People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI\/MEK).<\/a><\/p>\nWidespread chanting of \u201cdeath to the dictator\u201d dates back at least to the end of 2017 when another anti-government uprising began sweeping through more than 100 localities on the back of public expressions of economic discontent. That nationwide protest became the basis for what Mrs. Rajavi termed a \u201cyear full of uprisings\u201d and ultimately became the first in a series of several equally large-scale protests leading straight to the emerging revolution.<\/p>\n
When the 2017 uprising stretched through much of January 2018, even the regime\u2019s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei acknowledged in a speech that the MEK had \u201cplanned for months\u201d to facilitate simultaneous protests and to popularize the message of regime change. This statement contradicted years of propaganda that had sought to dismiss the MEK as a mere cult with little genuine support inside Iran. It was no doubt because of the resulting awareness of serious threats to the mullahs\u2019 hold on power that the regime set out to strike a decisive blow against the Iranian Resistance at its gathering in France later that year.<\/p>\n
Since failing in that endeavor, the regime has only been able to watch as transparent support for the MEK and NCRI continued to grow, both at home and abroad. The 2018 uprising was an early testament to the effectiveness of a network of \u201cResistance Units\u201d that the MEK had begun establishing throughout the country four years earlier. Since then, these direct-action collectives have continued growing in number while also expanding to include hacktivism and highly visible public broadcasts alongside the destruction of regime billboards and statues.<\/p>\n
There were 1,000 members of the Resistance Units who submitted video statements to the coalition\u2019s summer gathering in 2021. One year later, in the run-up to the current uprising, this number multiplied fivefold. The proliferation of this network certainly helps to explain why this uprising is the most widespread in the underlying series and why it has proven uniquely resistant to the regime\u2019s efforts to destroy it.<\/p>\n
More than 500 protesters<\/a> have been killed since September 16, when the morality police beat Mahsa Amini to death for supposedly wearing her hijab too loosely. This is a troubling figure but also a far cry from the 1,500 who were killed within days of an earlier uprising breaking out in November 2019.<\/p>\nThe difference has nothing to do with restraint on the part of the authorities, as should be evident from the Iranian Parliament trying to approve the pursuit of capital punishment for protesters. The comparatively low death toll is better explained by the countless videos that have emerged over the past two months showing protesters and bystanders shielding one another from attack and fighting back, typically with only rocks, against heavily armed security forces.<\/p>\n
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