Brave Lady From Abadan Teaches Several Lessons

Last night, an old lady from Abadan had an interesting conversation and a fight recorded on her phone while she was courageously standing up to the State Security Force. As she walked down the street, she kept filming the oppressive security forces who were dispatched to crackdown on peaceful protesters in her city. She told them that they are all captives of this regime and that they are doing nothing for the country, other than to fatten themselves on the people’s misery.

When a bystander asked her to call “death to Abdolbaghi”, referring to Hossein Abdolbaghi, the corrupt owner of the Metropol Complex that collapsed and killed more than 30 innocent people, the brave lady replied: “Why shall I say ‘death to Abdolbaghi?’ You have to shout ‘Death to Khamenei!”

Following that conversation and repeating her slogans against the regime, she was attacked and someone was recorded trying to grab her phone.

The following scenes display the old footage with her voice saying that she was fine, but she was being attacked by one of the security guards. She goes on to explain what has happened to her and that she is determined to keep fighting and defying the riot police and the regime.

The footage, though short and unprofessional, reveals a great deal about the situation in Abadan in particular, and what is going on in Iranian streets in general:

• The security forces are not local and do not have local dialects. One person who smiles and greets the old lady doesn’t even seem to be of Iranian descent. Commentary on social media suggests that he and some other officers or agents were from the Fatemiyoun Brigade, Afghan nationals who are paid heavy sums to fight on behalf of the regime in Syria and crackdown on Iranian protestors.
• The old lady walks among the security forces and starts challenging them while some of them lower or shake their heads and don’t seem to be pleased with their job. Combined with various reports and opinion pieces from state officials about low morale among troops, this indicates that the continuous state of the uprisings will take its toll on the oppressive forces and even though they are recruited and sent on missions far from home, the geographical expansion of the protests will test their resilience.
• Even though she openly chants “Death to Khamenei”, she manages to walk away eventually. While the slogan is becoming the new normal in Iran, this wasn’t the case in the past four decades and tens of thousands of people have anguished in the regime’s dungeons for daring to chant the same in previous protests. Hence, while the regime is not even close to letting down its guard, the people are becoming more defiant and fear seems to be changing fronts, slowly but surely.