The Battle for Freedom in Iran

Video footage from early January showed security forces storming a hospital in Ilam where activists said wounded protesters were being treated  Vahid Online 

 

"This regime is dying. Essentially, it's fighting, it's killing again, but it is also dying..."

"This regime has lost legitimacy The problem is it hasn't lost the capability to kill."

Former CIA  director David Petraeus 

 

"Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who has emerged as a unifying figure for the democratic movement, has called for continued resistance through nightly chants and nationwide strikes."

"'The blood of the best and bravest children of our homeland does not allow us to remain silent or retreat', he wrote." 

"According to the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, regime elites are moving billions of dollars out of the country in anticipation of its collapse."

"They are preparing their escape routes -- many of which lead to Western nations, including Canada."

Avideh Motmaen-Far, president, Council of Iranian Canadians 

Videos circulated via social media on Jan. 13 and verified by NBC News showed more than 200 bodies in bags outside Iran's largest cemetery in Tehran.  via X

 

Morgues overflow in Tehran, where families wander disconsolately through rows of bodies enclosed in black bags, searching for their loved ones. In the state-imposed digital shut-off only videos smuggled out through Starlink connects Iranians to the outside world. Yet, the world looks in at Iran as it undergoes the most contagious, forceful denial by its citizens of the dark world of the Islamist Republic they are forced to live within. 

 

The latest uprising, initiated on December 28 and responded to by the regime's military and policing bodies, the IRGC, Basij and regional Police by escalating force that more latterly turned into a military bloodbath targeting peaceful protesters, has drawn the attention of the United States of America, where President Donald Trump, in alarm over reports of thousands of people killed and mass hanging of those arrested has warned the Iranian government it will intervene if the killings persist.

 

The eyewitness reports of military-grade weapons deployed against civilians describe a scene of unbridled horror. Security forces blocked access routes preventing fire engines from reaching an area where protesters set fire to a mosque in an attempt to free detained friends; a deliberate move by the regime's enforcers to ensure that all in the mosque would be incinerated. Unhindered, the blaze spread and destroyed 300 shops in the historic bazaar.

 

A woman passes a damaged mosque in Tehran on Jan. 21.   NBC News

 

Over 1,000 people were reported killed in a three-night period in a northwest city, reported by a  witness, where some medical centre floors were steeped in blood. In another center, security forces fired directly at protesters, shot those wounded, while blocking others from reaching hospitals. In Tehran, prayer leader Ahmad Khatami called for the execution of all protesters that have been detained, speaking of them as "servants of Netanyahu" and "soldiers of Trump". 

 

Without the active intervention of outside help it remains unlikely that the protesters who detest the Iranian regime would be capable on their own, despite their numbers and the passion of their rejection, to effect a regime downfall. Even if the Police forces in sympathy with the people, decided to cast their lot in with them in support of regime change, since they are not as ideologically driven as the IRGC and Basij, it is unlikely they could succeed.

 

With that reality uppermost in mind, Prince Reza Pahlavi has called for "surgical strikes" against the infrastructure of the Islamic Republican Guard Corps; the instruments of the IRGC oppression of the Iranian people. Any action that targets IRGC capacities to support operations targeting command and control structures of the IRGC could succeed in damaging the regime to the extent of abolishing it altogether.  

"I put one of the wounded in the boot of my car to take him to hospital, as I was worried that we would get in trouble if we were stopped by the police."

"For almost 96 hours straight - 'without interruption, without sleep, without even closing our eyes for a moment -' we were operating. We were crying and operating. Nobody complained."

"All our clothes and hospital gowns were covered in blood -' our outer clothes, our underwear, everything was soaked in the blood of these young people."

"[We operated on one man who had been shot in the leg and face at a protest.] A bullet had entered through his chin, ripped through his mouth and exited through his upper jaw."

Nima, Tehran surgeon   

An anti-U.S. billboard in Enghelab Square in central Tehran on Jan. 25.  NBC News