APTOPIX Iran
Sun, October 2, 2022
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s parliamentary speaker warned Sunday that protests over the death of a young woman in police custody could destabilize the country and urged security forces to deal harshly with those he claimed endanger public order, as countrywide unrest entered its third week.
Posts on social media showed there were scattered anti-government protests in Tehran and running clashes with security forces in other towns Sunday, even as the government has moved to block, partly or entirely, internet connectivity in Iran.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf told lawmakers that unlike the current protests, which he said aim to topple the government, previous demonstrations by teachers and retirees over pay were aimed at reforms, according to the legislative body's website.
“The important point of the (past) protests was that they were reform-seeking and not aimed at overthrowing" the system, said Qalibaf. “I ask all who have any (reasons to) protest not to allow their protest to turn into destabilizing and toppling" of institutions.
Thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been detained by Iran's morality police in the capital Tehran for allegedly not adhering to Iran's strict Islamic dress code.
The protesters have vented their anger over the treatment of women and wider repression in the Islamic Republic. The nationwide demonstrations rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of the clerical establishment that has ruled Iran since its 1979 Islamic revolution.
Iranian state TV has reported that at least 41 protesters and police have been killed since the demonstrations began Sept. 17. An Associated Press count of official statements by authorities tallied at least 14 dead, with more than 1,500 demonstrators arrested.
Qalibaf, the parliamentary speaker, is a former influential commander in the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Along with the president and the head of the judiciary, he is one of three ranking officials who deal with all important issues of the nation.
The three meet regularly and sometimes meet with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters.
Qalibaf said he believes many of those taking part in recent protests had no intention of seeking to overthrow the government in the beginning and claimed foreign-based opposition groups were fomenting protests aimed at tearing down the system. Iranian authorities have not presented evidence for their allegations of foreign involvement in the protests.
“Creating chaos in the streets will weaken social integrity, jeopardizing the economy while increasing pressure and sanctions by the enemy,” he said, referring to longstanding crippling U.S. sanctions on Iran.
Qalibaf promised to “amend the structures and methods of the morality police” to prevent a recurrence of what happened to Amini. She died in the custody of the morality police. Her family alleged she was beaten, while officials claim she died of a heart attack.
His remarks came after a closed meeting of Parliament and a brief rally by lawmakers to voice support for Khamenei and the police, chanting “death to hypocrites,” a reference to Iranian opposition groups.
The statement by Qalibaf is seen as an appeal to Iranians to stop their protests while supporting police and the security apparatus.
Meanwhile, the hard-line Kayhan daily said Sunday that knife-carrying protesters attacked the newspaper building Saturday and shattered windows with rocks. It said they left when Guard members were deployed to the site.
On Saturday, protests continued on the Tehran University campus and in nearby neighborhoods and witnesses said they saw many girls waving their head scarves above their heads in a gesture of defiance. Social media carried videos purportedly showing similar protests at the Mashhad and Shiraz universities but The Associated Press could not independently verify their authenticity.
A protester near Tehran University, 19-year-old Fatemeh who only gave her first name for fear of repercussions, said she joined the demonstration “to stop this behavior by police against younger people especially girls.”
Abdolali, a 63-year-old teacher who also declined to give his last name, said he was shot twice in the foot by police. He said: “I am here to accompany and support my daughter. I once participated in the 1979 Islamic Revolution that promised justice and freedom; it is time to materialize them.”
Protests resumed on Sunday in several cities including Mashhad, according to social media reports, and Tehran’s Sharif Industrial University, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. Witnesses said security was tight in the areas nearby Tehran University and its neighborhoods downtown as hundreds of anti-riot police and plain clothes with their cars and motorbikes were stationed on junctions and squares. The AP could not immediately verify the authenticity of the reports.
Also on Sunday, media outlets reported the death of another Revolutionary Guard member in the southeastern city of Zahedan. That brought to five the number of IRG members killed in an attack on a police station by gunmen that, according to state media, left 19 people dead.
It wasn't clear if the attack, which Iranian authorities said was carried out by separatists, was related to the anti-government protests.
