‘They’re fed up’: Iran protesters see no future if status quo persists
In Iran protests, analysts see a struggle between Iranian leaders who want the status quo and young people who demand change.
Though the protests now entering their fourth week in Iran may not be the largest in turnout that Iran has seen in recent years, some analysts see them as significant in making plain that many Iranian young people do not see a future for themselves in the Islamic Republic if the status quo persists.
“The reason I think young people, especially young girls in high school, are so much involved in the protests now…is they are telling their parents, ‘You have failed to ensure a better future for us. We have reached a point where we have to put our well-being on the line,’” said Hadi Ghaemi, with the Center for Human Rights in Iran, in an interview.
“Young people will not have a future if the Islamic Republic continues on its current course, if the status quote persists,” Ghaemi said.
“I think we are seeing basically the beginning of a nation-wide movement to dislodge the Islamic republic,” Ghaemi said. “It will not be easy…when the regime has so much coercive power. It is an unprecedented situation. I cannot compare it to any other time.”
Ghaemi’s group, the Center for Human Rights in Iran, assessed this week that, according to Iran state figures, at least 1,200 people have been arrested in the three weeks since protests erupted following the death of Mahsa Amini, arrested by Iran’s so-called morality police, allegedly for improper hijab. CHRI also expressed alarm about growing instances of almost 100 members of Iranian civil society being arrested not at protests at all, but at their homes or workplaces.
‘They’re fed up’
CIA Director Bill Burns, who previously as then Deputy Secretary of State led the ‘back channel’ to Iran in 2012-2013 that helped make way for the interim Iran nuclear deal, said Iranian protesters, many young women, are “fed up.”
“I don't think they're isolated protests,” Burns told CBS’s Norah O’Donnell in an interview on Sept. 27 at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. “And, you know, what's striking, at least to me and to our analysts here, is the sweep of those protests right now. And these incredibly brave people, and many incredibly brave young women.
“They're fed up, in a lot of ways,” Burns continued. “And they're willing to take the risk of getting out and demonstrating, because they're fed up with economic decay, with corruption, with the social restrictions especially that Iranian women face, and with political oppression as well.”
Burns suggested the Iranian regime, well-practiced at repression, might be able to put a lid on the current protests now, but that would not solve its internal crisis.
“This is an autocratic system, the Iranian regime, which is very good at repressing people,” he said. “And, you know, they're quite ruthless now and putting down those kind of protests as well. But they don't have answers for what's on the minds especially of a younger generation of Iranians.”
Protesters see no future
While the turnout “numbers don’t necessarily show themselves to be a huge challenge, it is the context that matters,” a Europe-based Iran sanctions expert, speaking not for attribution because of sensitivities for his work, said Oct. 5. “These are very anti-systemic protests.”
“In these protests, I think the economic undertones are there, but there is a layer of middle class and young people who see no economic future, no social future, no political future,” the analyst said. “They have no political choice, no social outlets to let loose, no sense of economic prosperity over the horizon.”
“The gender/hijab issue in Iran is not like a regular issue,” the analyst said. “It is a massive political issue and foundation stone for the Islamic Republic. The protests make it a national security issue; it securitizes a particularly sensitive issue.”
For the system to back off this issue, “it would have to prepare the political ground so as not to be made to look weak, so its core constituency accepts it,” the analyst said, “But they have not done that.”
IRI authorities have ‘closed eyes’ to warnings on generation gap
“Despite years of warnings about the growing threat to the regime posed by the country’s widening ‘generation gap,’ until now the Iranian authorities mostly chose to close their eyes to this issue,” Iranian journalist and analyst Maysam Bizaer wrote in a paper for the Middle East Institute on Oct. 5. “Crucially, the government has refrained from making systematic changes or passing any liberalizing reforms to meet rising Zoomers’ evolving needs.”
“Instead, the Islamic Republic has relied on its existing playbook of denying Iranians the right to think and act differently while seeking to further marginalize the liberal segments of society,” Bizaer wrote. “The country’s policies and resources are being directed at imposing further restrictions on those who reject the founding values of theocratic Iran.”
Sick: Is this the big one?
Former NSC Iran analyst Gary Sick said Iran’s aging Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his “sclerotic, theocratic” entourage have spent years working to protect the regime from internal threats and steadily sidelining those pushing to try to reform the system from within.
“The old men who made the revolution of 1979 learned their lessons well,” Sick wrote in an analysis, entitled ‘Is this the big one’, this week. “Today, the aging revolutionaries around Khamenei spend a great deal of time and effort watching for any signs of political opposition and intervening proactively to nip it in the bud. They arrest anyone showing any signs of leadership, interrogate and hold them for prolonged periods and then frequently release them with the understanding that they will utter not a word about politics or else pay a much higher price. The most dangerous are confined to permanent house arrest. It works.”
