{"id":237707,"date":"2021-04-11T07:46:21","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T12:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=237707"},"modified":"2023-02-01T04:59:26","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T03:59:26","slug":"irans-protest-movement-has-persevered-and-is-re-emerging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/iran-protests\/irans-protest-movement-has-persevered-and-is-re-emerging\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s Protest Movement Has Persevered and Is Re-Emerging"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Police<\/p>\n

There is substantial evidence that domestic unrest is ramping up in Iran once again. As the Iranian opposition leader, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi<\/a> said in a speech marking last month\u2019s Iranian New Year holiday, even the country\u2019s state media outlets \u201cdescribe Iranian society as a powder keg that could explode at any moment.\u201d Those descriptions are all but certain to proliferate in the weeks ahead, as Tehran continues pushing for widespread public participation in June\u2019s sham presidential election, while Iranians push back against what they see as mere political theater designed to provide the theocratic system with a democratic fa\u00e7ade.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people of Iran also want to boycott<\/a> the upcoming, so-called presidential election because they want a free and democratically elected republic,\u201d Mrs. Rajavi said in the same Nowruz speech. Since then, her observation has been confirmed by multiple reports from within Iran featuring images of anti-regime slogans that have been graffitied or posted in public spaces in order to encourage a boycott of the sham presidential elections. Similar efforts showed unprecedented success during the February 2020 parliamentary elections, which saw the lowest level of public participation in the 40-year history of the regime.<\/p>\n

One might have expected that boycott to coincide with renewed popular unrest throughout the country, if not for the fact that the election closely coincided with the Iranian regime\u2019s first public acknowledgment that the novel coronavirus was actively spreading inside the country. Later, when the pandemic was in full swing, the regime\u2019s president Hassan Rouhani boasted that authorities \u201cdid not delay one day\u201d in informing the public, but in fact, the regime had concealed the crisis for more than a month after the first cases were registered with the National Emergency Organization. In the meantime, officials urged full participation in the sham parliamentary elections, and they only used it after the fact as an alternative explanation for why turnout had been so low.<\/p>\n

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Maryam Rajavi's speech on the advent of Persian New Year 1400<\/div><\/div>
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