{"id":248549,"date":"2021-10-06T09:41:36","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T14:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=248549"},"modified":"2023-02-01T02:00:42","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T01:00:42","slug":"the-meks-resistance-units-the-driving-force-of-the-protests-and-uprisings-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/iran-resistance\/the-meks-resistance-units-the-driving-force-of-the-protests-and-uprisings-in-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"The MEK\u2019s Resistance Units: The Driving Force of the Protests and Uprisings in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"
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FILE PHOTO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since the Iranian regime\u2019s new president, Ebrahim, was appointed in June, there have been signs of persistent unrest in Iran. In fact, the signs of that unrest had made themselves known even before Raisi be \u201cselected<\/a>\u201d by the regime\u2019s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n

Raisi is the \u201chenchman of 1988\u201d and had high-level participation in a massacre of political prisoners that took place in the summer of that year. As Tehran\u2019s deputy public prosecutor in the run-up to the massacre, Raisi became one of four officials to serve on the Tehran \u201cdeath commission\u201d that was tasked with implementing a brutal fatwa issued by the regime\u2019s founder and first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini.<\/p>\n

By all accounts, Raisi was among the most enthusiastic agents of Khomeini\u2019s order for the systematic execution of all members of the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI\/MEK). Protests in advance of Raisi becoming president underlined his responsibility for the vast majority of the 30,000 executions<\/a> estimated to have been carried out during the 1988 massacre.<\/p>\n

As the unrests in recent years in Iran have been escalating the MEK\u2019s \u201cResistance Units\u201d have proven to be a central driving force in a number of recent, large-scale protests and nationwide uprisings.<\/p>\n

One such uprising took place in January 2018 and encompassed well over 100 localities while giving rise to stark anti-regime slogans such as \u201cdeath to the dictator.\u201d Those same slogans were adapted to another nationwide uprising<\/a> in November 2019, this one involving residents of nearly 200 cities and towns. Today, similar slogans are appearing in the form of graffiti and banners in many of those municipalities, signaling the same sort of Resistance Units activism that set the stage for the previous protests.<\/p>\n

Of course, unlike in 2018 and 2019, many of the current slogans take aim at Raisi, while also maintaining their prior focus on \u201cthe dictator,\u201d Khamenei. In recent days, the MEK has identified at least 17 cities in which Resistance Units had posted messages publicly, often urging another popular push for regime change as the only solution to problems plaguing Iranian society. In some cases, the site of these messages overlapped with the locations of large-scale protests organized by schoolteachers to mark the start of a new academic year.<\/p>\n

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Iran: The MEK Resistance Units Represent the Nucleus of the Campaign to UNSEAT the Mullahs.<\/div><\/div>
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