Iranian Protests Turn Deadly

Report: Iranian government kills at least two protesters, censors social media

Dec 31, 2017 11:38 am

Iranian students run for cover from tear gas at the University of Tehran during a demonstration driven by anger over economic problems, in the capital Tehran on December 30, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / STR / GETTY IMAGES

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Protests continued to roil Iran over the weekend, as the government has reportedly opened fire on anti-government protesters and shut down popular social media platforms in the country.

Why are the Iranians protesting?

The protests, which have now reached their third day, center around a number of economic and social issues that have festered in Iran for years. One source of frustration has been economic stagnation in the country, which Iranian citizens expected to improve with the lifting of economic sanctions as part of the 2015 deal struck with the Obama administration. While the nuclear deal lifted sanctions on some areas of the Iranian economy, many Iranian companies and industries are still subject to an international blacklist. Additionally, the Trump administration placed new sanctions on Iran this summer after a rocket launch this July.

These sanctions, combined with endemic government corruption, have caused rising unemployment and inflation in Iran while most of the rest of the world has enjoyed a relatively bullish economy in 2017.

Iranians are also protesting a number of social issues, including a law that has been in place since the 1979 making the wearing of a hijab mandatory for women. An iconic video of an Iranian woman defiantly waving a flag with her face uncovered has come to symbolize the whole protest movement.

In response to the protests, police in Tehran announced this weekend that they would no longer enforce the compulsory hijab law.

Who are the Iranians protesting?

The target of the protests is just as significant as the fact of the protests themselves. While the current protests are not as widespread as the protests during the 2009 Green Movement, they are possibly more significant because they are the first widespread protests directed at Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini since the revolution. The 2009 Green Movement protests were directed at lower level government officials.

In the current protests, many protesters have intentionally defaced posters of Khameini and shouted “death to Khameini” in full public view — actions that would have been unthinkable in the 2009 Green Movement.

How has the government responded?

Other than the announcement that the compulsory hijab would not be enforced in Tehran, the government’s response has mostly been to increase oppression.

Over the weekend, the government shut off access to popular social media platforms Instagram and Telegram, which protesters were using to disseminate footage and pictures of their movement in a country where there is no such thing as a free press.

As the protests escalated over the weekend, the government has also responded with increased brutality. Multiple media outlets have reported that Iranian police appear to have opened fire on a group of protesters in the city of Dorud, apparently killing at least two protesters. While the government has not confirmed these deaths, multiple social media images appeared to show multiple bodies being carried away from the confrontation with police.

The protests themselves have also grown more violent, as protesters set fire to government offices in the city of Ahvaz and stormed the local governor’s compound in the city of Arak.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly tweeted in support of the protesters, and warned the Iranian government that “the world is watching” for possible human rights abuses.

Iranian Nuke Deal Will Bring On More Terrorism

Iran Deal: $150 Billion to Fund Obama's War

by George Phillips
July 28, 2015 at 4:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6225/iran-150-billion-dollars

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Comment

• The Iran deal does not prevent a nuclear Iran. At best, it only delays it a few years.
• Under the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, $150 billion would go to a single regime that has been a state sponsor of terrorism for the entire 36 years of its existence.
• The Iran deal, in five years, will actually lift a ban on sending Iran conventional weapons, including (in eight years) intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States. But Iran is already wasting no time buying weapons and producing weapons on its own.
• When Obama leaves office, he may think that any catastrophe the Iran deal causes will not "technically" be his, but the next president's. But it is his. It's as if someone is lighting a long fuse and will then say he was not near the dynamite when it went off. Any explosions that result from this huge military and financial payday to Iran will, and should, be known as "Obama's war."

