Iran's Police Special Forces Prepare For New Protests
The commander of the Iranian Police special units says his force is expanding its capabilities in preparation for tackling fresh protests.
The commander of the Iranian Police special units says his force is expanding its capabilities in preparation for tackling fresh protests.
General Hassan Karami told Entekhab News on March 25, that the special forces are preparing to simultaneously confront unrest at 400 locations.
The protests that started in September 2022 raged in more than 100 Iranian cities for over five months before they receded in February, although protests in some regions and chanting from rooftops still continue and pockets of street protests have also been observed.
In Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan Province protests have taken place every Friday since September. Hundreds have been reportedly killed or wounded during the protests over the past six months.
Gen. Karami called the ‘Woman, life, freedom’ protests “Super Sedition” and claimed that his forces have overcome the unrest “successfully.” Using military terms for treatment of civil disobedience, Karami said: “We have grounded the enemy and its human resources and media backing it and badly defeated them.”
Since the start of the protests Iranian officials including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and military commanders attributed the protests to “conspiracies” hatched by foreign powers and media.
The special force of the Iranian police was only one of the units the government used to suppress the protests. Karami characterized it as “A specialized force with unique capabilities.” He said: “We designed our operations based on the location and nature of threats.” Karami also boasted that most of the equipment used by the special forces are made in Iran.
During the protests, apart from improvised vans that were turned into anti-riot vehicles, all the weapons, including shotguns used to blind the protesters were imported from other countries.
Although Karami’s remarks reveal the Iranian regime fears a new round of nationwide protests in the spring, Interior Minister Ahmadi Vahid who is the highest-ranking officer in charge of the police said in remarks about the protests: “We had to face some problems and nuisance in the past year but we cannot say that it was a tough year.”
He said that the National Security Council under his supervision was tasked with dealing with the protest, and we accomplished this mission successfully.” Ironically, Vahidi did his best to avoid the word “protest” and referred to it as "this matter” or “the nuisance.” He also said that “It was a problem the Islamic Republic’s enemies had created.”
Vahidi said that the protests did not distract Iranian officials from focusing on what they needed to do for the country. What he said is in contrast with remarks by many Iranian politicians including members of the parliament who have been constantly criticizing the government for its inaction in the face of the country's most serious economic crisis in modern history and for failing to solve Iran's foreign policy problems.
During the past months, observers have warned the government that popular discontent persists "like a fire under the ashes" and that protests might erupt at any moment with small events that can ignite big upheavals. Even Khamenei's top military adviser former IRGC Commander Yahya Rahim Safavi has warned him that protests might reoccur if the officials do not stand by the promises they have made to the nation.
Other Iranian observers such as reformist commentator and political activist Hamid Reza Jalaeipour have warned that : "Iran has not yet entered a revolutionary situation, but if the current unrest continues, the country will move toward a revolutionary phase."
The article by journalist Davoud Heshmati in Shargh said Raisi was too optimistic toward the loose coalition among conservative groups that formed his government and took over the parliament. In fact, popular protests may have delayed the activation of fault-lines within the government and preserved its unity. "The coalition was too fragile," Heshmati wrote.
"Despite the delay, in its emergence, the political deadlock is quite visible. The government is incapable of making decisions and this makes next year's developments interesting," he said.
According to the author, "the Iranian society is alive, but Iranian politics is in coma." The Iranian society is anything but "indifferent." Everyone thought the youth were apolitical, but they managed to create a great movement in the streets even without a leadership and organization. What brought them together was the demands for freedom in choosing their lifestyle.
The protests that erupted last September after the death of a young woman in police custody over her ‘inadequate hijab’, was led by teenagers and young people, especially women.
Another issue Heshmati pointed out was that the Iranians had already lost hope in elections after former president Hassan Rouhani refused to or was unable to address the issue of democracy and representation and instead dedicated his efforts to resolving the nuclear issue with the West, only to be blocked by hardliners.
Heshmati wrote that part of the reason hardliners took over the parliament in 2020 and the presidency in 2021, was the people's disillusionment about the possibility of change and reform after eight years of a centrist president. The majority simply did not turn out to vote, giving hardliners the victory.
As a result, Heshmati argued, political action that should have happened during elections spilled to the streets where activists with little or no political background took the lead. Now, they have returned to their homes, tired and battered. The government in Iran is adamant not to recognize their movement and the opposition outside the country can only radicalize the movement and work hard to advocate the demand for regime change.
This has led to a situation in which the society is in an unpleasant political state and the government has lost its capacity to handle the economic crisis because of the impact of the protests and rivalries that are tearing apart the political system.
As a way out of this situation, Heshmati suggested that the regime needs to restore the people's trust in the political system by attaching importance to the ballot box in the parliamentary elections in 2024 and by encouraging everyone to take part by promising representation and allowing political parties to become active.
Meanwhile, both the protesters who took to the streets for months and politicians in Iran maintain that"Iranians no longer believe in the reformist-conservative dichotomy," and they are unlikely to settle for stage-managed elections that would bring the same old useless politicians to the parliament.
In the absence of rigorous street protests, people who chant slogans from their rooftops or out of their windows every night make it known that their demands are beyond what reformists and conservatives tolerated by the regime can claim to meet.
Meanwhile, like many other politicians and analysts during the past months, an article in Donya-e Eqtesad (Economic World) pointed out that Iran's domestic problems are unlikely to be solved without addressing key foreign policy issues most markedly the nuclear issue.
