"The Regime's Legitimacy Is Eroding"
Iran Protests Continue Despite Brutal Repression
The uprising against the Islamist dictatorship in Iran is entering a new phase and the regime is doing all it can to survive. For how much longer can the mullahs cling to power?
By Anne Armbrecht, Julia Amalia Heyer, Muriel Kalisch, Mina Khani, Maximilian Popp, Christoph Reuter, Omid Rezaee und Özlem Topçu
There isn’t a single place where she is safe from the regime’s henchmen, says Anoush, not even in her dreams.
It has been just over a month since DER SPIEGEL first spoke with Anoush, a teacher from the Iranian capital of Tehran in her mid-20s.
At the time, the protests that erupted following the September death of the young Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini had already spread throughout the country.
Anoush says she began taking part in the demonstrations from the very beginning.
Now, she has again decided to share her experiences, using long chat messages to do so.
She has, however, changed the service she uses: She no longer feels that WhatsApp is secure enough.
The regime, she says, has drastically ratcheted up the pressure.
The terror, she says, is everywhere, with only a fraction of it making it into the media.
An acquaintance of hers, she says, was raped in prison after being arrested, with the guards having fired at her genitals with paintball guns.
"Since then, I have been having a recurring nightmare of being raped myself," she says.
Despite the violence, people in Tehran and elsewhere in the country are continuing to take to the streets.
Their primary focus this week has been the massacres in the Kurdish areas of the country.
It is difficult, however, to determine where the demonstrations are taking place and how large they are since the internet has been blocked in many parts of the country.
The fight against the dictatorship is no longer finding its expression only in street protests, says Anoush.
"We are screaming from the windows, even if security forces are opening fire more frequently.
We are boycotting companies that advertise on state television.
We are using cash instead of credit cards, collecting money for the people in the Kurdish areas. It is difficult to get help to them, but some people are trying.
When we cross the streets, we give each other the V for victory sign.
We cry ourselves to sleep and wake up with new hope."
Fewer Mass Protests, More Flashmobs
The uprising against the mullahs has been underway for 10 weeks, longer than most thought possible – Iranian rulers, the international community, and even the protesters themselves.
And the shape of the resistance is changing, according to reports from inside Iran.
There are fewer mass protests, but more flashmobs.
Small groups from a specific district, sometimes even just a single residential building, suddenly emerge and begin shouting: "Down with the dictatorship!," filming the event and then melting away.
The anger, however, has remained just as intense.
"Nobody is staying quiet," says a 41-year-old from the middle class Tehran district of Sadeghiyeh.
For many Iranians, the uprising has become a part of their everyday lives.
In the social networks, images and videos are being shared by tens of thousands of people.
You can see videos from Tehran showing people from all walks of life – from young hipsters to elegant, middle-aged women – strolling through the city with their hair uncovered and greeting each other with fist bumps.
You can see embracing and kissing in front of their city’s landmarks.
In Iran at the moment, says the Bern-based Orientalist Reinhard Schulze – who is speaking on the phone with friends across the country almost daily – the definition of Iranian nation is currently at stake.
The central question: Who represents the Iranians?
"We do," insists the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which continues to have its opponents sentenced to death.
"We do," counter those who have risen up against the regime.
Initially, their insurrection came merely in the form of refusing to cover their hair, instead tearing off their headscarves.
Increasingly, though, the rebellion is becoming more militant, including the use of Molotov cocktails.
Schulze believes that the character of the Iranian nation has changed over the past several weeks.
The population, he says, believes less and less in the promises made by the Islamic Republic and its institutions, which has been in power for 43 years.
Day by day, people are demanding a more liberal model in which the rule of law should also play a strong role, says Schulze.
A Slap in the Face for Tehran
The fact that political power in the country is at stake could also be seen on Monday, when the Iranian national team at the World Cup in Qatar demonstratively kept their mouths closed during the playing of their country’s national anthem.
It was a clear protest with the world watching – and a slap in the face of the rulers back in Tehran.
Most of the players on the Iranian national team had long been wary of making clear political statements, in part no doubt because of enormous pressure from the regime.
On the eve of their departure for Doha, the players even met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
Did they have a choice? Images of the meeting distributed by the president’s office show the team sitting on chairs in a circle around Raisi.
The players are wearing suits, with several of them bowing, hands over their hearts.
Many began referring to them as "Team Mullah," and people on the streets of Tehran lit fire to World Cup posters and pictures of the team.
One can only guess at why the national team players ultimately decided to stage their silent protest.
They provided no explanation following the match.
Were they simply waiting for the largest possible stage for their gesture?
Or did the pressure, after months of doing nothing, simply grow too heavy?
Did they have a bad conscience vis-à-vis the millions who had idolized them?
Or was it merely a desire to be on the "right side" of history?
It also isn’t clear how the regime will react to the anthem boycott.
Ahead of the tournament, the national players were reportedly threatened.
But it seems unlikely that the regime will exert the same force on the national team as they do against demonstrators on the streets.
The players, believes the U.S.-based women’s rights activist Maryam Shojaei, are simply too popular.
Shojaei focuses her work on gaining access for women to sporting events in Iran.
Speaking of the players on the Iranian World Cup team, she says: "They enjoy an immunity that normal people don’t have."
The Iranian national football team in Qatar electing not to sing the national anthem before their opening match. Foto: Julian Finney / Getty ImagesThat's why for Shojaei and other activists, the gesture of the national team players didn’t go far enough.
