Today marks the 60th day of continued protests against the Iranian regime over the death of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the regime’s brutal moral police for not wearing her headdress properly.
The regime’s intense crackdown has killed at least 326 people, including 43 children, according to Norway-based group Iran Human Rights.
After two months of alleged UN bureaucratic inaction, the body’s Human Rights Council is now forced to respond to the bloodbath in Iran. The head of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, he wrote on Twitter: “For the first time in history, the UN Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session on Iran. We call for the creation of an International Commission of Inquiry, a formal call to expel the Islamic Republic from the highest body of Unite for Women’s Rights.”
Iran’s widespread security apparatus has arrested more than 14,000 people during the upheaval against the country’s ruling ayatollahs.
Mahsa Amini’s tomb in his hometown of Saqqez, Iran.
(Fox News digital)
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Demonstrations and work stoppages have been held in several Iranian cities in recent days to commemorate the “Bloody Friday” massacre of nearly 100 people in the southeastern city of Zahedan in response to Amini’s alleged murder and reported rape of a 15-year-old by a police officer.
Iran’s morality police arrested Amini on Sept. 13 for not wearing the hijab properly, a violation of the nation’s strict Islamic dress code that requires women to cover their hair. Amini died on 16 September.
Fox News Digital spoke to Iran experts to gauge the power of the protests that have blanketed the country since Amini’s death in Tehran.
Iranian dissidents have called the ongoing upheaval a national uprising that is nothing short of a revolutionary movement.
“Based on the regular feedback I receive from my compatriots in Iran, their protests do not stop anytime soon, they only intensify with each passing day and as the Iranian regime continues to ramp up the beatings, arrests and killings of these protesters” , noted Iranian expert Karmel Melamed. “Politicians in America and Europe don’t seem to realize that these protesters are largely teenagers and young people under 25 who have had enough of being ruled by this oppressive regime of the mullahs and show us every day on the streets of cities in all of Iran that nothing will stop them from their quest for true freedom”.
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Iranians protest the death of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the country’s morality police, in Tehran on September 20, 2022.
(AP Photo/Middle East Images, File)
The Washington DC-based Institute for the Study of War said about 30 protests were held in 15 cities across 11 Iranian provinces in early November.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Iran Human Rights, said in a statement: “Iranians continue to take to the streets and are more determined than ever to bring about fundamental changes. The Islamic Republic’s response is more violence. The international community must support the Iranian people’s right to self-determination and to prevent further loss of life by the Islamic Republic”.
The pressing open question is: Do Iranians have the resistance strength and sheer numbers on the streets to oust the regime? Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, speculated that the number of participation of the “3.5% rule” for a protest movement to be able to overthrow a regime. Iran has a population of approximately 85 million, which means that nearly 3 million people would need to actively participate nonviolently in the mass movement.
It is unclear how Chenoweth’s theory would hold up against a violently totalitarian government like Iran’s. In 2019, Iranian rulers massacred at least 1,500 protesters during nationwide peaceful demonstrations against the regime.
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Iranians protest the death of Mahsa Amini after she was arrested by the Morale Police, in Tehran on October 27, 2022.
(AP Images/Middle East, files)
The word “determination” has unified many Iranian analysts’ thoughts on the eight-week protest movement.
Alireza Nader, an expert on Iran, said: “The determination of Iranian revolutionaries is impressive. They have refused to leave the streets after being shot, arrested and tortured. In fact, more and more Iranians seem determined to overthrow the regime.”
Nader chastised the White House for staying largely on the sidelines and providing mere verbal support. “Yet the Biden administration has offered very little assistance beyond rhetoric,” Nader said, adding a reference to Biden’s special envoy for Iran, “US policy will not change as long as Robert Malley remains at the head of the Washington’s Iranian Policy”.
President Biden has apparently taken a more confrontational stance against the regime by recently declaring, “We will liberate Iran.”
However, John Kirby, strategic communications coordinator for Biden’s National Security Council, quickly backtracked the president’s statement, noting that Biden was “expressing, once again, our sympathy” with protesters in Iran.
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Lawdan Bazargan, who was imprisoned by the Iranian regime in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison in the 1980s for her anti-state political activities, said, “This uprising of the Iranian people is a complete revolution targeting the pillars of the Islamic regime, in the name of social justice, the desire to create a new political institution. The slogan “Woman, life, freedom” and the song “Barave” contain all their claims. The slogan and the song deal with topics such as freedom, gender equality, human rights, freedom of religion, justice, LGBTQ rights, refugee rights and animal rights”.
Hamid Charkhkar, an Iranian American academic, said the regime was “desperate” and “running in fear”. He cited a personal example. Iranian intelligence “actually questioned my brother about me and told him to ask me not to participate in the protests in the United States and warned him that I would be questioned if I decide to return to Iran.”
Charkhkar added, “After almost 60 days, we see that people continue to take to the streets on a daily basis and are determined to continue their fight against the regime. The youth in Iran are fed up and until they see systemic change, they won’t As the regime ramps up its repression and does everything in its power to suppress protesters, Iranian youth are finding new ways to express their opposition to those in power.”
A police motorcycle burns during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini in Tehran, Iran September 19, 2022.
(West Asian News Agency via Reuters//File Photo)
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He noted, “The latest example is taking off the mullahs’ turbans on the streets. For a long time, the government has been trying to create this image that Shia priests, also known as mullahs, are God’s representatives on Earth and are saints. Now we see people making fun of them and breaking down their authority with such a simple act.”
According to Charkhkar, “The scale of this uprising and its continuation is by far the largest of any protests we have seen since the 1979 Islamic revolution.”
Another Iranian American activist, Marjan Keypour Greenblatt, said, “The revolutionary uprising against the Iranian regime is evolving and entering a more serious phase. The Iranian people and their rulers are fighting for opposite goals: the people want freedom and the regime insists on suppressing them, leaving no room for reconciliation and no possibility of retreat. This is a cause they are willing to kill or die for.”
