Anti-Regime Protests, Strikes Enter Sixth Week In Iran

The Berlin rally was the biggest-ever gathering of Iranians outside Iran, which took place peacefully and successfully, drawing crowds from most European countries.

There is little doubt that for now the protest movement, that many call ‘the revolution,’ has brought about a strong unity on one major issue – people in Iran and in the diaspora do not want the clerical regime.

Gone is the idea of being patient and waiting for reforms in Iran.

Since 2017, the governing military-clerical elite has proven that it is increasingly tilting toward more despotism and radicalism in domestic and foreign policies. Even regime insiders who were a bit more moderate have been completely sidelined since February 2020, when an engineered election handed over the parliament to hardliner elements mostly connected with the Revolutionary Guard.

They were the ones who in December 2020 voted for high levels of uranium enrichment, bringing Iran very close to a nuclear threshold state. They also refused direct talks with the United States in the long and fruitless negotiations in Vienna since April 2021.

100%

The current mobilization and unity among diaspora Iranians in Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia and elsewhere, pose a challenge to Western governments who are suddenly faced with their own citizens of Iranian descent demanding stronger policies toward the Islamic Republic.

A case in point was a tweet by US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley on Sunday who praised Iranian marchers in Washington DC and Los Angeles, but then said that demonstrators are asking “their government to respect their dignity and human rights.”

More than 2,500 people responded to his tweet mostly challenging his formulation that Iranians simply want respect from their government. They said that Iranians reject the current regime, not that they are asking for a change of behavior by the authoritarian system. There were as many critical comments as ‘Likes’ that Malley’s tweet received. Some even asked for his resignation as a Biden official who in their perception is not sympathetic to what most Iranians want.

American Iranian activist and women’s rights advocate Masih Alinejad tweeted on Sunday, saying it is time for Malley to be replaced.

An Instagram post by Iran International on Sunday asking the public what they think about Malley’s tweet elicited almost 7,000 comments, almost all critical of the US envoy.

The criticism of Malley goes back to his role as an architect of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and the lead negotiator to restore that accord in the Biden Administration; a step that would provide tens of billions of dollars to the clerical regime, giving it the means to suppress protests and enrich its militant proxies in the region.

The activist segment of the Iranian American community has become self-assured and more determined to support the protesters inside the country. Wobbling by Democrats will cost them votes, as there is already a degree of skepticism about Jimmy Carter’s party seen as responsible for abandoning the Shah in 1978 and helping to bring the Islamic Republic to power.

European governments will also soon realize that there is a substantial Iranian voting bloc in Germany, Britain, Sweden and some other countries. Already, second and third generation Iranians are getting elected to public office in some European countries. Two young Iranian women became ministers in Sweden this month.

The rallies in support of protesters in Iran are giving the Iranian diaspora an organization and grassroots leaders who reject pro-regime lobbying groups they have come to discredit lately. Their role is most evident in Canada, where the government in October adopted sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard.

In an article on Sunday, Iran Daily, a government mouthpiece, dismissed the 100,000 number of protesters cited by independent media, claiming that the crowd was so small it could not even fill the main venue in Berlin.

This comes as videos of the gathering showed a countless number of people not only around the main square but also in the adjoining streets.

German police said over 80,000 took part in the anti-regime protest and many international TV channels called it the largest demonstration of Iranians in history.

The author of Iran daily’s piece also claimed that “terrorists and [non-Iranian] Europeans” had received money to participate in this gathering, without presenting any evidence.

According to the report, “the extensive planning and large expenses for setting up an anti-Iranian demonstration in Berlin turned into a complete failure.”

Some activists commented that since all pro-government rallies in Iran are organized by substantial expenditures to bus people in and give them food that Tehran officials assume a protest in the West also needs a lot of money.

Meanwhile, Nour News, which is close to the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council said if the claims by the Persian-speaking media based abroad are true, “they barely could comprise two to four percent of the Iranians living in Europe.”

Referring to it as a “fiasco”, it argued that “most of the rally participants were homosexuals, MEK members, separatists, monarchists and anarchists.”

“It is better for the West to focus on its own political, economic and security problems rather than creating sedition in other countries, so that their people do not suffer from inflation, food scarcity and gas shortage,” added Nour News.

This comes as experts have predicted a 50 percent inflation for Iran in 2023 and tens of millions have fallen into poverty.

While it is estimated that a family of three needs $600 a month to survive, the minimum wage stands at around $200 according to Labor representatives.

Based on a recent report by Salam-e- No website about 66 million of Iran’s 84-million population are living under the poverty line.

Terrified by the big turnout in Berlin, Javan daily, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, warned Germany of consequences for allowing people to hold a massive demonstration in Berlin against the Islamic Republic.

Afkarnews, another website that tried to devalue the Berlin demonstration said that “the organizers used people of different nationalities and homeless people who even did not know where Iran is geographically located.”

Such claims come at a time when the Islamic Republic is well known for forced confessions and using mercenaries to crack down on antigovernment protests.

