Repressive, Conspiring, Conniving, Brutal Iran

"His mind was filled with love for Iran but this regime is against this type of mind. They do not want these minds to work for our country. They want them destroyed by bullets."
"I will cry out for justice and freedom on his [regime-murdered son Pouya Bakhtiari] behalf and on behalf of the young people of Iran, on behalf of all the people of my beloved country, who will eventually bring these people [the Islamic Republic regime] to their defeat."
Manouchehr Bakhtiari, Karaj, Iran

"When the Internet came back, I was bombarded with videos of shootings and killings in the streets."
Masih Alinejad, Iranian journalist, opposition activist, Tehran

"This is a system that perceives itself to be under siege."
"At the end of the day they are all in the same boat and preserving the Islamic Republic is a common goal among both the hardliners and the moderates." 
"Without the implementation of major economic and political reforms, I think there will be more frequent and more violent confrontations between the state and the society in coming months."
"With or without U.S. sanctions, Iran's economic and political systems are in urgent need of an overhaul. As the level of street anger shows, there may not be much time to undertake it."
Ali Vaez, director, Iran Project, International Crisis Group

Iranian protesters gather around a burning car during a demonstration against an increase in gasoline prices in Tehran, on Nov. 16. AFP/Getty Images

"[Some video footage shows security forces shooting demonstrators in the face, and in the back as they ran away] — in other words shooting to kill."
"Verified video footage indicates severe violence was used against protesters, including armed members of security forces shooting from the roof of a justice department building in one city, and from helicopters in another."
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet 

Iranian protesters block a road during a demonstration against an increase in gasoline prices in the central city of Shiraz on Nov. 16.   AFP - Getty Images file

Over 200 people were killed in Iran through four days dedicated to protests that turned into intensely violent spectacles from November 15 to the 18th, the government of Iran suppressing the protests that broke out spontaneously everywhere in the Republic, leading to the deadliest unrest in the 40-year reign of the theocracy that is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Security forces were given orders for a violently aggressive response against demonstrators, of a type of violence unseen in previous protests of recent vintage.

IN 2009 during the 'green movement' protests related to a rigged election that brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back to the presidency, over the course of seven months 72 Iranians were killed, while about 24 lost their lives in the 2017-18 mass demonstrations linked to the failing economy. In these most recent demonstrations where Iranians took to the streets to make it abundantly clear their patience with this regime's handling of Iranian affairs is at its absolute nadir, the Revolutionary Guard Corps set out to shed blood.

All the while what was happening to the rebellious protesters was hidden to the world when the regime cut off Internet access so protesters were unable to use the platforms formerly made use of to communicate and coordinate activities for greatest effect, much less communicate with the outside world. When restrictions were lifted after a week, the killing spree was revealed in all its horrendous proportions, of a government that set out to exact a lethal punishment whose effect would still protests through state terrorism.

The ayatollahs, after all had a precedent nearby which they studied at close hand and in effect took part in themselves, when the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad responded to his Sunni Syrian citizens' protests over unequal treatment to Shiite (Alawite) Syrians' privileged status. Assad spoke of the protesters as 'terrorists' and treated them accordingly, with lethal military weaponry, barrel bombs, aerial gunships targeting breadlines, hospitals and Shiite neighbourhoods with chemical weapons. The civil war that ensued took the lives of half a million Syrians.

Iran's proxy militia Hezbollah was given orders to intervene in Syria and the IRGC al-Quds division entered Syria as well in aid of the Bashar regime, a kind of dry run rehearsal for their own potential reaction to 'pacifying' dissidents-cum-'terrorists' in Iran. The deaths of 208 Iranians has been verified by Amnesty International, but thought to represent only a quarter of those whose lives were taken as punishment for insubordination to the regime.

No official death toll has been released by the government, and Iranians have been warned of consequences for those who speak to international media. Families are informed their loved ones' corpses will be returned to them for customary funeral rites only with guarantees they would not provoke fresh protests and upon payment of "bullet money", the fee charged by authorities authorizing return of the bodies.

Iranian protesters clash in the streets of Isfahan, central Iran, on Nov. 16. (EPA-EFE)

U.S. sanctions that have strangled oil sales and damaged the Iranian economy led to the protests, when the regime, which prefers to fund rockets for Hezbollah and Hamas to threaten Israel, over paying for needed food and medical imports, announced a fifty percent increase in the subsidized gas for Iranians, the cheapest in the world at 30 cents a litre. The immediately following protests in various cities that began on November 15 saw demonstrators blocking streets, burning gas stations, chanting "Gas prices went up, the poor just got poorer".

Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei characterized the protests as a "dangerous deep conspiracy" by foreign powers while President Hassan Rouhani, the 'moderate' to Khamenei's 'hard line', called the protesters "mercenaries" and "hooligans", tools of the Americans. Several days after the first protests had broken out, Tehran saw street blockages take place, and it was when that occurred that Pouya Bakhtiari, 27, found himself taking part in one on the streets of Karaj only to be shot in the head, part of his skull blown off, killed by an Iranian state gunman.

A government sniper fired at protests from the justice ministry building rooftop in the city of Javanroud. Soldiers shot from a helicopter as it flew over a crowd gathered in the city of Shiraz. A 14-year-old girl was killed in Tehran by gunfire; "bullet money" was waived for her, given her age. In Mahshahr, a mostly Arab-populated city close to the border with Iraq, Revolutionary Guards exchanged fire with residents, pushing about 100 armed people into a marsh. The marsh was raked with bullets by guardsmen in pickup trucks with mounted machine guns.

Now, the 27-year-old Bakhtiari's father has pledged to take over his son's Instagram page where he had written: "People, don't miss this opportunity. Once and for all, let's destroy this criminal and corrupt regime", before he died. "Here is a gorgeous sunset. I wish a better sunrise for the people of Iran", he had written, his vehicle helping to block a street, part of the protest strategy to bring his city to a halt. That was the last sunset he would ever see. His father posted a defiant note to the government, announcing a traditional memorial service for 40 days in honour of his son.

Shattered windows line a building that was set ablaze during recent protests over government-set gasoline prices rises, in Tehran, Iran, on Nov. 20, 2019. The demonstrations struck at least 100 cities and towns, spiraling into violence that saw banks, stores and police stations attacked and burned.(Ebrahim Noroozi)

This is the regime that the European Union through a joint effort initiated by France, Germany, the United Kingdom -- to which other European countries have committed, to help Iran bypass U.S. sanctions on the sale of oil -- give aid and comfort to a regime that will stop at nothing to ensure their human-rights destroying regime continues unopposed, with its agenda of roiling its neighbours in the Middle East, imposing its power and plans to once again be represented as influential, controlling the region's politics through violent religious fervour; implacable enemies of human rights and western values.

The Islamic Republic of Iran represents the single most potent theocratic-based threat to world peace in its incitement toward terrorism, its alliance and support for non-state Islamist jihadists, its interference with the internal tribal-sectarian divisions of other countries in its push to command and control and surround itself with vassal states countering the strength and alliance of the majority Sunni Arab states in its bid to subjugate them to Shiite Persian authority.