Iranic drones over the skies of Kyiv. What do they mean for the Iranian students who are protesting against the hated regime across the country? When it comes to assessing the prospects for the protest movement, Russia and China are playing an increasingly important role. The Iranian Ministry of Science has been relatively open to exchanges with the West in recent decades. The course was set anew with the arrival of President Ebrahim Raisi. The leading cadres in the ministry were replaced. Universities are now required to look to Russia and China. This seems to be the end of a collaboration in which Western universities benefited from the above-average Iranian students and the country from the expertise they brought back from the West – if they did come back. The emigration is great.
Since September 28, the students have known that they are not alone in their fight against the regime. On that day, 72 professors from the University of Tehran, most of them well-known scholars, published an open letter to the government in the newspaper “Etemad”, in which they openly named the country’s political and economic misery and demanded the freedom of all demonstrators. The letter spread like wildfire, and other universities followed suit and published similar appeals. Nevertheless, the students cannot rely on the fact that the universities are firmly at their side. The management positions are occupied by people loyal to the regime, as is the ministry.
