After 6 days of protests all over Iran, streets of more than 100 cities are yet full of tension. Almost 200 protesters killed in the streets, more than 4000 protestors are arrested and are kept in illegal prisons, many injured, internet has been shot down for more than 150 hours and the Iran Protests is still going on.
Unrests started after the government’s decision on increasing fuel prices 300% of its former price. After reimposing sanctions by the United States after the JCPOA deal, Iranians have been under terrible economic pressure since then. Sanctions targeted the main income of Iran and due to that Iran Rials hit record low and consequently Iranians lost their purchasing power. But this is not the whole story behind the protests. From the first day of the protests, chants aimed the whole regime of Iran. People were chanting “death to dictator”, “nor Ghaza nor Lebanon, my life is only for Iran”, “our enemy is not the United States and our enemy is right here”.
Nature of Iran Protests
Unlike Hong Kong there is no journalist with a camera in the streets of Iran due to strict restrictions on foreign media in Iran and terrible censorship on local media, the international community has no idea about what’s going on in Iran. International media say this is a protest against hike on fuel price, but actually it’s about something else. The fact is Iranian society has bigger problems than fuel price. The main problem from the people’s point of view is the people of Iran have been eliminated from power circle since 1978 right after the Islamic evolution. There is an important legal issue in Iran which deprived people from being involved in the politics of their society and it derives from the constitution of Islamic Republic. People think the constitution of Iran is a barrier on their way to democracy and human rights. Constitution of Iran is religious based by which the whole political power of the country is in the hands of the supreme leader who is at the same time a top religious power who could interpret the religious book of Muslims Quran in favor of himself or his ambition. According to article 110 of Iranian constitution, the supreme leader is responsible for policy making for 85 million Iranian. The supreme leader can decide whether Iran should be an enemy of the United States or not! The supreme leader can decide whether Iranan authority spend enormous emount of money on defending Bashar Al-Assad or arming Palestinian militias against the Israel or should be a friend of Israel. But this is not the sole problem. Supreme leader of Iran Ali Khamenei has built a shadow government by which makes the formal government useless. Every city in Iran has a Friday Prayer who is deputy of supreme leader and the true governator of the city is this person. Friday Prayers attend meetings of the Security Council of each city by which whole formal affairs of the city is governed and the real governators who are representatives of the government in those cities must follow their will. Intelligence service of IRGC practically has privilege on intelligence ministry of the government and above all this, the presidency itself has no more power and it is a decorative institution to show off to the western democracies that Islamic republic is also a democracy which is not true. rule of law does not mean anything for Islamic republic. During the recent protests the government shut down the internet for 100 hours, in spite of slots of lots of companies, disturbing communication and shooting down internet is against the law. There is footage from the recent protests in Iran in which you can see police of Iran is shooting at protestors from the top of judiciary building of city of Javanrood.
Where are the protesters going to?
After the Green Movement which was suppressed brutally in 2009, people realized ways to make change and reform the system through legal means is closed and the only way is changing the system by taking away the physician force of the regime to be able to change the constitution and All these matters lead Iranians to take streets of Iran not only to protest against fuel price but also to revolt against the system which barred all ways to reform the constitution but it seems the Iranian regime who is facing a legitimacy crisis suppressed its own people brutally to continue possessing the power anyway.