Hardline Cleric Says Recent Protests In Iran Unprecedented
Firebrand Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami has admitted that "the Islamic Republic has never had [such] tough days like the past 100 days of protests".
Firebrand Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami has admitted that "the Islamic Republic has never had [such] tough days like the past 100 days of protests".
In a speech on Sunday in the city of Semnan, Tehran’s Friday Prayer Imam called the popular protests of the past six months a "riot" aimed at ousting the regime. He acknowledged that protesters saw no difference between ‘reformist’ and ‘hardliner’ factions of the Islamic Republic and were bent on overthrowing the regime.
In addition, international assessments show the protests in the past six months have been unprecedented in terms of their size, the largest ever since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
Ahmad Khatami, who is a member of the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts, also made the extreme claim that by the "Woman, Life, Freedom" slogan the protesters are seeking "nudity" in their fight against the hijab.
In its propaganda, the authorities of the Islamic Republic use words such as "nudity" and "bareness" to belittle the fight against the mandatory hijab as women act to defend their fundamental rights and social freedoms.
Following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in September, rights groups claim that regime forces have killed over 500 protesters including at least 70 children with brutal suppressive measures across the country.
Iran’s judiciary has also sentenced four protesters to death after sham trials where the young men did not have basic access to lawyers.
Radio Farda, the Persian Service of US government funded Radio Free Europe (RFE/RL) said it has received a copy of the letter sent by Iran’s Mission to the United Nations which is based on the statements of the Ministries of Interior and Health and other government institutions, along with the remarks of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Raisi and the judiciary chief.
The letter claims that less than ten percent of the students experienced symptoms of poisoning, and all were transferred to the hospital and discharged in a short time. It further alleges that only four students needed hospitalization for more than two days.
In the letter, the Islamic Republic however noted that students in 250 classrooms in 52 schools in different cities were poisoned.
This comes as Iran's Ministry of Health said early last week that 13,000 students were poisoned in 100 cities of 28 provinces.
Some Iranian media say at least 30,000 students were poisoned within the past couple of months.
Hundreds of schoolgirls -- who have been at the forefront of anti-regime protests - have been chemically poisoned since November 30 when the first case of a mysterious poisoning was reported in the religious city of Qom.
While the Islamic Republic has been fiercely cracking down on dissent, many believe it was involved in the serial chemical attacks on schoolgirls. Activists and right groups have called on the international community to pressure the regime over the issue.
A day after the letter was sent, eight experts of the United Nations said the Iranian regime committed "intentional”poisoning and instead of confronting the attacks and conducting a quick investigation, it put its efforts into covering up the incidents.
Last week, the European Parliament adopted a resolution to decry the regime’s months-long failure to act on the serial poisonings, as well as its deliberate suppression of credible reports of systematic toxic attacks.
Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology Issa Zarepour said Friday that there is no accurate data regarding the damage from internet access restrictions. However, independent VPN review website Top10VPN said in its annual that the economic impact was about $773 million in 2022.
While in dollars this might not appear to be a staggering figure, in local currency it is hundreds of trillions of rials and a huge loss for an economy straddled by US sanctions, inefficiency and corruption.
As nationwide anti-regime protests began in September, the government started to disrupt access to the internet to prevent news about the unrest being disseminated both inside the country and abroad. It also aimed at preventing protesters from communicating with each other. Internet disruption lasted for weeks.
Intermittent disruption have continued in 2023, mostly coinciding with protests. The latest one occurred on March 7, as Iranians were holding a nationwide rally to protest the regime's inaction or possible involvement in the face of poisonous gas attacks on schoolgirls in recent months.
Drawing widespread criticism on social media, Zarepour, however, rejected the estimates by the company – and any other foreign source for that matter – saying that "there have been dozens of assessments by foreign sources that cannot be relied upon." He added that the Islamic Republic itself has not done any evaluation over the losses caused by the Internet restrictions.
Earlier in the month, Statista -- an online platform specialized in market and consumer data – said Iran’s blocking access to social media sites and news outlets was second only to Russia in 2022, affecting almost 72 million people
A report released in January said that due to extensive internet and social network restrictions, 20 percent of people lost their online jobs in the last four months of the previous year. According to Jobvision website, 46 percent of organizations suspended or postponed more than half of their recruitment programs due to the recent internet restrictions, and 45% of companies or businesses that depend on the Internet have decided to reduce their payments or had to pay wages by delay.
The computer trade union of Tehran -- or Tehran ICT Guild Organization -- announced in November that almost half of the Internet service providers in had seen a 50-percent drop in sales due to disruptions, censorship, and Internet shutdowns during the protests. The union's secretary Alireza Keshavarz Jamshidian went on to say that about half of the Internet providers lost over 500 million rials (around $1,400) a day, as sales dropped. However, he added, one-fifth of the companies say they suffered between $2,800 and $14,000 loss a day.
Curfew-style shut down of the internet has a highly damaging impact on several industries including food, medicine, and steel production, especially on small businesses and farmers. The E-Commerce Association in Tehran announced last year that the internet shutdown costs Iran $1.5 million per hour.
Despite all the losses due to the government restrictions, the cash-strapped administration of Ebrahim Raisi has issued a new decree to collect eight percent royalty fee from video call services of mobile operators in the country.
