Written by Staff Writer on 13 January 2020.
On January 11, a second wave of Iran protests started by students from the heart of Iran’s capital, Tehran, and rapidly spread across the country. During this uprising, slogans targeted the regime’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and his tool of repression, the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
From the beginning of the uprising, protesters have been targeting the core of Iran’s problems, meaning the religious dictatorship and the IRGC. The central slogan of the uprising was “Death to the dictator and Death to Khamenei.” People have also been chanting: “Shame on you IRGC, let go of the country,” and “IRGC commits crimes; supreme leader supports them.”
Following the elimination of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the IRGC Quds Force, the regime gathered some people to attend Soleimani’s funeral by mobilizing its propaganda apparatus and using all sorts of ploys and threats. By doing so, the regime invested heavily to give the impression that it enjoys popular support. The regime also wanted to portray a criminal like Soleimani as the “People’s hero.” However, the Iranian people’s uprising and their slogans demonstrated that not only did they see Soleimani as a killer, but the regime’s supreme leader Khamenei is also seen as a killer. “Soleimani is a murderer, his leader is also a murderer,” protesters chanted while tearing up Soleimani’s pictures.
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Another robust message of the uprising was that the Iranian people not only want to overthrow the regime in its entirety, but they desire a democratic and free Iran, and they expressed their desire in their slogans that they are looking to a free and prosperous future rather than looking back. “Death to the oppressor, whether the Shah or the [supreme] leader. Neither the bad, nor the worse,” demonstrators chanted.
The uprising also confirmed the Iranian Resistance’s assessment that the November uprising would continue until the regime’s downfall. The reason for the continuation of the uprising is that all the factors and motivations of the November uprising still exist and are even much stronger and more urgent. The regime tried to suppress the uprising by massacring 1,500 protesters in November 2019, but the Iranian people not only were not intimidated by it, but courageously demanded the regime’s overthrow.
The Iranian people’s unbreakable resolve to overthrow the clerical regime, on the one hand, and the regime’s status, on the other, confirm the regime’s inevitable downfall. Recent events have shown that the mullahs’ regime has lost its balance. After the elimination of Qassem Soleimani, the regime’s de facto second-in-command, as well as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the ringleader of the Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) in Iraq, as the uprising in Iraq continues to increase, the strategic depth of the regime is about to collapse.
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Khamenei had repeatedly warned: “If we could not draw our front line against the enemy on the streets of Iraq and Syria, we would have to fight the enemy on the streets of Kermanshah, Hamedan, Tehran, and other Iranian cities.” Khamenei now sees that with the collapse of his strategic depth and with the continuation of protests in Iran, he must fight his real enemy, the Iranian people and Resistance on the streets of Iranian cities.
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The international element, which for the past four decades had been in favor of the ruling dictatorship, has vanished with the failure of the appeasement policy. The regime’s recent military confrontation with the US buried the regime’s bogus power with Qassem Soleimani, its symbol of terrorism in the Middle East and around the world. Everyone saw that the regime only bluffs and is even unable to protect its highest military figures.
The common denominator of these signs indicates the mullahs’ regime is on the verge of downfall, and the Iranian people are willing to overthrow it at any cost.