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Iran State-Media Reflect Mullahs’ Utter Fear of Major Protests

Iran State-Media Reflect Mullahs’ Utter Fear of Major Protests
Iran, Protests in Tehran December 2017– January 2018 – file photo

In recent days, in reaction to a series of international and domestic developments, the Iranian regime’s state-run media outlets are warning about a looming uprising, reflecting the regime’s utter fear.  

These media outlets have reacted to the following issues:  

  1. The coronavirus outbreak, its rising death toll, and effect on the restive Iranian society.  
  2. The regime’s deceptive economic plan, or so-called “economic relief,” which is nothing but selling oil to the people. And the subsequent decrease of Iran’s stock market rate.  

COVID-19 outbreak   

The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) announced on Tuesday that over 90,700 people have lost their lives due to the novel coronavirus. The regime’s cover-up and intentional inaction since the beginning of this pandemic, then forcing people back to work, have increased the death and infection rate. Now fearing their mismanagement of the crisis would trigger a new series of the major Iran protests, like the one in November that rattled the regime’s foundations, some of the regime’s officials and state media are acknowledging some parts of this crisis and warning of its outcome.  

In this regard, the state-run Setareh Sobh (Morning Star), quoting Reza Malekzadeh the regime’s Deputy Health Minister, wrote: The government wants to return the situation to normal by setting health protocols, but it is ignorant of the fact that 26 provinces of the country are currently red or on alert. According to experts, the speed and power of the virus transmission in the second wave has increased three to nine times. At the same time, the medical staff and medical equipment are worn out and are not able to withstand the third wave of the outbreak that will come in autumn and winter. Holding mourning ceremonies and reopening schools and universities creates serious crises in spreading the virus. If these ceremonies and reopening occur, we will see the alarming outbreak of Coronavirus in the fall.”  

Last week, the state-run Jahan-e Sanat published an interview with Mohammad Reza Mahboubfar, a member of the National Covid-19 Task Force. This interview resulted in Jahan-e Sanat’s closure. Mahboubfar had said: “We witnessed the first patients suffering from Covid-19 exactly a month prior to the official announcement of this virus entering the country, meaning around mid-January. However, at the time the government concealed this due to political and security reservations. Unfortunately, from the very beginning, transparent reporting was not provided to the public. Most certainly these numbers have been engineered from the very beginning of the coronavirus epidemic. Anyhow, they are being provided to the society based on political and security reservations. In my opinion, the numbers reported by the Health Ministry (cases and deaths) are one-twentieth of the true figures.”  

On July 13, the state-run Mostaghel, reflecting the regime’s utter fear of another uprising, wrote: This nation will not forget how it was abandoned during these bitter days.  This will affect the upcoming incidents.”  

Bogus Economic Relief by Rouhani  

The regime’s president, Hassan Rouhani, after days of bragging about a so-called “economic relief”, revealed its plan which was nothing but selling oil or other governmental shares to the Iranian people and further plundering the nation. This resulted in the Iranian stock market experiencing heavy losses.  

While referring to the government’s decision to raise the fuel price which triggered the major Iran protests in November 2019, the state-run Ebtekar daily wrote: The government saw its wrong behavior [in rising] the fuel price. Due to the current situation with many issues like squeezed springs, any behavior that leads to the formation of an ‘explosive stock market’ and its explosion will be an economic suicide for the [regime’] and society. And this will have security consequences.” 

The state-run Aftab-e Yazd wrote on August 16: “If people lose confidence in the market, the effects will not be the same as before. Since now many of people are involved in the stock market, the stock market collapse cannot have good consequences.”  

In this regard, while trying to blame the rival faction forlack of expertise,” the state-run Resalat daily wrote: Unusually, many of the decisions of this government are not expert, and for not having this expertise, we have paid heavy costs, such as November incidents. The government’s decision in raising the fuel price, which was also approved by the Supreme Economic Coordination Council, led to protests and riots in November and weakened the system.”  

Another state-run news agency, Nasim, in an article acknowledged the regime’s mismanagement of the crisis and wroteThe crisis management of the government showed itself one day in the way of distributing food baskets and long queues for obtaining it, one day in managing the tomato and poultry market, one day in the decision to increase the price of gasoline overnight, which led to the bitter events of November 2019, and one day to compensate for the budget deficit taking away the nation’s property in the name of privatization which has resulted only in unemployment of workers and their strikes.