In Iran, the conflict between the regime and the demonstrators is coming to a head. There is a growing willingness on both sides to resort to violence. On Friday, the army said it would “oppose the enemy’s conspiracies” to ensure the “safety of the people.” The strongest warning to date to the demonstrators also said that the protests were “desperate acts” aimed at weakening the Islamic Republic.
The Ministry of Intelligence had previously warned against participating in rallies. Such illegal acts would be pursued with all available legal means, said the responsible Minister Esmail Khatib. The warning was also apparently sent to many social media users. The Ministry of Intelligence has also been involved in cracking down on political protests in the past.
Justice chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Edschei had already called for a crackdown on Thursday. The judiciary and the police should not compromise when dealing with the “professional noisemakers”, he said, according to the Irna news agency. He accused the protesters of collaborating with “foreign espionage services”.
The regime is also demonstrating
The protests continued to escalate on Friday night and on Friday itself. For the first time since the 1979 revolution, demonstrators took to the streets in the rich north of Tehran and in the poor south of the capital at the same time. Iranian exile broadcasters, such as Iran International, broadcast videos of protests, sometimes with large crowds. The protest has long since spread to most of the provinces. Apparently more violence was committed against public buildings and police forces than in the previous nights. Exiled broadcasters continued to read the names of activists who had been arrested. Apparently several hundred people are arrested every day. The protests still have no recognizable head, but appear to be organized in a decentralized and spontaneous manner.
For its part, the government called for rallies to demonstrate support for the Islamic Republic after Friday prayers. State media on Friday showed images of women in black chadors, turbaned Shia clerics and men who appeared, on average, considerably older than those taking part in the protests. The ministry responsible for media has ordered media houses not to cover the protests and also to restrict coverage of the death of Mahsa Amini that sparked the protests.
Since the authorities largely shut down the Internet on Thursday, gathering news from Iran has become considerably more difficult. During the last major protests at the end of 2019, the internet was completely switched off for three days. This makes it difficult to give exact death toll figures. The province of Kordestan, where Amini came from and where the wave of protests began, is particularly affected. The Kurdish regions are largely cut off from the outside world. According to unconfirmed reports, martial law has been declared there.
The Oslo-based Kurdish human rights organization Hengaw puts the number of fatalities in Kurdish areas at at least 15 and the number of injured at more than 730. In the Kurdish areas, anger at Amini’s death is mixed with criticism of the systematic discrimination against the Kurds. For example, they are not allowed to have Kurdish first names. Amini, who succumbed to her skull injuries inflicted by the vice squad on September 16, was called Djina in Kurdish but had to call herself Mahsa in official documents.