Local media said a police officer also had died in the Kurdish city of Marivan, following injuries during clashes with protesters. The protests have drawn supporters from various ethnic groups, including Kurdish opposition movements in the northwest of Iran that operate along the border with neighboring Iraq.
Amini was an Iranian Kurd and the protests first erupted in Kurdish areas.
Kevin Fixler
Sat, October 1, 2022
Nearly 100 members of Boise’s Iranian-American community and supporters rallied on the Idaho Capitol steps Saturday afternoon, one in a series of protests in major cities across the world sparked by the death of a young woman in the Iranian capital last month for allegedly defying the regime’s rules governing women’s public appearance.
“Woman! Life! Freedom!” demonstrators chanted in unison, demanding the end of Islamic law and the liberation of the Islamic Republic of Iran from its authoritarian leaders. “Democracy in Iran!”
Impassioned rally attendees waved mini-tricolor flags for the original state of Iran and brought homemade signs with messages including “Free Iran! Be our voice!” Others passed out printed images of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian woman who died Sept. 16 in Tehran under disputed circumstances, and also assembled a small memorial with flowers and candles dedicated to her on the Capitol steps
A small memorial for Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was taken into custody for allegedly disobeying the nation’s dress code for women is assembled on the steps of the Idaho Capitol during a rally held by members of Boise’s Iranian-American community and supporters, on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022.
“Say her name!” shouted attendees, taking turns leading the group and switching between chants in English and Farsi, the language of Western Iran. “Justice for Iran! Justice for Mahsa!”
Afagh Faramarzi, 30, of Meridian, helped organize Saturday’s hourlong event. She arrived as a teenager to the Treasure Valley from the south-central Iranian city of Shiraz, she told the Idaho Statesman.
Asal Syes, center left, and Afagh Faramarzi, with an Iranian flag, lead a chant during a rally at the Idaho Capitol against the treatment of women in Iran, on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. Protesters have been demonstrating against the Middle Eastern nation’s authoritarian government after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who last month was taken into police custody for allegedly disobeying the nation’s dress code for women.
“I am angry. I cry a lot,” Faramarzi told rallygoers in welcoming remarks. “I am worried. I am hopeful. … I am a woman of Iran.”
She called on Idaho’s federal lawmakers to help advocate against the Iranian government and hold the Middle Eastern country’s leadership accountable.
U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, is the ranking member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Last week, he joined fellow senators in introducing a bipartisan resolution condemning Amini’s death, designating it a “murder.”
“The murder of Mahsa Amini was a horrible reminder of the Iranian regime’s oppressive beliefs and gross violations of women’s basic human rights,” Risch said in a statement. “The Iranian people bravely protesting her death demonstrate their desire for a more peaceful and free Iran.”
The U.S. Department of State officially labels Iran a brutal, dangerous regime, and “the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”
Amini was arrested last month by Iran’s so-called “morality police,” who strictly enforce the Muslim country’s dress code for women. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, women and girls over the age of 9 have been required to wear loose fitting clothes and headscarves, known as hijabs, out in public.
Amini reportedly traveled to the nation’s capital with family from her home in the Kurdistan Province near the border with Iraq. Following her arrest, police said she collapsed after suffering a heart attack and fell into a coma. She died at a hospital three days later.
Members of Amini’s family reject the narrative from state authorities that she had underlying health conditions and have instead said she was beaten and tortured. Daily protests have raged throughout the country since, with police arresting hundreds of people, with still dozens more reportedly dead.
In the wake of ongoing protests, Iran’s regime also has worked to block the internet and reportedly detained dozens of journalists, including Niloufar Hamedi, the reporter who first brought Amini’s case to light.
Since 2000, 345 refugees from Iran have arrived to Idaho, though none in the last year, according to the Idaho Office For Refugees. The state’s largest resettlement cities include Boise, Twin Falls and Pocatello.
Members of Boise’s Iranian-American community and supporters rallied at the Idaho Capitol against the treatment of women in Iran, on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. Protesters have been demonstrating against Iran’s authoritarian government after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who last month was taken into police custody for allegedly disobeying the nation’s dress code for women.
The Biden administration last week committed to admitting up to 125,000 refugees into the U.S. from across the world through next summer. Combined, the grouped regions of Europe and Central Asia, and the Near East/South Asia are allotted up to 50,000 slots.
