Over two weeks after the death at the hands of the Basij militia of 22-year-old Kurdish women Mahsa Amini for not wearing her hijab properly, 83-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei officially speaks out. Amini was allegedly beaten to death with a truncheon by the Basij “morality police,” for defying Iran’s strict women’s dress code. Showing why its pure madness for the U.S. and EU to reinvent former President Barack Obama’s 2015 Iranian Nuke Deal AKA the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA], Khamenei blamed the nationwide protests over Amini’s death on the U.S. and Israel. Like the old Nazi regime, the Jews were the cause of all Germany’s past defeats and economic woes, leading to the worst massacre in human history. But Khamenei uses the same predicable playbook, blaming the U.S. and Israel for explosive rioting occurring in 80 cities and towns around Iran.
Iran has lingering regret over Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei’s 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the progressive regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Palavi, who brought Iran out of the dark ages to incorporate U.S. and EU values into Iranian society. Women during the Shah’s reign were not required to wear head-scarves, receiving comparable treatment in education and jobs in Iranian society. Khomenei’s Islamic Revoution turned back the clock on 100 years of progress under the Shah and his father’s rule. So, when it comes to nationwide protests, Amini was a catalyst for the population frustrated from the oppression of strict Shiite Islamic rule. Khamenei approved the nationwide crack down on protesters, blaming the U.S. and Israel for trying to topple the Mullah regime. But the aging-and-sick Khamenei knows that you can only oppress a population for so long.
Iran’s nationwide protests speak volumes about a population yearning for the good old days under the Shah when Tehran was a mini-Paris, a hub of haute couture, music, art and fashionable night life, letting Iranians work and live their lives without government oppression. While the Shah had his “secret police” to prevent an Islamic takeover, the Basij militia were not tormenting Iran’s youth for wearing lipstick or listening to Western music. “This rioting was planned,” Khamenei said. “These riots and insecurities were designed by America and the Zionist regime, and their employees,” putting all the blame on imaginary foreign sources. Khameni and his Mullah regime knows that the protests are against oppressive Mullah rule, where the Basij and Revolutionary Gurards protect the regime at all costs, even massacring the population when it threatens the Mullah regime.
Students at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran announced that classes had been cancelled at the start of the new term, except for doctoral students. Revolutionary Guards used tear gas to breakup crowds of students holed up in the university protesting the death of Amini, but, more importantly, demanding human rights. Plain-clothed Revolutionary guards surrounded the university in a show of force. State run IRNA downplayed the crackdown at Sharif University, saying that many students had been released from detention. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock condemned “the regime’s brute force” at Sharif Universit, calling it “an expression of sheer fear and the power of education and freedom, Baerbook knows her German history, the same kind of tactics used by the Nazi SS to coerce and brutalize the German people into full conformity with Hitler’s regime.
Khamenei condemned the scenes of women burning hijabs and cutting of their hair as “actions that are not normal, that are unnatural,” warning that “those that foment unrest to sabotage the Islamic Republic deserve harsh prosecution and punishment,” said Khamenei. Iran’s spasm of nationwide rioting occurred in 1999, right before the last gasps of pro-Shah protesters were forced out of the country. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia tightened their grip on Iranian society, driving out residual malcontents with Mullah rule. Over 41 deaths and at least 1,500 protesters have been arrested by plain-clothed Revolutionary Guards. Alborz Mexami, an economic reporter, was arrested for subversive activities. As the crack down proceeds, Iranian exiles in London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles, gathered to wave Iranian flags and protest the Ayatollah’s brutal crack down.
How ironic that most the protesters are under 25-years-of-age, never knowing in their lifetimes life before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Tehran-based university teacher Shaindokht Kharazimi said the new generation knows how to fight back against the Mullah regime. “The [young protesters] have learned the strategy from video games and play to win,” said Kharazimi told the pro-reform Etemad newspapers. “There is no such thing as defeat for them,” not knowing that periodic regime protests have gone on for over 40 years. Kharazimi recalls the 1999 student protests when reformist President Mohammad Khatami backed the most violent street demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “Don’t’ call it a protest, it’s a revolution now,” students showed at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. Those students don’t know the Revolutionary Guard crack down currently underway.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
