Dozens of deaths turned to hundreds; hundreds turned to thousands. The theocratic regime faces a convergence of unprecedented challenges to its rule: a younger population with no ties to revolutionary mythology, which increasingly detests the moral pedestal on which the rulers place themselves, a caste dedicated to enriching itself while producing only impoverishment – all in an increasingly hostile international context. 

The regime is showing itself incapable of eradicating the waves of protest with coercion alone. It sees mass mobilization not as political dissent but as a threat to national security, a pawn on the geopolitical chessboard, to be taken down with surveillance, digital censorship, live fire into the crowds and hundreds of executions. At the same time, the anti-regime are becoming ever more frequent and intense.

The regime still has a conservative electoral base and a coercive apparatus (IRGC, Basij) which so far has kept rank. In the coming days, one must keep an eye on the behavior of the elite and the army – all the more so if the massacres should intensify further – to see if any fault lines emerge: resignations, defections or conspicuous absences.

Meanwhile, the Reactionary International is trying to cast the mobilizations into a unifying mold via a narrative focused on the Pahlavi dynasty, the puppet dictators of pre-1979 Iran. Trump is threatening military........

© Il Manifesto Global