David Pratt: Why the Islamic Republic is truly rattled by mass uprising in Iran

For years now when not side-tracked fighting the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group these women of the PAK have been engaged in an active campaign to achieve an independent Kurdistan.

That independent state, should it ever come about, would of course include land that is currently part of Iran and as might be expected the government in Tehran have no truck with such political ambitions and what they see as a direct threat to their rule.

All the women I met at the camp had come from Iran and every one of them knew that to return there would mean certain death at the hands of the Iranian authorities who considers them “terrorists”.

“This is our life, we have given everything for the fight for a Kurdish homeland,” one of the women whose name was Sarbakho, told me, summing up the commitment and sacrifice she and her comrades had made.

Just days after my visit to the camp there was a sharp reminder of Iran’s determination to rid itself of the dogged opposition the women of PAK represent when the Iranian military fired a missile into the base.

But just this past week in the most intensive barrage for decades in the region, 70 long range warheads were fired from Iran into northern Iraq killing 14 PAK fighters wounding 58 more and flattening many of their bases.

In firing the missiles Iran’s intention is clear. Put quite simply, it seeks to lay the blame for the current protests inside Iran on external forces like the PAK who the regime sees as helping foment anti-government demonstrations.

But the reality of Iran’s protests seen as the most serious challenge to the Tehran authorities in years is far more complex and multidimensional. For almost a month now ordinary Iranians among them working women and men, university students and school pupils have been engaged in extraordinary protests despite a deadly crack down by security forces.

What started with the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman and ethnic Kurd arrested by morality police in Tehran on 13 September for allegedly violating Iran's strict rules requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab, or headscarf has grown into nationwide demonstrations that have united disparate groups.

The demonstrations are now about more than the death of Mahsa Amini or the imposition of the hijab, with protesters now openly calling for a more democratic and secular system.

While the protests have involved Iranians from every section of society, Iran’s Kurds have played a leading role and subsequently borne the brunt of the repressive crackdown.

Women especially have been at the forefront of the protests. Videos that have made their way onto social media despite government attempts to suppress coverage have shown women defiantly setting their headscarves on fire and cutting their hair in public to chants of “Woman, life, freedom” and “Death to the dictator” - a reference to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

While public protests against the compulsory wearing of the hijab are not new, nothing like the current scale of demonstrations has been seen before. Those women who have inspired and led the protests have been increasingly joined by young men who have backed the women’s demands and extended the scope of the anti-government activism onto a wider political platform.

While piecing together what is happening on the ground remains difficult because of restrictions on independent reporting, the picture that is emerging say analysts is one where the government is clearly rattled. That much was evident in what is already known in Iran as “Bloody Friday” when on September 30 the country saw the deadliest government crackdown so far.

Since then, reports have surfaced that Iranian security forces from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) massacred dozens of people in the south-eastern province of Sistan- Baluchistan when they opened fire on a protest in the city of Zahedan.

The city, which is in one of Iran’s poorest regions, on the border with Pakistan is one of Iran's few Sunni-majority cities and the region is populated by the Baluch ethnic minority who adhere to Sunni Islam rather than the Shiism predominant in Iran.

As in the case of ethnic Kurds,’ activists from the Baluch ethnic community have long complained that the Sistan-Baluchistan region has been the victim of discrimination by Iran's Shiite clerical leadership, with disproportionate numbers of Baluch killed in clashes every year and hanged in executions.

Once again what happened in Zahedan is evidence of the many ethnic and political fault lines that provide the backdrop to the current protests that have convulsed Iran nationwide. But while the protesters themselves might have differing motives what unites them is a desire to see the current regime changed.

For his part Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei went on state television on Friday to make a speech in which he compared the Islamic Republic to an unshakable tree.

“That seedling is a mighty tree now, and no one should dare think they can uproot it,” Khamenei insisted in what many observers see as his toughest warning yet to protesters challenging the regime.

At his disposal in dealing with the protests Khamenei has his ‘shock troops,’ members of the Basij, (ba-SEEJ’) paramilitary volunteers who are fiercely loyal to the Islamic Republic. Time and again over the past two decades at the first signs of protest the Basij show up, men in black, riding motorcycles, often wielding guns or batons.

The Basij whose official names translates to the Organisation for the Mobilisation of the Oppressed, have been an ominous presence ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution when they were established by Ayatollah Khomeini to Islamise society and combat enemies from within.

