DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — In a matter of days, nationwide protests challenging Iran’s theocracy exploded into a crackdown and bloodshed that blew past reported casualty figures of decades of past demonstrations in the country.

This new level of mayhem summons the chaotic days surrounding the birth of the Islamic Republic in 1979. That poses perhaps the greatest risk to Iran’s theocracy in the time since that revolution: It now faces a populace increasingly prepared to defy a government long willing to use violence to suppress dissent.

In the run-up to the revolution in 1978, Iran witnessed running street battles between forces loyal to the US-backed shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and demonstrators. Also part of that movement: attacks that targeted cinemas, nightclubs, US interests, Iranian officials and minorities. Each fresh mourning for slain protesters expanded into a cycle of demonstrations. That ultimately ballooned to millions on the streets and pushed the monarch, fatally ill with cancer, to flee.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in exile in France, returned to Iran and soon seized all levers of power under his vision of “Velayat-e Faqih,” or the “Guardianship of the Jurist.”

Many didn’t fully grasp what would come next.

The execution of thousands of former government and military officials, writers, activists and others followed. So did a bloody eight-year war launched by Iraq. The imposition of the mandatory hijab, or headscarf, for women took effect. Soon came decades of tension with the United States — particularly after the 1979 seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran and the 444-day hostage crisis that helped impact the outcome of an American presidential election.

Iran’s theocracy remembers those chaotic days after the revolution. And it’s well aware of their potency today.

In recent days, state television has aired archival footage of the early 1980s........

© The Times of Israel