The geography of protests in Iran
Iran, Aug 16, 2018 - Looking at Iran from any angle provides us an image engulfed with protests, strikes, picket lines and demonstrations launched by a powder keg society. These anti-regime protests may have their ups and down, yet it is proven in the past nine month there is no turning back.
More than 150 cities across Iran are witnessing expanding protests, beginning back in late December 2017 when demonstrations sparked in Mashhad and quickly spread to Sanandaj, Tehran and at least 140 other cities, dangerously placing the Iranian people against the regime. This characteristic was seen vividly in Kazerun. Then truck drivers went on strike across the country. Afterwards the city of Borazjan and others in Khuzestan Province rose, followed by farmers in Varzaneh near Isfahan.
This is the people responding to the mullahs’ 40 years of repression.
The people are expressing their hatred of the mullahs in a domino fashion, a fury that has been escalating for four long decades now.
Tehran’s bazaar, home to Iran’s main economic pillars, has joined the protesters’ ranks. Brave youths in Tehran have immediately showed their support. It is quite considerable the fact that bazaar merchants first demanded freedoms and chanted political slogans in their protests.
Karaj, Tehran’s neighbor to the west, was also the scene of several nights of major protests and extensive skirmishes between protesters and authorities. Some sources even reported intense close-contact clashes.
More recently, Tehran’s shoe market store owners went on strike chanting “Death to the dictator.” This goes far beyond already legitimate protests over skyrocketing prices and the scarcity of goods.
These signs all indicate there’s no other link between the people and the ruling mullahs. Iranian regime officials are realizing these protests will continue.
Furthermore, the ruling regime has no solution to the expanding uproar facing its establishment. The Iranian people are challenging all the tools and tactics used by the ruling regime to remain in power.
The people are no longer accepting the regime’s expansionism in Syria, Yemen, Iraq; the officials’ rampaging corruption, constant lies, embezzlement by Iranian regime officials and their relatives, banks stealing people’s money, the regime’s endless deceit about “foreign enemies,” and …
Protesters are also responding to the regime’s deceptive measures by chanting, “Reformists, principalists, end of story.”
All of the above portray a very telling political balance of power. Iranian regime officials from all factions are desperately focusing efforts to maintain their apparatus intact.
What they’re missing is the undeniable fact that Iran can only be “saved” through regime change and bringing an end to the mullahs’ four decades of atrocities.
These anti-regime protests will escalate and bring about the end of the Iranian regime as we know it, paving the path for the establishment of freedom and democracy across Iran.