"If you want to see real courage, then look at the young women who are risking their lives at the protests."
It is nevertheless clear that a significant shift is underway in Iranian society.
"The regime’s legitimacy is eroding.
They are no longer recognized by their own people,” says Orientalist Schulze.
He believes that the mullah’s grip on power has become fragile.
Of course, he says, it is difficult for many in the population to believe that the mullahs might one day be swept from power.
But there is also a significant amount of hope and plenty of courage.
In the beginning, he was part of a group of four, says 23-year-old paramedic Ardalan, from the Kurdish north of the country, who told his story over the course of dozens of voice messages.
They were an emergency response team tending to injured demonstrators.
"Two were murdered and one was arrested.
I’m the only one left."
He says that he too was taken to prison and tortured, and charged with "insulting the Prophet" because he had helped the wounded.
He was then released on bail, "and I’m still going!
We have to treat the wounds immediately, otherwise many of them won’t survive."
Early on, he says, they were fired at with teargas and buckshot, but that hasn’t been the case for some time.
Now, he says, the regime is using snipers and "dushkas," –large-caliber machine guns that are frequently mounted on the beds of pickups.
Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini grabbed power in 1979, Tehran has been propagating the fight against purported American imperialism and against the discrimination of Shiite Muslims in Saudi Arabia and in other Gulf autocracies.
Even More Brutality in the Provinces
But the Islamic Republic has always been a state that oppresses minorities: the Kurds to the west, the Baluchis in the southeast and Sunni Arabs in the south.
Since the first day of the unrest in September, protests in the Kurdish areas as well as those in Sistan and Baluchestan Province have been fired on with live ammunition.
"I don’t want to use the term 'state of war,'" says Ardalan, "because in a war, both sides are armed.
But we only have bricks that we pile up to form barricades, while the other side is heavily armed."
A street barricade in Mahabad: "I don't want to use the term 'state of war,' because in war, both sides are armed." Foto: Middle East Images / laifArdalan’s accounts cannot be independently verified, but they are consistent with the stories told by other sources.
His identity is known to DER SPIEGEL.
"We have established a network for the transportation of medical supplies and bandages," he continues.
"We use side streets.
All the main roads are monitored.
At the roadblocks, they search for medical supplies.
If you have any with you, you are arrested."
By law, the Red Crescent – the Muslim world’s version of the Red Cross – would be responsible for helping everyone.
"Instead, those who are injured by the Revolutionary Guards are immediately taken to prison,” says Ardalan.
"When they arrested me, they broke my fingers."
Everyone knows the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, he says, "but far worse things happen in prisons in Kurdistan, more torture."
That, he says, is the regime’s method for spreading fear.
Normal life on the streets has been extinguished, says Ardalan.
On the one hand, fear has translated into a de facto curfew.
"I know women who have been shot simply because they wanted to go out for some bread."
On the other hand, almost all store owners are striking and people are boycotting the state-owned supermarkets.
Even money is running short, he says.
His account has been frozen and cash machines aren’t working.
"There are no banknotes any more in Kurdistan!"
Lessons for the City
The brutality in the provinces is intended as a warning to the residents of larger cities in the heart of the country.
But this time, the violence has actually triggered the opposite effect.
"We sympathize with them.
We understand that we are confronting the same enemy,” says a Tehran resident who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for her safety.
The old relationships between city dwellers and the rural population have changed, she says.
"We can learn from them," the woman from Tehran says.
"They have much more experience than we do when it comes to organizing street battles.
How to immediately collect elsewhere when the first demonstration is crushed.
How to organize help for the injured.
How to transform a funeral into a rally."
A protest in Sanandaj, a city in the Kurdistan region of Iran Foto: SalamPix / SalamPix / Abaca Press / picture allianceIn Iran, state institutions and, especially, the hundreds of thousands who are part of the Revolutionary Guard and their minions are holding firm, along with the huge number of private citizens who benefit from Iran’s parallel economy.
The Revolutionary Guard has control of huge swaths of the economy: airports, oil terminals, hospitals and universities.
And this parallel economy is nourished by the Western sanctions, resulting in an army of profiteers who would lose their privileges if the Islamic Republic were to collapse.
Afshon Ostovar, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California, and the author of a book about the Revolutionary Guard, believes the regime is approaching its end.
"What we are seeing right now is a generational revolution, the younger generation against the regime," he says.
He doesn’t want to predict whether it will be successful now, or only in one, two or five years.
"The undoing of the Iranian regime has begun."
With every young person who is killed, Ostovar says, the Supreme Leader is also losing the support of the victim’s cousins, aunts, uncles, parents and grandparents.
German-Iranian political scientist Ali Fathollah-Nejad believs it will ultimately depend on how workers respond.
There have already been protests among contract workers in the oil and gas sector.
Fathollah-Nejad says they are debating whether and when to join the uprising.
He says that such a coalition of demonstrators and workers would have good chances for success.
"They have something in common: They don’t believe that their lives will improve under this regime."
In Iran’s south, to be sure, where the largest oil fields are located, there have thus far been fewer demonstrations than in Tehran or Kurdistan.
But strikes and protests are on the rise there as well.
Workers at an oil refinery, long-haul truck drivers and employees of the automobile producer Bahman Motor in Tehran are demanding change – specifically wages that they can survive on.
Ultimately, the slogan used thus far in these protests – Woman, Life, Freedom – could soon be expanded to include another word: Bread.
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