In peacetime, the Basij, most of whom stem from poor, rural backgrounds enforce Iran’s Islamic social codes, acting as a morality police at checkpoints and parks. Basij have a presence in every Iranian university to monitor people's dress and behaviour as higher education centres are often where Iranian male and females meet for the first time in a mixed environment.

But the moment signs of dissent arise the Basij who analysts say may have as many as 1 million active members, can mobilise a security apparatus that includes armed brigades, anti-riot forces and a vast network of informers who spy on their neighbours.

Faced with such an extensive, formidable and brutal state apparatus begs the question as to what if anything the protesters might be able to achieve as a result of the current unrest?

On the face of it other examples from recent years of attempts to get rid of despots and dictators from Belarus to Syria will give little comfort to those Iranians taking to the streets right now. But some analysts believe the ongoing protests this time in Iran have different characteristics.

“Clearly, the current protests differ from previous waves as they unite people from all walks of life in cities across the country, not asking for reforms but showing their outright contempt for the Islamic Republic,” says political analyst Cornelius Adebahr a specialist on Iran at the international think tank Carnegie Europe.

But as Adebahr also points out in contrast to the Green Movement that sprung up in 2009 in protest following the officially declared election victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the current protests appear to lack any sort of leader or specific political agenda.

For Iran’s protesters to achieve change they would need to build a movement with infrastructure, goals and strategies for moving from dissatisfaction to transformation argue many analysts.

Indeed, the regime has been quick to ensure that doesn’t happen by resorting to the “preventative” arrest of lawyers, journalists, and civil society actors to nip the movement in the bud says Adebahr

Some Iran watchers insist that the first sign of the protests succeeding would be when the security forces stop killing people against the explicit orders of the regime to crack down on them. Right now, that is certainly not the case.

We have been here before some analysts insist. Time and again over the past decades there has been hope and a degree of optimism among the Iranian diaspora that something was about to change and that the will of the people would prevail.

But time and again too, the regime cracks down, cuts off the internet and the protests peter out with little or no tangible change. Will that then be the outcome this time around as well or is what we are witnessing in Iran a country on the verge of a game changing moment as it was with the stunning and sudden fall of the USSR in 1991?

There is no doubt that the regime is worried and that cracks in its edifice have begun to appear. Just a few months ago, the Iranian rumour mill cranked into overdrive amid reports that 83-year-old Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who survived prostate cancer surgery in 2014, was again gravely ill.

Though Khamenei remains well and is still in office, talk of his demise once again threw the spotlight on Iran’s succession process and the underlying questions over its legitimacy and lack of accountability. Such questions are not going away anytime soon and given the current unrest are as pressing now as they have ever been to ordinary Iranians.

The long lingering frustration felt by Iran's citizens has now morphed into open anger in a country where partly because of western sanctions but also chronic government dereliction, 30 per cent of people live below the poverty line and inflation officially stands at 42 per cent.

Almost half of Iran’s population is aged below 40 a young generation that has only known life under the Islamic Republic but grown up in the internet age. I remember well from a visit years ago to Iran being struck by what I could only describe to friends on my return home as the “two Irans” I encountered. The first was a place of ageing religious conservatism and the second a place inhabited by a young vibrant populous who behind closed doors were only too willing to vent their frustration and anger about the former.

Those young Iranians I met craved news and engagement with an outside world that eschewed theocracy and that craving I can only imagine has increased exponentially to which the current protests are testimony.

“There is an overall fundamental sense of a regime that doesn’t deliver to its own people… and the protesters have a long list of grievances,” was how Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran programme at the Middle East Institute, recently summed it up.

This weekend the death toll will doubtless continue to rise as the crackdown on the protests continues. The authorities in Iran said last week that 41 protesters had been killed and more than 1,200 arrested but human rights groups said that the toll was likely to be much higher as information is difficult to come by because of restricted mobile phone and internet provision.

The Islamic Republic has a well-honed instinct for survival, a history of surviving crises and is ruthlessly efficient in stamping out dissent.

But even if as many analysts suggest these protests dissipate, the underlying anger and grievances that fuel the unrest will continue to haunt the Iranian government.

Then there is the danger too as the missile attacks against the bases of the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) in neighbouring Iraq highlighted last week that tensions can spill across borders.

Across Iran the chants of protesters reverberate with cries of “death to the dictator” and “we will die, we will die, but we’ll get Iran back.”

Those Iranians in the streets are still a long way off yet from getting back their country. They have though seriously rattled the Islamic Republic and its political elite and look set to do so for some time to come.