On the stage of the Qatar World Cup, which is known to have hundreds of millions of spectators around the world, the Iranian national team faced England for the first time on November 21. During the national anthem, they kept silent and solemn and refused to sing along. Support for anti-government demonstrations that have not ended for a third month.
Although Iran's official media did not broadcast the video of the national team refusing to sing the national anthem, in Iran, where 80% of Internet users have a VPN (Virtual Private Network), it is hard for ordinary people to be aware of this, which probably weakens some domestic " The national team doesn't represent me" voice.
The demonstrations, which are now reported to have resulted in hundreds of deaths, 15,000 arrests and five death sentences, began on September 16.
Its origin is the accident in which Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, was suspected to have died at the hands of the morality police.
During a visit to the capital Tehran, Amini was detained by morality police on suspicion of not wearing a hijab properly, but was later apparently beaten to death.
After the news came out, demonstrations across the country were detonated, which have not stopped to this day.
Vigorous crackdown on demonstrations enters third month
The demonstrations, initially led by women who challenged the government by not wearing a hijab, received a nationwide response across race, gender, region and class, with college students and even high school students as frontline activists.
The slogan of the demonstration was "Women, Life and Freedom", mixed with anti-Islamic regime elements of "Death to the dictator".
The form of demonstrations is "both civil and military", ranging from women ostentatiously walking through the market without a headscarf, shop strikes, vandalizing the portrait of the supreme spiritual leader, attacking moral police departments, confronting security forces with petrol bombs, attacking lone police officers and priests, etc.
Facing the demonstrations, the Iranian authorities have resorted to strong suppression, including large-scale interruption of the Internet, pressuring or arresting celebrities who speak out in support of the demonstrators, using live ammunition to deal with the demonstrators, and storming universities and even middle schools.
However, the government appears to have been unable to stem the momentum of the demonstrations.
Iranian hijab demonstration: The picture shows on October 27, 2022, after the death of Iranian woman Amini, demonstrators in Tehran took to the streets to protest.
The photo was not taken by Associated Press employees and was obtained outside of Iran.
(AP)
On October 29, Hossein Salami, Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has strong political, economic, and military strength, publicly stated that "today is the last day of riots," which can be regarded as an "ultimatum" to the demonstrators.
On November 6, 227 of the 290 members of Congress issued an open letter calling on the judicial authorities to punish the demonstrators "without mercy". It was once shared by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
However, the tough stance of these state apparatuses did not stop the demonstrations from continuing.
According to statistics from the US think tank Institute of War (ISW), on November 21 alone, at least 16 demonstrations took place in 12 cities in 8 provinces; on the 18th, it was also reported that the late supreme spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution News that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's ancestral home was set on fire by demonstrators.
Athletes support demonstrations, officials point to "external forces"
The Iranian national team's refusal to sing the national anthem is just the latest part of the athletes' support for the demonstrations.
In mid-October, there was an incident in which Iranian female sports climber Elnaz Rekabi (Elnaz Rekabi) competed in South Korea without a headscarf (Rekabi clarified after returning home that she forgot to wear a headscarf); Declan Independent Football The club (Esteghlal) also refused to celebrate after winning the Iranian Super Cup earlier this month, and some players publicly paid tribute to Iranian women.
Iran national football team captain Ehsan Hajsafi (Ehsan Hajsafi) said before the game in Qatar that he was on the same road with the demonstrators and "supported them". "We must admit that the situation in our country is not right, and our people are not happy. Just because we're here doesn't mean we shouldn't be their voice."
(There are still voices in Iran who believe that the national team has not given enough support to the demonstrations.)
The Iranian national team on the field refused to sing the national anthem.
(AP)
The Iraqi government's response to domestic celebrities publicly supporting the demonstrations was ambiguous.
Officials have declared that they will take action against celebrities who "stir up the flames". A singer-songwriter of a demonstration song was also arrested at one point, and several singers and players were also arrested or had their passports confiscated.
However, President Ebrahim Raisi went out of his way to receive the national team ahead of their Qatar match, even though the Iranian football community had expressed a degree of support for the demonstrations.
In terms of the overall propaganda strategy in response to the demonstrations, Iran, as expected, pointed the finger at "external forces", including the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries that supported the demonstrations with "speaking skills" and sanctioning Iranian officials, Iran's old enemy Israel, and allowing the domestic media to criticize the protests. The Iranian demonstrations were reported in detail, the Saudis, and so on.
Since Amini, the source of the demonstrations, belongs to the Kurdish ethnic group, Iran has also launched attacks on Kurdish armed sites in Iraq for months, and may even cooperate with Turkey, which has recently stepped up efforts to attack Kurdish forces due to the Istanbul bombing. .
However, this propaganda of exaggerating "external forces" has not been able to subdue the domestic demonstrations.
Moreover, as more and more demonstrators were killed, the 40th anniversary of the death of many concerned deceased (according to: Shia custom) has become an opportunity for a new wave of demonstrations, making the demonstrations more and more endless. tend.