During his Friday prayer sermons, which was the first in the fasting month of Ramadan, Mowlavi Abdolhamid said, "In the past, we have had elections in which we elected representatives and presidents, but they were not real elections, they were appointments.”
In a free election, people have a choice to vote for whoever they deem fit to represent them, but in Iran the Guardian Council puts forth a number of their cherrypicked insiders, who are not capable of running the country, he said.
He further described killing of protesters and harsh treatment of people detained during over six months of nationwide rallies against the regime as a "big mistake" and a "grave sin."
"There are protests everywhere in the world, but they (authorities) listen to the people and do not kill them like they did in Iran. Killing protesting people in Iran was a big mistake. They should not have hit and killed people with gunfire. Many people went to prison and the detainees were treated harshly, which was a painful and regretful incident,” he said.
Abdolhamid went on to say that neither religion, nor sect, should be a factor when it comes to elections, noting that the only people who should be in managerial positions are those who can make Iran prosperous, not like the current officials who only care about filling their own pockets.
Although street protests are not as frequent as the past few months, peoples’ hearts are "wounded and in pain," the cleric maintained.
Portraying the previous Iranian year as a grim year with lots of ups and downs that led to the creation of the current protest movement, he said, “The people of Iran felt difficulties regarding many issues, they saw themselves in trouble and failure in life, they were under the most severe economic pressures that threaten their livelihood."
In addition to economic issues, the outspoken Sunni leader said systematic corruption, as well as unpopular domestic and foreign policies were other factors led the people to revolt.
This Friday again authorities shut down internet access in Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchestan where Abdolhamid delivers his sermons and it is home to the country’s Sunni Baluch minority of up to two million people. Cyberspace watchdog NetBlocks confirmed the major disruption to internet service, saying that the incident follows an ongoing pattern of network blackouts targeting protests during Friday prayers.
Following his sermons, people of the city held rallies to protest against the Islamic Republic for the 25th week in a row, chanting anti-regime slogans like “We Don’t Want a Child-Killing Regime.” The Sunni Baluch population have taken to the streets in Zahedan every Friday after prayers since September 30 when government forces cracked down on protesters and killed more than 80 protesters, known as Bloody Friday. Earlier in the day, Haalvsh website, a local news outlet that monitors rights violations in Iran's Baluchestan region, said 121 of the protesters who were killed in Zahedan and Khash on Bloody Friday were identified.
The Belgian capital hosted the European foreign ministers at the Council of Europe on Thursday, a good opportunity for Iranian activists who want European countries to designate the IRGC as a first step, followed by the expulsion of the Islamic Republic’s envoys, towards the fall of the regime.
Several European politicians, including Danial Ilkhanipour and Alireza Akhondi, were among the speakers of the events that were held during the demonstrations.
Ilkhanipour, a German-Iranian member of the Hamburg city parliament, told the crowd that in the past few months, Iranians have shown they can achieve what they want if they unite, referring to several rounds of sanctions by EU and a resolution by the European Parliament asking the EU to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity for its role in the repression of popular protests and the supply of drones to Russia.
Akhondi, a Swedish-Iranian member of the Swedish Parliament, said that “The Islamic Republic has killed people in Europe and kidnapped people such as Iranian-German national Jamshid Sharmahd,” who faces a death sentence in Iran on charge of "corruption on earth". Sharmahd, who is also a US resident, is held by Tehran for allegedly heading a pro-monarchist group accused of a deadly 2008 bombing and planning other attacks in the country. Akhondi claimed that a large number of agents of the Islamic Republic are here in Brussels.
Vahid Beheshti, the British-Iranian activist who is on hunger strike outside the UK Foreign Office for the same cause, also sent a video message to the gathering, telling the European foreign ministers that as Lebanon’s Hezbollah is blacklisted as a terror group, Iran’s Guards should also be designated.
Most of the speakers of the event asked EU members how they can ignore such a large amount of evidence on human rights violations and terrorist acts perpetrated by the IRGC.
Earlier in the day, the block's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell tweeted that “Ukraine has been attacked again by Russia with Iranian drones, targeting educational facilities and a missile attack on a residential building in Zaporizhzhia. Just when Putin expressed need for peaceful settlement to President Xi, Russian again commits war crimes.”
In January, Borrell said that the European Union cannot list the IRGC as a terrorist entity until an European court has determined that they are, noting "Ministers adopted a new package of sanctions against Iran, targeting those driving the repression.” “The EU strongly condemns the brutal and disproportionate use of force by the Iranian authorities against peaceful protesters," he said but no action was taken to designate the IRGC.
The IRGC was set up shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution to protect the Shiite clerical ruling establishment and provide a counterweight to the regular armed forces. It has an estimated 125,000-strong military with army, navy and air units. It also commands the Basij religious militia, a volunteer paramilitary force loyal to the clerical establishment which is often used to crack down on anti-government protests.
There have been numerous Iranian terror acts in Europe, where courts have indicted top officials. In addition, IRGC’s record in organizing attacks elsewhere are well-documented. Critics say that Borrell and many of the European diplomats are focused on re-starting nuclear talks with Iran after the previous long round of negotiations in 2021-2022 ended last September without success.
The current round of antiregime protests engulfed the country in September when 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini was on a trip to capital Tehran where she was beaten to death by the ‘morality police’ for “improper hijab.”