Two-minute read
On August 27, 2025, in the city of Qazvin, municipal agents savagely attacked impoverished street vendors, beating men and women and destroying their meager goods. The violent assault, captured on video and quickly spread across social media, was not an isolated incident of excessive force but a calculated act of suppression by a regime terrified of its own people.
While the Iranian regime plunders national wealth for its nuclear ambitions and foreign warmongering, it criminalizes the very poverty it has created, responding to citizens’ desperate attempts to survive with brute force. The state’s subsequent, chaotic attempts at damage control only underscore its instability when confronted with public fury.
Qazvin, northwest Iran
Security forces aggressively dismantle the stalls of street vendors and physically assault them, depriving them of the only means to make ends meet. pic.twitter.com/iYCEbzqKfG— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) August 31, 2025
The Regime’s First Instinct: Justifying Cruelty
Before public outrage forced a retreat, the regime’s initial response was to arrogantly defend the violence. Qazvin’s prosecutor, Mohammad Mehdi Rahimi, shamelessly justified the attack, stating, “The municipality is permitted to act against the obstruction of public thoroughfares.” This statement reveals the regime’s core ideology: the poor are not citizens to be supported but obstacles to be violently removed.
This perspective is the logical outcome of a system that prioritizes its own survival and military expansion over the welfare of its people. As NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi noted in response to the attack, the regime “loots Iran’s wealth on nuclear projects, missiles, and foreign wars,” while leaving its own population so desperate that they are brutalized for simply trying to earn a living.
The brutal assault on working street vendors in Qazvin once again exposes the savagery of the mullahs’ plunderous regime. While looting Iran’s wealth on nuclear projects, missiles, and foreign wars, it leaves educated youth jobless and pushes children into labor and even…
— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) September 1, 2025
The Cover-Up: A Circus of Contradictions
Once the footage went viral, the regime’s narrative collapsed into a panicked and contradictory series of pronouncements. The judiciary, which had initially defended the crackdown, suddenly reversed course. Prosecutor Mohammadreza Asgari announced that suspects had been identified and some arrested. Police spokesman Saeid Montazeralmahdi took to X (formerly Twitter) to call the agents’ actions “unacceptable.” Qazvin’s mayor, Mehdi Sabbaghi, offered a hollow apology while simultaneously attempting to discredit the evidence by asking citizens to consider that the videos may have been “edited or incomplete.”
This disarray was most visible within the Qazvin City Council itself. One member, Vali Chegini, admitted that a similar clash had occurred last month and the harsth treatment by municipal agents resulted in a broken hand for another street vendor. This admission proves that the violence is systemic, not an aberration.
A Volcano of Anger Ready to Erupt
The brutal attack in Qazvin and the regime’s subsequent chaotic response are a microcosm of its existential crisis. It is a government that can only rule through violence and deceit. Its officials are so disconnected that they justify cruelty one day and feign compassion the next, all while hoping to quell public anger.
But their fear is palpable. They know that every vendor struggling to feed their family is a potential spark for a nationwide uprising. As Mrs. Rajavi warned, the regime’s crackdown is a sign of weakness. “The day is not far,” she stated, “when the volcano of anger—workers, the jobless, and the marginalized, together with the Resistance Units and the Liberation Army in uprisings—will uproot this tyrannical regime once and for all.”