For 2022, the U.S. also set its annual cap at 125,000, though the number of refugees who have entered the country this year is about 15,000, the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute reports.
More than 1,200 of those refugees from 18 countries, primarily from Afghanistan, Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of Congo, resettled in Idaho over the past year. The Idaho Office For Refugees expects about 1,075 more refugee arrivals in the state over the next year, which is on par for averages in Idaho over the past 20 years, according to Holly Beech, a spokesperson for the agency.
“Here in Idaho and across the country we’ve seen a renewed sense of urgency to help displaced people, which has reached record highs,” she told the Statesman by email. “A healthy resettlement program provides a pathway for people to rebuild their lives in safety, reunite with family, and create stronger communities and economies.”
Arthur I. Cyr
Sat, October 1, 2022
Arthur I. Cyr
The enormous mass public demonstrations in Iran could bring a change in regime. The fundamentalist Islamic rulers of the nation must be worried. A large number of cities across the country are experiencing the ongoing protests, though estimates of just how many vary.
The immediate spark for this important development is the troubling death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman of 22, while in police custody. Authorities allegedly arrested her for improper wearing of the headscarf required by the government.
Iran continues to be a focus of frustration for United States foreign policy. The fundamentalist Islamic regime in Tehran has long voiced hostility to Israel as well as the U.S., punctuated from time to time with public threats of apocalyptic destruction.
Consequently, the steady expansion of Iran’s uranium enrichment program causes understandable concern.
The P5+1 formation is the principal international group dealing with Iran. Nations involved are Britain, China, France, Russia and the U.S. – the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - plus Germany.
In November 2013, the group, after considerable challenging diplomatic effort, reached an agreement with Tehran. The accord increased international monitoring of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program in exchange for lifting some economic sanctions. The Trump administration abruptly ended this nuclear agreement.
Read more: How protests in Iran over Mahsa Amini's death 'forever moved the debate' over women's rights
Immediately after World War II, Soviet troops occupied northern Iran. The Truman administration successfully pressured Moscow to withdraw. Later, British and CIA operatives overthrew the elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh.
In 1979, revolutionaries overthrew the pro-U.S. Iran regime and Islamic fundamentalism ascended. This abruptly ended Iran’s previous posture as a close and notably influential American ally. Over the intervening decades, the breach has continued.
After ousting the autocratic Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Islamic militants seized the American embassy, took hostages and held them for months. The lengthy crisis poisoned Tehran-Washington relations and helped Ronald Reagan defeat incumbent President Jimmy Carter in 1980. During the Reagan administration, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in a lengthy eight-year war with Iran.
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The 2009 presidential election sparked mass demonstrations against alleged election fraud. Use of cell phones to report the demonstrations revealed broad public discontent. Dictators can no longer completely suppress information, though Tehran is trying.
The Shah’s modernization policies over the long term had fostered a relatively well-educated population. There is a sizable middle class. The urban population has been expanding steadily.
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Women play influential roles in a wide range of professions. The relatively modern economy – and society – contrast with other nations where fundamentalist Islam plays a major or dominant role.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, remained an interested – and often acutely perceptive - analyst of Iran developments. Until his death in 2017, he regularly noted publicly that the fundamentalist mullahs running the country face very fundamental problems.
Without a new nuclear agreement, sanctions on Iran could eventually destroy the economy. Brzezinski believed Iran could move in the same direction as Turkey. That nation constitutionally is a secular state, and remains a faithful member of NATO, even though a fundamentalist political party controls the presidency.
Nearly a decade before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, former President Richard Nixon in his book “Beyond Peace” argued that invading provocative Saddam Hussein’s Iraq would be a mammoth blunder, leading to expansion of the influence of Iran, our actual regional diplomatic and strategic rival
History and current unfolding events confirm President Nixon’s insight, and should guide policy.
Arthur I. Cyr is the author of “After the Cold War – American Foreign Policy, Europe and Asia.” Contact him at acyr@carthage.edu.
This article originally appeared on The Record: Iran presents an opportunity and a challenge after Mahsa Amini's death
