Iran will crackdown on the wave of protests... again.

 

Protesters/rioters in Tehran Iran. Reuters. 

Iran's president has vowed to crack down on a major wave of protest currently rocking the country. Reuters. The protests were spurred by the death of a 22 year old woman named Mahsa Amini, who died in custody of Iran's morality police. Women have played a large part in the protests with some burning their required veils or even cutting their hair. The protests were the largest since the 2019 protests, that were put down with extreme force by Iran. Pro-Iran supporters also held huge rallies in response to the protests. It is unclear how many people have died in this round of protests but there are reports of police firing on crowds. 

My Comment:

I almost didn't write a post on this issue because of how little I expect to come from this. If there is one thing that Iran is good at it's putting down rioters. The 2019 riots, that were much worse than this round, were put down with extreme prejudice. Iranians don't mess around when it comes to protests and riots and I fully expect them to do so again. 

It's not like the Iranian people were going to overthrow the government or anything. The problem is that many people in Iran still support the government there and would fight back against any attempt to do so. Indeed, there were fairly large rallies, organized by the state, in support of Iran's government. 

Still, Iran's actions here are worth noting, given how far their behavior is from the norm. In most countries protest movements are allowed to go on, with the vast majority of them burning out over time. If you are unlucky, some countries persecute protesters, like we saw in Canada during the Freedom Convoy and on January 6th here in the United States. But Iran? Iran just shoots people. Or otherwise kills them. They don't mess around with this at all. 

I don't really expect that to chance either. Iran has figured out that they can stay in power if they simply kill those that would oppose them. That isn't really going to change any time soon and they don't care at all about the international condemnation of their actions. Indeed, that's mostly a western phenomenon and it's important to note that Iran's relations with both Russia and China are improving. 

As for the particular case in question, I have no idea what really happened. I don't trust western media to tell the truth and I certainly don't trust the Iranians. Everyone has a motivation to lie, but it could be an example of police brutality, or someone just dying randomly. I don't know because I wasn't there. 

But the fact that Iran has morality police in the first place is just bizarre as an American. Though, given current behavior, I can sometimes understand the appeal. With that being said though, it seems to have backfired rather severely for the Iranian regime as even though I fully expect them to survive this wave of protests, it is still a very bad thing for them to have to deal with. 

I've seen a few people saying that this is another attempt at a "color" revolution, but I don't really buy it. The protests seem fairly organic and the issue is legitimate enough. And it's not like Iran doesn't protest, they do it all the time. With that being said, I do think that the CIA and other western intelligence agencies are drooling at the opportunity to cause as much chaos in Iran as they can. 

But I think over all things will remain status quo ante. Protest and riots have to be fairly universal to overthrow a government and even then if the government is willing and able to put down the protests with violence chances aren't good. If the Iranian people had firearms it might be different but they mostly don't so I don't see this latest wave of protest being any different than previous waves.