{"id":227080,"date":"2020-10-01T18:23:39","date_gmt":"2020-10-01T17:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=227080"},"modified":"2023-02-01T05:42:30","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T04:42:30","slug":"iran-recurring-uprisings-expose-tehrans-twisted-priorities-and-tenuous-hold-on-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/iran-protests\/iran-recurring-uprisings-expose-tehrans-twisted-priorities-and-tenuous-hold-on-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran: Recurring Uprisings Expose Tehran\u2019s Twisted Priorities and Tenuous Hold on Power"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Iran,
The November 2019 nationwide uprising in Iran<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Iranian regime\u2019s officials have been fearful of recurring uprisings since the spontaneous emergence of a nationwide protest movement in the final days of 2017. Their fears were quickly compounded by the people\u2019s resilience in the face of harsh government crackdowns. Although thousands of arrests and dozens of killings led to the initial uprising being fractured before the end of 2018, it also sparked a series of more local anti-government demonstrations that the opposition leader Mrs. Maryam Rajavi referred<\/a> to as \u201ca year full of uprisings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"navid
Navid Afkari<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tehran remains committed to imposing severe consequences on those who participated in uprisings, challenging mullahs\u2019 40 years of oppression. This is evidenced by the September 12 execution of Navid Afkari<\/a>. The 27-year-old champion wrestler, a highly popular figure in Iran, was arrested for attending protests in the city of Shiraz in August 2018. His case garnered international headlines after it became clear that he was tortured into providing a false murder confession<\/a> despite the complete absence of evidence supporting the accusation. But Iran\u2019s judiciary dismissed all appeals for a re-trial, and apparently accelerated his death sentence in hopes of moving past the controversy.<\/p>\n

The implementation of that sentence was surely important to the mullahs because Afkari\u2019s high-profile status allowed for him to be used as a warning to all ordinary private citizens. One appeal to save his life<\/a>, signed by nearly 50 Iranian professional athletes, noted that the regime has a long history of this sort of conduct, as it \u201ccannot tolerate popular figures\u201d who speak out against the theocratic system. That intolerance only increased in the two years between Afkari\u2019s arrest and the confirmation of his death sentence, as public unrest grew into yet another nationwide uprising during that time.<\/p>\n

The sequel to the first uprising took place in November 2019, as people in over 200 cities and towns flooded the streets<\/a> after the announcement of a sharp increase in the price of gasoline. The second uprising immediately took up the defining slogans of the first, including \u201cdeath to the dictator\u201d and other explicit calls for regime change. In January 2018, the regime\u2019s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei attributed those slogans to the organizing efforts of the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI-MEK)<\/a>. Nearly two years later, the leading democratic opposition group proved that its influence had not diminished in the face of escalating government crackdowns.<\/p>\n

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Khamenei, Regime\u2019s Supreme Leader Blames the MEK for the Iran Protests<\/div><\/div>
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