign interference combined with internal unrest.
<End>

* No evidence, or even examples given, of the alleged "hybrid warfare" that Iran's enemies have waged against it.

My initial sense, is that Iran has some difficulties, and so worries, about keeping all its ethnic groups, united for Iran. Part of this difficulty would seem to be due to bias against those minority groups, by the Persian majority. I base that statement on having read that there is compulsory service for all Iranian men, & the ethnic minorities make up about half of the troops, yet 80% of the officers are Persian.

<Snip>
Since Iran is an authoritarian regime and pursues a military expansionist policy abroad, Tehran desperately needs the human capital of the ethnic minorities that constitute half of its population. Iran's large population has given it the largest pool of military age manpower of any state in the Persian Gulf, but the ethnic divisions within this population present a number of serious political, security, and economic challenges.

The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran requires all men over 18 must to serve in the Armed Forces of Iran. At least half of Iran's regular armed forces are thus composed of troops conscripted from ethnic minorities. However, Persians comprise almost 80% of the senior officers due to the army's distrust of ethnic minorities.[13]
<End>

IOW, it sounds as if the government's regarding of minorities with suspicion, & not allowing them equal inclusion in society, is part of what will turn their fears, into self-fulfilling prophecies.

In short, having such a "fragile" society, prone to "internal unrest," seems the central problem, but no valid excuse for Iran's militaristic "defense," through attacks on other nations, outside its own borders; essentially making Iran's internal instability, the rest of the world's problem (or at least, for any that Iran deems to be opposing it).

Indeed, from this article, Iran has opted for the authoritarian model of controlling its population through force, as opposed to trying to make its society more inclusive, & to build bridges of understanding & tolerance, between different groups. I imagine that being a theocratic state, only makes that more challenging, and less realistic. But in the modern world, in which a nation's attacking of its own citizens is becoming ever more intolerable, Iran does seem to have put itself in an untenable position. It is probably a bit late, at this point, for it to introduce minority-friendly policies. Yet the state government seems unwilling to give up full control over all of its land and people. Not a situation that seems likely to end well.

 

Many people appear to think so:

 

I LOVE THE ARAB MAPS

Who is Bernard Lewis and how does he think Israel will additionally take over Lebanon - 'cause obviously the Palestinians are not enough for us we need some more Muslim mobs.....
Y'know...its commonly called "projection", when a country has "revolutionary" plans to other countries to blame others for their own way of thinking, look, we wouldn't take any more Arabs if you pay us, one has to be especially detached of the last 30 years to think otherwise.

 

Bernard Lewis was an eminent historian of Islam. I very much doubt that the map in the post you quoted was drawn, or even imagined, by Lewis. That map, together with another version attributed to the same Bernard Lewis, are all the rage on antisemitic conspiracy theories sites. Couldn't find them anywhere else.

Bernard Lewis was Jewish. I'm quite sure I don't need to spell out the real meaning of the text on the map.

 

This map is clearly nothing serious-- who is going to make Turkey give up a substantial part of its territory, and for the Kurds, no less?

 

This sounds like do or die:

 

I had enjoyed reading some of Bernard Lewis' works in the past, so I won't rip on a now deceased scholar turned neocon guru too much -- except to say he appeared to have become decidedly delusional in his old age. Increasingly, pushing for things refuted by his own writings on Iran. Going from noting that Iran is an exceptional country because its borders were natural and authentic, to being seen siding with those banking on causing an implosion in Iran to disintegrate the country into smaller pieces. Writing about the cultural influence of what he had dubbed "Iranian Islam" in one lecture, extending far beyond Iran's border and into the Sunni empires that were its geopolitical rivals reaching the "gates of Vienna", to then pushing for a Sunni-Shia schism in the Islamic world.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/do-not-weep-bernard-lewis-high-priest-war-middle-east
Do not weep for Bernard Lewis, high priest of war in the Middle East

Anyway, on more current affairs:

https://www.barrons.com/news/iran-l...ds-in-iraq-01668415507?refsec=topics_afp-news
Iran Launches Deadly Missile, Drone Strikes On Exiled Kurds In Iraq
By AFP - Agence France Presse
November 14, 2022

 

OK this is really taking things too far.

Iran Votes to Execute Protesters, Says Rebels Need 'Hard Lesson'

After numerous calls for harsh punishments in recent days, the Iranian parliament on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of the death penalty for protesters.

 

Around 1,000 have been indicted on an assortment of charges, with the vast majority of even those indicted not subject to capital punishment even if convicted of the crimes they have been charged with.

And the Iranian parliament neither gets a vote on the subject nor ever voted on such a thing.

https://www.verifythis.com/article/...heck/536-9b21be3b-62aa-4793-91c7-799872cbdef7

The reporting on Iran is a joke...

 

Around 20 of the "protesters" who have been charged, could face capital punishment based on the charges against them. To give some context, here are 11 among those facing possible capital punishment.
https://www.barrons.com/news/iran-charges-11-over-killing-of-basij-paramilitary-member-01668246007
Iran Charges 11 Over Killing Of Basij Paramilitary Member

 

Well thanks for the fact check. I get that our news coverage is crappy (see Ukraine threads) but I admit I am just as susceptible to the Gell-Mann effect as anyone else.

 

I'd never heard of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect:

 

Could the protests spread to Pakistan: