WITH BRUTAL CRACKDOWN, IRAN CONVULSED BY WORST UNREST IN 40 YEARS

The New York Times – By Carlos Christian

December 3, 2019

Iran is experiencing its deadliest political unrest for the reason that Islamic Revolution 40 years in the past, with no less than 180 individuals killed — and presumably a whole lot extra — as indignant protests have been smothered in a authorities crackdown of unbridled pressure.

It started two weeks in the past with an abrupt enhance of no less than 50% in gasoline costs. Inside 72 hours, outraged demonstrators in cities giant and small have been calling for an finish to the Islamic Republic’s authorities and the downfall of its leaders.

In lots of locations, safety forces responded by opening fireplace on unarmed protesters, largely unemployed or low-income younger males between the ages of 19 and 26, in response to witness accounts and movies. Within the southwest metropolis of Mahshahr alone, witnesses and medical personnel mentioned, Revolutionary Guard members surrounded, shot and killed 40 to 100 demonstrators — principally unarmed younger males — in a marsh the place they’d sought refuge.

“The current use of deadly pressure in opposition to individuals all through the nation is unprecedented, even for the Islamic Republic and its document of violence,” mentioned Omid Memarian, deputy director on the Middle for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group.

Altogether, between 180 to 450 individuals — presumably extra — have been killed in 4 days of intense violence after the gasoline value enhance was introduced Nov. 15, with no less than 2,000 wounded and seven,000 detained, in response to worldwide rights organizations, opposition teams and native journalists.

The final huge wave of protests in Iran — in 2009, after a contested election, which was additionally met with a lethal crackdown — left 72 individuals lifeless over a for much longer interval of about 10 months.

Solely now, almost two weeks after the protests have been crushed — and largely obscured by an web blackout within the nation that was lifted lately — have particulars corroborating the scope of killings and destruction began to dribble out.

The newest outbursts not solely revealed staggering ranges of frustration with Iran’s leaders but additionally underscored the intense financial and political challenges dealing with them, from the Trump administration’s onerous sanctions on the nation to the rising resentment towards Iran by neighbors in an more and more unstable Center East.

The gasoline value enhance, which was introduced as most Iranians had gone to mattress, got here as Iran struggles to fill a yawning finances hole. The Trump administration sanctions, most notably their tight restrictions on exports of Iran’s oil, are an enormous cause for the shortfall. The sanctions are supposed to stress Iran into renegotiating the 2015 nuclear settlement between Iran and main world powers, which President Donald Trump deserted, calling it too weak.

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A lot of the nationwide unrest appeared concentrated in neighborhoods and cities populated by low-income and working-class households, suggesting this was an rebellion born within the traditionally loyal energy base of Iran’s post-revolutionary hierarchy.

Many Iranians, stupefied and embittered, have directed their hostility immediately on the supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who known as the crackdown a justified response to a plot by Iran’s enemies at house and overseas.

The killings prompted a provocative warning from Mir Hossein Mousavi, an opposition chief and former presidential candidate whose 2009 election loss set off peaceable demonstrations that Khamenei additionally suppressed by pressure.

In a press release posted Saturday on an opposition web site, Mousavi, who has been below home arrest since 2011 and rarely speaks publicly, blamed the supreme chief for the killings. He in contrast them to an notorious 1978 bloodbath by authorities forces that led to the downfall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi a yr later by the hands of Islamic revolutionaries who now rule the nation.

“The killers of the yr 1978 have been the representatives of a nonreligious regime, and the brokers and shooters of November 2019 are the representatives of a spiritual authorities,” he mentioned. “Then the commander in chief was the shah and at the moment, right here, the supreme chief with absolute authority.”

Authorities have declined to specify casualties and arrests and have denounced unofficial figures on the nationwide dying toll as speculative. However the nation’s inside minister, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, has cited widespread unrest across the nation.

On state media, he mentioned that protests had erupted in 29 out of 31 provinces and 50 navy bases had been attacked — which, if true, suggests a stage of coordination absent within the earlier protests. The property injury additionally included 731 banks, 140 public areas, 9 spiritual facilities, 70 gasoline stations, 307 automobiles, 183 police vehicles, 1,076 bikes and 34 ambulances, the inside minister mentioned. Iran’s official media have reported that a number of members of the safety forces have been killed and injured throughout the clashes.

The worst violence documented to date occurred within the metropolis of Mahshahr and its suburbs, with a inhabitants of 120,000 individuals in Iran’s southwest Khuzestan province — a area with an ethnic Arab majority that has a protracted historical past of unrest and opposition to the central authorities. Mahshahr is adjoining to the nation’s largest industrial petrochemical complicated and serves as a gateway to Bandar Imam, a significant port.

The New York Occasions interviewed six residents of the town, together with a protest chief who had witnessed the violence; a reporter based mostly within the metropolis who works for Iranian media and had investigated the violence however was banned from reporting it; and a nurse on the hospital the place casualties have been handled.

They every offered comparable accounts of how the Revolutionary Guard deployed a big pressure to Mahshahr on Monday, Nov. 18, to crush the protests. All spoke on situation of anonymity for worry of retribution by the Guard.

For 3 days, in response to these residents, protesters had efficiently gained management of most of Mahshahr and its suburbs, blocking the principle street to the town and the adjoining industrial petrochemical complicated. Iran’s inside minister confirmed that protesters had gained management over Mahshahr and its roads in a televised interview final week, however the Iranian authorities didn’t reply to particular questions in current days concerning the mass killings within the metropolis.

Native safety forces and riot cops had tried to disperse the group and open the roads however failed, residents mentioned. A number of clashes between protesters and safety forces erupted between Saturday night and Monday morning earlier than Guard members have been dispatched there.

When the Guard arrived close to the doorway to a suburb, Shahrak Chamran, populated by low-income members of Iran’s ethnic Arab minority, they instantly shot with out warning at dozens of males blocking the intersection, killing a number of on the spot, in response to the residents interviewed by cellphone.

The residents mentioned the opposite protesters scrambled to a close-by marsh and that certainly one of them, apparently armed with an AK-47, fired again. The Guard instantly encircled the lads and responded with machine-gun fireplace, killing as many as 100 individuals, the residents mentioned.

The Guard piled the lifeless onto the again of a truck and departed, the residents mentioned, and kinfolk of the wounded then transported them to Memko Hospital.

One of many residents, a 24-year-old unemployed school graduate in chemistry who had helped arrange the protests blocking the roads, mentioned he had been lower than 1 mile away from the mass capturing and that his greatest buddy, additionally 24, and a 32-year-old cousin have been among the many lifeless.

He mentioned they each had been shot within the chest and their our bodies have been returned to the households 5 days later, solely after they’d signed paperwork promising to not maintain funerals or memorial companies and to not give interviews to media.

The younger protest organizer mentioned he, too, was shot within the ribs Nov. 19, the day after the mass capturing, when the Guard stormed with tanks into his neighborhood, Shahrak Taleghani, among the many poorest suburbs of Mahshahr.

He mentioned a gunbattle erupted for hours between the Guard and ethnic Arab residents, who historically hold weapons for searching at house. Iranian state media and witnesses reported {that a} senior Guard commander had been killed in a Mahshahr conflict. Video on Twitter suggests tanks had been deployed there.

A 32-year-old nurse in Mahshahr reached by cellphone mentioned she had tended to the wounded on the hospital and that the majority had sustained gunshot wounds to the pinnacle and chest.

She described chaotic scenes on the hospital, with households speeding to usher in the casualties, together with a 21-year-old who was to be married however couldn’t be saved. “‘Give me again my son!’” the nurse quoted his sobbing mom as saying. “‘It’s his marriage ceremony in two weeks!’”

The nurse mentioned safety forces stationed on the hospital arrested among the wounded protesters after their situations had stabilized. She mentioned some kinfolk, fearing arrest themselves, dropped wounded family members on the hospital and fled, overlaying their faces.

On Nov. 25, per week after it occurred, the town’s consultant in parliament, Mohamad Golmordai, vented outrage in a blunt second of searing anti-government criticism that was broadcast on Iranian state tv and captured in images and movies uploaded to the web.

“What have you ever performed that the undignified Shah didn’t do?” Golmordai screamed from the parliament ground as a scuffle broke out between him and different lawmakers, together with one who grabbed him by the throat.

The native reporter in Mahshahr mentioned the full variety of individuals killed in three days of unrest within the space had reached 130, together with these killed within the marsh.

In different cities corresponding to Shiraz and Shahriar, dozens have been reported killed within the unrest by safety forces who fired on unarmed protesters, in response to rights teams and movies posted by witnesses.

“This regime has pushed individuals towards violence,” mentioned Yousef Alsarkhi, 29, a political activist from Khuzestan who migrated to the Netherlands 4 years in the past. “The extra they repress, the extra aggressive and indignant individuals get.”

Political analysts mentioned the protests appeared to have delivered a extreme blow to President Hassan Rouhani, a relative average in Iran’s political spectrum, all however guaranteeing that hard-liners would win upcoming parliamentary elections and the presidency in two years.

The robust response to the protests additionally appeared to sign a hardening rift between Iran’s leaders and sizable segments of the inhabitants of 83 million.

“The federal government’s response was uncompromising, brutal and speedy,” mentioned Henry Rome, an Iran analyst on the Eurasia Group, a political danger consultancy in Washington. Nonetheless, he mentioned, the protests additionally had “demonstrated that many Iranians usually are not afraid to take to the streets.”