A fresh wave of anti-government protests has erupted throughout Iran over the weekend in a development that has stunned international observers and reinvigorated domestic opponents to the Islamic Republic. As the ruling regime in Tehran sought to reassert its credibility in the wake of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, people in cities across the country took the streets to express their anger at the government, which has now admitted that it was responsible for the deaths of the 176 civilian passengers aboard Ukrainian Airlines flight PS752, most of whom were Iranians and Iranian-Canadians.
The apparent change in the political atmosphere of the country over the last few days has been extraordinary. Only a week after the funeral of Soleimani, which saw the streets of the capital filled with those rallying round the regime, the cries of impassioned crowds from Tehran to Isfahan can now be heard chanting “Down with the dictator!”. This is not how things were supposed to play out.
The protests began after the Iranian government acknowledged that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had “unintentionally” shot down the Ukrainian airlines passenger plane on the night of Tuesday 7 January. Several missiles fired by the IRGC, who were conducting a strike against US military bases in Iraq, struck the plane as it was departing Tehran for Kyiv.
This recent wave of protest follows in the wake of previous expressions of popular frustration that broke out in November-December 2019. These began as an expression of discontent against a surprise rise in gasoline prices, but quickly turned into one of the greatest threats to the regime since it was created in the revolutionary year of 1979.
The current demonstrations appear to have first gathered momentum in the universities of the capital, before spreading outwards to other parts of the country. On Saturday evening, videos emerged of a large crowd gathered in Tehran Polytechnic University shouting “Death to the Islamic Republic, Down with Khamenei!”.
This was swiftly followed by scenes from Amir Kabir University in Tehran, where students could be seen calling for the resignation of Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani, declaring “Resignation is not enough. Prosecution is necessary” and “I will kill those who killed my brother”. This last chant was a reference to the role the regime played in downing flight PS752.
Similar episodes were also underway across the city. In Iran’s national university, Shahid Beheshti, the IRGC were loudly compared to ISIS; and perhaps the most symbolic display of civil disobedience was also witnessed here, where students refused to walk and trample upon the US and Israeli flags painted onto the walkway into the university square.
From Tehran, protests and fury spread to other cities in the country. In Isfahan on Saturday evening, a crowd gathered and loudly proclaimed “America is not our enemy – our enemy is here in Iran”.
One significant development in the street protests is the extent to which women have come to take a place at the forefront of challenging the regime. Footage from Azadi square in Sanandaj shows young women venting their frustration with a regime that has persistently curbed womens' freedoms.
Another theme of the unrest has been the targeting of posters of Qasem Soleimani, the Quds Force commander and architect of Iran’s network of foreign proxies. Yesterday evening protestors burned a billboard with an image of Soleimani, and countless videos have shown Iranians tearing down memorial images posted in Tehran by the government’s supporters. In one, a man proclaims “Death to the terrorist” before tearing a Soleimani poster down.
The US President, Donald Trump, has tweeted his support. In a tweet drafted for him in the Farsi language as well as in English, the President addressed “the leaders of Iran”, urging them “DO NOT KILL YOUR PROTESTORS”, to “Turn your internet back on”, and “Stop the killing of your great Iranian people.”
The regime’s response has been to clampdown with armed force against the protestors. Security forces have shot tear gas canisters at the crowds and beaten those who resist, such as the students at Amir Kabir University. In some cases, live ammunition has been fired upon crowds and harrowing scenes of blood-strewn streets and people fleeing for their lives have emerged. This is a government that has few qualms about enacting violence upon its own people.
These measures follow hard upon the heels of the methods that were used to break the December demonstrations when, according to a Reuters special report, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei personally ordered the regime’s security forces to do whatever it took to stem the tide of revolt. A total of 1,500 are believed to have been killed in the resulting crackdown.
There has also been a backlash from regime supporters directed at the British embassy in Tehran. When the protests broke out on Saturday, the British ambassador to Tehran – Rob Macaire – was arrested, after he was accused of taking part in the protests. He has since been released, and has refuted the allegations. No sooner was he released than an orchestrated blockade by the Basij militia, who are backed by the IRGC, surrounded the British embassy and burned the British flag.
Amid the violence and repression, many of the protestors have begun to call for radical regime change. At around 7:30pm on 12 January, floods of Iranians could be seen marching through Tehran demanding that the “Mullahs must get lost”. The students of Beheshti University yesterday explained that “We neither want the Shah, nor the leader; neither bad nor worse!”. Another group of young men referred to the day’s events as “The second wave of the revolution has started.”
What do the protestors want? There is not yet a single, coherent or comprehensive answer to this question. But those in Tehran’s Azadi Square were powerfully unified by what they were against, as they cried: “We don’t want bombs and missiles, we don’t want officials who steal”.
Those creating these acts of defiance, unforeseen by the regime, are now beginning to call for radical change. The rules of the regime have been suspended, however temporarily, and a whole host of ideas are rushing to fill the void.
We will have to see how the protests unfold – it is unclear whether they will succeed in driving the regime towards change or whether, as with their predecessors, they will be crushed by the hard fist of state coercion. What is clear is that something truly significant has been taking place in Iran since 2018 – more and more there is a sense of a turning point, a change in the tides of history unfolding before the gaze of the world.
In the words of Charles Kurzman, an historian of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, it might once again be the case that Iran is reaching a point at which people begin to “think the unthinkable”. The future direction of the country is up in the air. For many currently in the streets of Tehran, there is a desperate hope for a future beyond the oppressive theocracy built by the architects of Iran’s Islamic revolution over forty years ago.