The artwork was comprised of 12 long red banners with black stencil photos of Amini as well as the main slogan of the current wave or protests -- Women, Life, Liberty – hanging from the top floor to about four stories down in the vast well hole of the museum’s spiral stairway. 

Iranian-born New York-based artist Shirin Neshat shared a photo of the piece in her Instagram page, saying she is proud of the brave artists “who made a surprise protest by hanging this beautiful display today, they are the conscience of the sleepy art world who cares little for Iranian women fighting for basic human rights and freedom.”

Countless artworks have been created by Iranian and foreign artists in support of the current wave of the protests and numerous celebrities have expressed their solidarity with the Iranian protesters. Since the death of Mahsa Amini in custody of the hijab enforcement agents – or the so-called morality police – daily protests and strikes have convulsed the Islamic Republic. 

The regime’s repression agents have been committing heinous atrocities such as arresting and killing children and young adults, who have become the icons of the uprising and are extensively featured in songs, illustrations, paintings and murals all over the world. 

In an article published Saturday night, the IRGC’s Javan newspaper described the massive Berlin rally — where 100,000 people called for a revolution in Iran — as “a clear interference and support for regime-change seekers by Germany,” vowing it will not remain unanswered by Iran and will cost Germans dearly.

Rattled by the huge protest rally in the German capital, the paper claimed that many of the participants were not Iranians who were paid to attend the gathering. It also said many of the protesters were transferred from nearby countries in exchange for free food and accommodation.

The threatening article came a few days after Iranian state media reported that a German citizen was detained during the antigovernment protests in the northwestern city of Ardabil, where security forces beat to death at least one schoolgirl earlier in the month when students refused to attend a pro-regime rally.

The massive Freedom Rally for Iran in Berlin was described as the biggest gathering of Iranian protesters across the world. People from all corners of the continent traveled to Berlin with buses, trains and planes to voice support for their fellow-countrymen struggling against government brutality.

Protesters carried the pictures of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman who was killed in the custody of Iran’s ‘morality police’, as well as those who lost their lives in the nationwide protest movement since mid-September. They also unfurled a large Iranian pre-revolution national flag, which has become a symbol of rejecting the Islamic Republic.

British-Iranian actress and human rights activist Nazanin Boniadi shared some of the blocked pages on her twitter account on Sunday, asking Meta why Instagram is suspending their accounts for no reason.

“Fix your algorithms. This is outrageous,” Boniadi said.

Saman Arbabi, one of the activists, said that Instagram suspended his account “for doing absolutely nothing wrong other than posting videos” of Iranian protests from across the world.

A newspaper in Tehran, Arman Melli said on Sunday that while the Iranian government has blocked Instagram and WhatApp for the people since the current protests began in mid-September, senior clerics and officials still have access to these platforms.

British comedian and activist Chelsea Hart said in a video that Instagram demonetized all her videos for posting about the protests in Iran, adding that the media platform also withheld her creator fund from before her posts were demonetized. “Every single video that has gotten me in trouble has been specifically to do with Iran,” she said, noting that the videos were flagged without any guidelines about the videos.

“They’re suppressing my stuff big time and it is almost expressly to do with Iran. These platforms are absolutely trying to dissuade people from doing activism on Iran,” she said.

Boniadi, who recently held a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to discuss how to support the protesters and striking workers in Iran, added that “Chelsea isn’t the only one,” calling on the American company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to provide explanations.

In June, three human rights groups also called on Meta to review its Persian-language content review procedures.

In July, Iranian women's rights activist Masih Alinejad wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post recounting issues she faced with Instagram including loss of access to Instagram’s ‘live’ feature. She said this happened right after she posted a video of a confrontation on a city bus in Tehran between a hijab-wearing woman and another who refused to cover her head.

Asked by the Washington Post to comment, an Instagram representative had said the restriction “was placed on Masih’s account incorrectly because of a technical issue,” explaining that the platform automatically issues restrictions “when our systems detect spammy behavior.” The representative added: “It is against our policies to take action on accounts at the request of the Iranian government.”

But the issue could be more convoluted than Instagram 'taking orders' from the Iranian government. BBC reported in May that Iranian moderators working for a Meta subcontractor in Germany, Telus International, might be connected with the Iranian government and taking instructions from Tehran.

A top Iranian official said Sunday that blocking these apps was a decision taken by top leaders.

“The issue of lifting filters [on WhatsApp and Instagram] is the mandate of the National Security Council. One of the preconditions is that these two platforms should appoint representatives inside Iran and abide by the country’s laws and regulations. The NSC’s initial understanding is that these two platforms disrupt the security of the people,” Brigadier-General Gholamreza Jalali told reporters on the sidelines of the National Urban Defense Seminar Sunday.

“During the recent events these two platforms had some kind of coordination with the enemy abroad, the MEK, and the Zionist regime and this has been proven. Therefore the NSC decided to stop their activities as long as it thinks there is no assurance about the security of the country,” he added.