Iran Hardliners Attack Top Sunni, Shiite Clerics For Defying Khamenei

In a letter issued by a high-ranking army commander, he demanded daily reports on the arrest of army personnel and their families during protests, as well as paying attention to "subversive actions" against military facilities.

Hossein Safaralizadeh, commander of an army base in the southern city of Shiraz, has also mentioned that the army’s inspectorate has also warned other commanders in three provinces of Esfahan, Yazd and Charmahal-Bakhtiari to follow up on such cases on daily basis.

This letter may suggest that the number of army personnel who are showing sympathy toward the protest movement, or family members participating in protests is on the rise and top military officials are concerned about it.

“The presence of army personnel and their families in riots, their arrest by the security, writing anti-government slogans on the walls of the barracks, and the amount of possible damage to the barracks and army housing units must be reported daily… through text, phone, or reports,” reads the letter.

Iran’s traditional Army, as distinct from the Revolutionary Guard, is widely criticized for not acting against the brutality of Basij militiamen, IRGC forces, and police who are ruthlessly killing innocent people during the uprising.

Analysts believe that, in the past years, the Islamic Republic has provided key positions of the army to the members of the Revolutionary Guard to eliminate the possibility of forming an opposition within the army.

At the same time, the conservative camp appears to be divided over the impact of the protests and the sustainability of changes that have already occurred in Iranian society because of more than two months of nationwide protests.

In a commentary in the reformist daily Etemad, leading reformist commentator Abbas Abdi wrote that although some simple-minded individuals still believe that the protests will come to an end soon, the situation warrants more careful analysis.

Abdi asserted that most of Iranians are not happy about existing conditions and support the protests as without their support the movement would not have started in the first place or would have already ended. He argued that the reason why the majority of Iranians do not actively take part in the protests is because they fear the consequences and do not see a promising prospect for the movement. He said the latter is a more important reason.

"The majority believes there is no guarantee that the movement will succeed so they hesitate in the interest of preserving the status quo although they do not like it. Some protesters, on the other hand, believe that whatever happens in the future cannot be worse than the current situation," Abdi argued. He added that unlike some hardliners who have said there will be hell after the Islamic Republic, this is not true because "the current government is unable to function normally and ensure economic growth, control inflation, boost employment and build houses for the people."

Abdi added that "hardliners hope people will be tired of the situation and will give up. "He maintained that "Iran will never return to the situation before protests started. What has happened is irreversible, so we must go on." He argued that change is the only way forward, but it is with positive steps on the part of the government that a breakthrough could happen. Otherwise, the people might choose open-ended uncertainty."

In the meantime, while moderate conservative politician and commentator Mohammad Mohajeri has said that Iranian women might continue defying hijab no matter what comes up in the future, Hamshahri daily, the mouthpiece of Tehran Municipality and the hardliners who run it, assured likeminded ultra-conservatives that "pious people should rest assured the situation will not remain like this."

Mohajeri noted that "as the problems of [compulsory] hijab and the morality police have remained unresolved, the presence of a large number of women without headscarves has become routine in many cities and this is likely to become the new normal for society." However, he noted that this state of indecision could last longer as the government is used to leaving problems unresolved.

Mohajeri agreed that the problem goes beyond hijab as there is a general dissatisfaction in Iran about the way the country is being governed.

On the other hand, Hamshahri wrote that the way women dress now is not likely to continue in the future, arguing that the protests have not led to more women taking off their headscarves, a claim clearly refuted by photos and videos showing many women without hijab.

Hamshahri added that some women take off their scarf as an act of protest and when the protests are over, rationality will also prevail. But there is a big "if" about the end of protests. With three days of more rigorous strikes and protests until Friday, and further plans for next week, the prospect Hamshahri envisages seems to be wishful thinking.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson, Nasser Kanaani called the new round of sanctions “illegal and interventionist.”

He also added that the European parties have lost their “rationality” as such a “wrong approach” would restrict their “scope of interactions.”

Kanaani also threatened that Tehran will take countermeasures against such actions based on its national interests.

The European Union sanctioned 29 Iranians and three entities Monday over what it said was human rights violations related to suppression of ongoing protests.

A statement issued in Brussels, where foreign ministers met, said the move was over “their role in the death of Mahsa Amini and the violent response to the recent demonstrations in Iran.”

Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters that the new sanctions would “send a clear message to those who think they can suppress, intimidate and kill their own people without consequences.”

Britain also slapped a new round of sanctions on 24 Iranian officials who played a role in cracking down on protests after the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.

In a press release on Monday the United Kingdom announced the “sanctions target officials within the Iranian regime who are responsible for heinous human rights violations.”

In several articles over the past weeks, reformist commentators expressed concern that the situation is going toward a revolution while they claimed the nation wanted only to reform the system and warned that a dramatic change may lead to undesirable uncertainty.

On November 14, two reform figures, former President Mohammad Khatami and former vice president Massoumeh Ebtekar broke their silence after more than 8 weeks about a possible demise of the regime and voiced their opposition to dramatic changes in the Iranian political system.

Khatami, revealed his opposition to regime change by saying that it was "neither possible, nor desirable." Nonetheless, he warned that if the current state of affairs continues, the ground is paved for a looming social collapse.

Khatami called on the regime "to reform itself," but at the same time acknowledged that "a large part of the society shares the protesters' dissatisfaction" of the current political system.

On the same day, Ebtekar said in a commentary in the reformist daily Etemad in Tehran, "The new generation of Iranians believes it is not only the Iranian government, but the entire Iranian political system that is inefficient."

She added, "The Iranian government has been lagging behind the society for several years now. By not recognizing natural social developments, the Iranian government has created the current crisis for itself."

Ebtekar said elsewhere in her commentary: "the Iranian state television and other organizations with hefty government budgets which are responsible for keeping the public informed have failed to listen to young Iranians and their demands." She added that "Unfortunately, many religious and propaganda organizations deny the pluralism that exists in Iranian society and wish to dictate whatever that serves their interests."

The new generation that has grown up with the Internet and social media, believes to be a citizen of the world and cannot tolerate the traditional guidelines, Ebtekar said, adding that this has created a generational gap in Iran.

In an article carried by Etemad newspaper, Iranian American author and sociologist Asef Bayat wrote in a response to reformist commentator Abbas Abdi who had opposed regime change and expressed concern that the current protests might lead to a tragic end for Iranian society, "The tragedy of reformism in Iran is that Iranian reformists cannot further any reforms because they have been pushed out of the power circle, and at the same time they cannot agree with radical changes in Iran because by definition they are reformers and not revolutionaries." 

Bayat wrote that "individuals like Abdi fear the cost of a revolution. They fear violence, instability and damage to the country's infrastructure. Ordinary people are also afraid of the cost of a revolution, but they risk everything when they see that all roads to reform are blocked.

"However, some people talk about the risks involved in a revolution as though the current situation is risk-free like a paradise," Bayat said adding that the costs of the current situation include an average 20 percent inflation, high unemployment particularly among educated Iranians, high recession in the 2010s, the collapse of the middle class and pushing 45 percent of the population under the poverty line, destruction of the country's environment and many of its villages, and the decline of Iranians' status in the world because of the government's adventurist policies.

Bayat argued that Mahsa Amini, the young woman murdered in custody of morality police, the workers in Assalouyeh oil and gas fields and millions of Iranian men and women are being constantly humiliated, losing their hopes and their lives. But those who have chosen not to submit to this gradual death have taken collective action to change the status quo.

The NYT said that authoritarian regimes like the Islamic Republic and China increasingly hire detectives to “surveil, harass, threaten and even repatriate dissidents living legally in the U.S.”

Law enforcement officers have told the Times that during the past two years several complaints have been filed in which private investigators, “mostly unwittingly,” were involved in such schemes in different states.

In one case, the New York-based investigator Michael McKeever,71, received a request on his website to track down a debtor who had fled from Dubai to Brooklyn. However, when McKeever started his task by surveilling a house and taking photos of the people coming and going, the FBI warned him that his clients are “bad people and are up to no good.”

At this point McKeever realized he had been used by the intelligence agents of the Iranian regime to kidnap Masih Alinejad, a well-known Iranian-American activist who has been criticizing Iran’s human rights abuses.

“We were afraid they were going to look to snatch and grab her, bring her home and probably kill her,” said James E. Dennehy, the former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence and cyber division in New York, who now runs the bureau’s Newark office.

The report also reveals some other cases in which PIs unwittingly were used by Chinese agents to set up espionage networks, often focusing on national security targets or on individual dissidents.