“Does this mean that a revolt is impossible? Absolutely not,” Sick wrote.
He recommended the United States continue to loosen sanctions on technical services and equipment that the Iranian people can use to communicate, share information, organize and counter regime surveillance. And he cautioned that Washington should be humble about its expectations and should give the Iranian people the space and the lead to find a way forward themselves. “At a minimum, we should exercise utmost care that our policies toward Iran provide the necessary breathing space for a movement that Iranians themselves must create under the most difficult circumstances possible.”
US says it can do both—support protesters, pursue nuclear deal + prisoner release
On Thursday, the United States announced sanctions on seven senior Iranian security officials, including the Minister of Interior Ahmad Vahidi, and Minister of Communications Eisa Zarepour, it charged with being involved in commanding Iran’s crackdown on protests and suppression of Iranians’ access to the Internet. Also designated were Hossein Sajedinia, the Deputy Operations Commander of the Law Enforcement Forces; Yadollah Javani, IRGC Deputy Political Commander; Vahid Mohammad Naser Majid, the head of the Iranian Cyber Police; and Hossein Nejat, an IRGC commander and close associate of Iran’s Supreme Leader, who heads “Sarallah, the IRGC security apparatus based in Tehran that is tasked with quelling anti-government protests,” the Treasury Department said in a press release on the action.
“The United States stands with Iranian women and all the citizens of Iran who are inspiring the world with their bravery,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement Oct. 3.
On currently stalemated Iran nuclear talks, the National Security Council said the US remains open to diplomacy, but is currently focused on what is happening inside Iran.
“The door for diplomacy will always remain open, but our focus right now is on what is happening inside Iran,” a National Security Council official told me Oct. 5.
The U.S. on Wednesday welcomed the safe release of Iranian-American Baquer Namazi, 85, a former UNICEF official, on a flight out of Iran to the UAE, where he is to undergo surgery; as well as the release of his son, Siamak Namazi, on furlough, which can be renewed every week. A source said an interlocutor who accompanied the elder Namazi on the flight from Iran to Oman is expected to return to Iran next week to continue efforts for the release of other detained American citizens in Iran, Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz, and Siamak Namazi.
“I told Baquer how wonderful a family he had, and that we would continue to work until all U.S. citizens wrongfully detained in Iran are free,” U.S. Iran envoy Rob Malley said in a tweet Wednesday upon Baquer’s safe arrival in UAE.
American officials have repeatedly insisted there were no funds released to enable the release. “Reports from Iranian sources of a transfer of funds related to the release of Baquer Namazi and furlough of Siamak Namazi are categorically false,” NSC spokeswoman Adrienna Watson said.
(A source suggested the U.S. may have moved an Iranian prisoner from one prison in the U.S. to another to be closer to his family, but a U.S. official, asked about that, said she did not have information on that.)
“There are some moments that will last a lifetime,” Jared Genser, a pro-bono attorney for the Namazi family tweeted upon Baquer’s reunion with his son Babak in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday for the first time in six and a half years.
Meantime, an advisor who works on Iran issues in Europe said today that Europeans see little prospect of movement on the nuclear talks before US midterm elections on November 8, if then.
“The midterms in the US are the new horizon,” the advisor, speaking not for attribution, said today. “There may be a window of opportunity after that.”
In a phone call with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian “warned the European Union against any hasty political action over the latest riots in the country, saying that the Islamic Republic will reciprocate in case of such an action,” Iran’s Mehr state news agency reported.
Next round of protests could be around the corner
Any new round of Iran nuclear diplomacy is likely to take place with the added complication of an Iranian regime determined to project strength in the face of any lingering unrest at home.
A foreign-based Iranian media monitor said this round of protests may be suppressed, but he believes the next round is just around the corner.
“What is really special about these protests is that at their peak, they reached 93 cities, in 30 provinces out of 31,” the Iranian media monitor, who asked to speak not for attribution, said in a phone interview Oct. 6. “No protests before have reached that scale.”
He feels that the Iranian regime might consider but will end up deciding against offering a serious concession to the protesters, for instance, reforming the law requiring mandatory hijab for women.
“The thing is, for some people, we have reached a point where a concession isn’t enough,” he said. “They just want the establishment gone.”
Even if they subside in the coming days, “these protests will leave a mark,” he said. “This was unprecedented, in terms of scale, and in terms of the people leading it.”
And he notes that protests in Iran are becoming more frequent, occurring almost every year since December 2017, except during the height of the covid pandemic.
“These protests may not lead anywhere, but to me it shows the next one will be right around the corner,” he said.
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