Iran: Protests and Paralysis

by Amir Taheri, GATESTONE  •  December 11, 2022

The failure of Iran’s rulers to develop a coherent narrative, let alone a strategy to deal with what looks like an existential crisis for the regime, has led to a chaotic response to the popular uprising. Pictured: Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a rally in Tehran on November 4, 2022. (Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)

• The failure of the Khomeinist clique to develop a coherent narrative, let alone a strategy to deal with what looks like an existential crisis for the regime, has led to a chaotic response to the popular uprising. According to semi-official figures, between 300 and 500 protesters have been killed by the security forces and more than 15,000 jailed. By the time of this writing, four executions have also been officially reported.
• But when you break down those figures, a curious pattern emerges.
• Almost 60 percent of the deaths happened in just nine cities in two provinces: Sistan-Baluchistan and Kurdistan.
• Despite the depth and breadth of the protests, just confirmed by widespread strikes in more than 30 cities, the Khomeinist establishment is still unable to understand what is really going on. Divided between its natural reflex to crush any dissent and its lack of self-confidence, it is spreading its paralysis throughout Iran’s political life, hoping to be saved by inertia.
• After 10 years of negotiations to buy natural gas from Iran, China has decided to sign a 60-year deal with Qatar instead.
• [T]he ayatollah’s abracadabra seems unlikely to force this genie back into the bottle.

 

Almost three months after the current popular uprising against the Islamic Republic started in Iran, three things are clear.<
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The first is that even if the uprising hits an interlude to recuperate, as is often the case with such movements, it is unlikely to simply fade away. It has mobilized energies that cannot be tamed with time, and raised such hopes and expectations that even the most hard-boiled cynics in power won’t be able to disregard.

Next, most of those who have mobilized those energies, that is to say the thousands of young men and women who risked all to openly challenge one of the most brutal regimes in contemporary history, while knowing what they want, don’t know how to translate their desiderata into the cold political reality of securing and using power.

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