The regime of the religious and revolutionary leader is threatening to drown the protests in blood.
(Photo: IMAGO/APAimages)
The war in the Ukraine, growing tensions with China, and now there’s a major conflict that’s looming up again in Iran: For more than two weeks, the protests after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini have not stopped.
It is being demonstrated in more and more cities across the country. The religious and revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has now threatened a brutal crackdown on the protests. The USA is already preparing further sanctions for this case.
The Tehran regime is playing with full commitment: It is threatening to drown the protests in blood – as it did during the “Green Revolution” in 2009, when hundreds of Iranians were killed or shot dead in the streets after weeks of demonstrations against massive election fraud.
Khamenei has already proven that he does not shy away from brute force to protect the theocracy, i.e. the rule of Islamic scholars.
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But the 83-year-old is now beginning a gamble, because it is extremely dangerous for him: It is now mostly women who are taking to the streets, and they are in the front line, even against militias who are swinging clubs. The women are demanding consequences from the assassination of Amini, a Kurdish woman, ie a member of a Sunni minority in Shia-dominated Persia; Sunnis have little chance in the state apparatus and especially not in the security forces.
Storm of protest against the foundations of the theocratic regime
And the protesters are shaking the foundations of the Islamic Republic. They demand an end to the obligation to wear a hijab, a headscarf. Amini died in a Tehran intensive care unit on September 16, after being jailed three days earlier for “inappropriate dress” — an improperly fitting headscarf. The official cause of death is a heart attack.
(Photo: Burkhard Mohr)
The family and their supporters vehemently deny this: Amini was in excellent health and eyewitnesses reported that she was beaten by security forces. An x-ray revealed a head fracture.
However, compulsory hijab, combined with the oppression of women, is a basis of the theocratic regime. The leadership is therefore not willing to compromise.
Should the regime drown the protests in blood, however, any solution to the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program would be out of reach. Further sanctions would be imposed that would bring the country, which had been suffering from a devastating crisis for years, to the brink of economic collapse.
>> Read here: Violence in Iran – Biden announces further sanctions
Even China and Russia, who don’t care about bloodshed – see the Tian’anmen massacre and the Ukraine war – would have to turn away from Tehran because of the breach of the nuclear agreement. The oil exports that have so far been going to China would come to a standstill and trade with Russia would collapse.
So far, the three dictatorships have been coupled together. But Beijing and Moscow also do not want an Islamic nuclear power, not least because of the large number of Muslims in their countries. But Khamenei relies solely on violence.
And in doing so, he risks sweeping away the system that he actually wants to defend. Because in the event of an economic collapse, such large crowds of people would clamor for “regime change” that the repressive apparatus would no longer be able to master it.
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