The demonstrations have not been suppressed for a long time, and the outside world is speculating whether this is the beginning of the end of the Islamic regime in Iran.
However, this is probably just an unlikely subjective wish.
During the Iranian national anthem, some fans present booed.
(AP)
Insufficient bottom pressure
First, as Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, puts it, for the Iranian regime to fall, there must be "pressure from below" and "a split from above."
Judging from the current situation, both are "existing but not sufficient".
Let's talk about the bottom layer first.
Although there have been demonstrations by lawyers, doctors and other professionals on the streets of Tehran; workers in the oil extraction industry, chemical industry, and steel industry have all made sporadic strikes; teachers have also organized students to discuss current events around the demonstrations; Shops closed and strikes—but since the outbreak of the demonstrations, various campaigns calling for national strikes, strikes, strikes, and strikes have never been successful.
This situation is very different from the large-scale strikes of workers in the public sector and even the energy industry before and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the royal family.
Some analysts believe that this is related to Iran's economic structure.
At that time, the state-run economy accounted for a relatively high proportion of the Iranian economy, and many employees had stable jobs. In contrast, today, when the economic conditions of ordinary families in Iran are deteriorating, after large-scale privatization, many workers only have temporary contracts. When the way forward is uncertain, the precarious people will certainly not abandon everything and join politics.
Iranian goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand was injured after colliding with his teammates after 17 minutes of playing. Even though he insisted on fighting after simple treatment on the field, he still had to retreat from the line of fire in the end, with a severely swollen nose.
(AP)
At the same time, while suppressing demonstrations vigorously, the government has also continued to distribute money to stabilize people's hearts, including increasing welfare jn delivery to poor families, and providing salary increases higher than the inflation rate for public sector employees, etc.
Some companies that have been delaying salary waivers for a long time also "suddenly" distributed several months of wage arrears to employees.
Some official organizations have even stated that these actions are to prevent dissatisfaction in the workplace from turning into a reason to participate in demonstrations.
Even though young people who are the main body of the demonstrations now account for more than half of Iran's population (the population under 30 accounts for 60% of the total population), but other age groups with more social and economic capital are not willing to fully participate in the demonstrations, which makes "come to the bottom first" The pressure" is insufficient.
No split in power
The ongoing demonstrations did highlight some rifts among the upper classes.
After the outbreak of sympathy, at least two "Grand Ayatollahs" (that is, the hierarchy of Shiite religious studies to which Iran's highest spiritual leader belongs) - Asadollah Bayat Zanjani and Mohammad Javad Alavi Boroujerdi - have publicly criticized the enforcement of the Morality Police , or to express the opinion that people in Muslim societies have the right to criticize their leaders.
There is also Ali Larijani, a conservative mainstream politician who served as the Speaker of the National Assembly from 2008 to 2020, publicly stated that the religious tradition of women wearing headscarves should not be enforced by the government.
Part of the official media also appeared to question the government's actions.
And many analysts also believe that even though the top leaders of the Revolutionary Guards agree on the strong suppression of demonstrations, the general members of the Guards sympathize with the demonstrators.
This may partly explain why the demonstrations have not been smoothed over for so long.
In this photo posted on the website of Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei, Khamenei attends a graduation ceremony for a group of armed forces cadets at the police academy in Tehran, Iran, on October 3, 2022.
On the same day, Khamenei publicly responded to Iran's largest protests in years, broke weeks of silence, condemned the "hijab demonstration" caused by the death of the woman Amini as a "riot", and accused the United States and Israel of instigating behind it. .
(AP)
However, these upper classes, who hold moderate views on the demonstrations, have no real power.
The current supreme spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, has been sweeping away the reformers in the political circle in recent years, even the traditionalists who have a little independent will.
The reason why conservatives control the vast majority of Congress today is because most reformers have also been disqualified from running in the 2020 congressional elections.
In the 2021 presidential election, Larijani, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, was also removed from the election, which shocked the Iranian political circle. In the end, Khamenei created the objective conditions that the incumbent President Rahid was almost certain to be elected.
Unless there is a divide in the presidential class that holds the real power, it is difficult for the protracted demonstrations to develop into a revolution that can overthrow the regime.
The future direction of the Iranian regime still has short-term and long-term variables.
First, Khamenei, the supreme spiritual leader, is 83 years old and has recently been rumored to be in poor health.
Regardless of whether these rumors are true or not, Khamenei's departure is likely to happen in a relatively short period of time, and his resignation or death will also give rise to opportunities for demonstrators to reverse the overall situation.
The second is the generational change in Iran.
As mentioned above, young people who have not experienced the Islamic revolution account for more than half of Iran's population, and most of them absorb culture outside the regime through the VPN, and generally oppose the religious and moral repression of the Islamic regime.
As time goes by, the students who are beaten today will become a large group with all kinds of social capital.
Even if this demonstration ended fruitlessly like the previous demonstrations over the past decade, time would probably be on the side of the demonstrators.
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