A throne on crater of a volcano: The mullahs reel between fire of protests and hell of sanctions
The protests continued in Tehran from that
time through the demonstrations of Iranian students in 1999, the green
revolution in 2009, until the protests in late December 2017 and the beginning
of 2018 until the end of 2019.
It was repeated again at the beginning of
January 2020, against the background of Iranian students' opposition to the
regime's policies regarding the downing of the Revolutionary Guard missile unit
of a Ukrainian passenger plane, which aroused the ire of many Iranian citizens,
as well as the international condemnations that Tehran received following this
incident.
The protest phenomenon became one of the most
prominent features of political life inside Iran after the Islamic revolution
of 1979; the protests renewed again with the end of 2017 and early 2018 against
the background of economic decline, especially after the Iranian nuclear
agreement was concluded in 2015.
The protests of November 2019 erupted after a
decision by the Economic Coordination Council between the three authorities to
raise the prices of fuel and fuel, which comes after the negative repercussions
of Tehran's exit from the Iranian nuclear agreement, which led to the exit of
tens of multinational companies from the Iranian market, and the end of many
foreign investment projects.
The admission of the missile unit of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards to their involvement in the accident of the
downing of the Ukrainian passenger plane, which killed a large number of
students of Iranian university students, led to a state of confusion and
embarrassment within Iranian society, and accordingly, large numbers of Iranian
students led protests against the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the
Revolutionary Guards in the capital, Tehran, and other cities.
As usual, the Iranian police pursued
repressive policies in confronting the demonstrators, as many photos and videos
appeared on social media sites to fire shots in the vicinity of the protests in
Tehran and soldiers carrying guns, which would help to escalate the intensity
of the demonstrations and continue even in the face of the Iranian regime.
The Iranian authorities have acknowledged
against the backdrop of international pressures, that they are conducting a
campaign of arrests of the people who caused this incident, which is the
traditional method that Tehran has always followed in such situations without
searching for the defect within its decision-making bodies.
As a result of the foregoing, there was a
growing intensity of anger by the protesters in the face of the Iranian
authorities, especially the clerics, which was evident in the need for slogans
against them and others threatening to restore Iran, as well as the revolution
and insubordination until the matter reached the point of demanding the
departure of the head of the guiding regime against Khamenei.
This indicates the necessity of rethinking the
Iranian regime in the sources of its legitimacy, especially its reliance on the
idea of exclusivity of the presence of the cleric at the top of the
decision-making structure.