In 1947, U.S. President Truman made history by launching the Marshall Plan, sending $13 billion (about $140 billion in today's dollars) to help rebuild post-war Europe, in order to prevent Western Europe from falling to Communist expansion.
Today President Obama is trying to make history through an Iranian nuclear deal that will givean astounding $150 billion of sanctions relief to a regime that was in 2014 considered by the U.S. Department of State, along with Sudan and Syria, one of the world's leading sponsors of terrorism.
The Marshall Plan was spread out over 17 countries that were U.S. allies and considered critical in the long struggle that would put Soviet communism on the "ash-heap of history," in the words of President Ronald Reagan.
Under the President Obama's disastrous Iran nuclear deal, $150 billion would go to a single regime that has been a state sponsor of terrorism for the entire 36 years of its existence.
$150 billion is an enormous amount of money to the Iranian regime, whose failed statist economic policies, ongoing expansionism and internal mismanagement -- not even to speak of its horrifying human rights record in imprisonments, torture, and widespread executions -- have led to a stagnant economy.
How might Iran spend the $150 billion?
Iran has brutally cracked down on dissent in its own country. It brutally imprisoned, tortured, and murdered those in the Green Movement, whose peaceful demonstrations, begun in 2009, had brought together up to three million protesters, and which threatened to topple the regime.
With the new inflow of money, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will have many more resources at its disposal to crush dissent and tighten its grip on power, making regime change -- which should be our urgent and ultimate goal, rather than a fleeting nuclear deal -- all the more unlikely.
Iran has backed the Assad regime in Syria, helping it keep control in a brutal civil war that has cost over 210,000 lives.
Assad even wrote a congratulatory letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei about the deal, probably in the likely assumption that he will get a substantial boost from this $150 billion boom.
A flush $150 billion in the hands of the Iranian regime will also likely give a boost to the Iranian-sponsored Houthi rebels trying to take over Yemen.
Iran has in the past used its Shia militias to kill an estimated 500 Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While the Iraqi Shia militias may be fighting ISIS now, they almost certainly will be fighting and killing more moderate Sunnis in Iraq, who worked with the U.S. government and are willing to work for a peaceful Iraq.
Iran has long backed Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups trying to destroy Israel.
Iran is already sending millions of dollars to Hamas to build and repair tunnels for use in kidnapping and murdering Israelis, and to rebuild Hamas's missile supply.
Iran's Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, already has an estimated 100,000 missiles it could use to attack Israel.
With $150 billion, Iran can fund a massive new war against Israel through its terrorist proxies -- using conventional weapons -- to try to obliterate Israel even before Iran gets nuclear weapons.
The fact that Iran pushed to have the UN arms embargo lifted as part of the nuclear deal shows its intentions for where to spend this $150 billion.
The Iran deal, in five years, will actually lift a ban on sending Iran conventional weapons, including (in eight years) intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States. But Iran is already wasting no time buying weapons and producing weapons on its own.
Russia recently finalized the sale to Iran of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system -- in violation of the existing embargo.
Although there may still be an official UN arms embargo on Iran, there is no ban the transfer of raw materials that they could use to make arms domestically. Iran already has an advanced weapons manufacturing industry.
If the Iran nuclear deal goes through, the mullahs will have to decide how much of the $150 billion will be used to boost their own arms manufacturing efforts and shore up their domestic reign of terror, and how much will be shared with their totalitarian and terrorist allies?
The Iran deal does not prevent a nuclear Iran. At best, it only delays it a few years.
Iran has brazenly vowed not to change its current policies and will continue to finance war, through its terrorist partners, against Israel and Sunni Muslim states. With ICBMs, Iran will not only threaten Middle East neighbors, but also the United States and Europe.

Why is Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif so happy? Zarif is shown hugging French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius at the close of nuclear talks in Geneva, Nov. 23, 2014. (Image source: ISNA)

When President Obama leaves office, he may think that any catastrophe caused by the Iran deal will not "technically" be his, but the next president's. But it is his. It's as if someone is lighting a long fuse and will then say he was not near the dynamite when it detonated. Any explosions that result from this huge military and financial payday to Iran will, and should, be known as "Obama's war."
Members of the U.S. Congress should move swiftly and boldly to vote this terrible deal down and try to stop the $150 billion from going to boost tyranny and terrorism and spread war throughout a region already on fire.

George Phillips served as an aide to Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, working on human rights issues.