One year ago, this week Iran went through its most significant outpouring of popular unrest in decades. The November 2019 uprising was sparked by the announcement of sharp increases in the government-set price of gasoline, but it quickly became an outlet for the revival of previously established demands for regime change.
Those demands had been voiced on a similarly national scale less than two years earlier, in another uprising that began with an economic focus only to be defined by anti-regime slogans like “death to the dictator” and “hardliners and reformists, the game is over.”
The January 2018 uprising was immediately remarkable because of its geographic and ethnic diversity, as well as the fact that it encompassed well over 100 Iranian cities and towns. The regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei responded to the unrest by acknowledging that the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI-MEK) had been a major driving force, despite the longstanding regime propaganda against the Iranian Resistance movement.
That propaganda struggled to reestablish itself in the wake of the initial uprising, especially given that activists throughout the country. Although Tehran effectively suppressed the nationwide protest movement with dozens of killings and thousands of arrests, the regime only succeeded in fracturing the unrest into more local and less centralized demonstrations.
These never entirely stopped, and they never gave up the anti-regime slogans of the January 2018 uprising. As such, they helped to set the stage for the scattered activities of the MEK “Resistance Units” to reconvene on a national scale when the regime announced plans that would cause further harm to a heavily impoverished and deeply frustrated population. The November 2019 uprising greatly expanded upon the scale of its predecessor, spreading to 191 cities in less than a week.
Seeing their ends is near, the regime officials initiated a widespread crackdown. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was immediately dispatched to confront protesters, on orders from the supreme leader himself. In a speech on Tuesday, Mrs. Rajavi characterized those orders as an explicit appeal for “a ruthless massacre,” which the IRGC obliged by opening fire on crowds of protesters, killing over 1,500.
Mrs. Rajavi’s recent remarks on this topic were delivered to a virtual audience of both Iranian expatriate communities and from foreign policy circles throughout the world. Dozens of those participants gave their own speeches in order to commemorate the anniversary of the November uprising while also commenting upon domestic conditions that could set the stage for more of the same, as well as Western policy initiatives in supporting Iranian people’s desire for regime change.
This event and its panelists criticized the international community’s preexisting policies of “appeasement” which they believe have emboldened the Iranian regime to escalate its reprisals against the domestic Resistance movement. Many also blamed this “appeasement” for Tehran’s apparent willingness to take extraordinary political risks on the global stage, even to the point of plotting terrorist attacks on European soil.
Multiple such plots were uncovered in the period between Iran’s two great uprisings. In March 2018, Iranian operatives were arrested in Albania for targeting a compound near the capital of Tirana which has housed members of the MEK since they were relocated from their former residence in Iraq. Then, in June of the same year, two other operatives were caught attempting to travel from Belgium to France in possession of 500 grams of high-explosives, with the aim of bombing an international gathering organized near Paris by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
The incarcerated terrorists and their overseer, a high-ranking Iranian diplomat-terrorist named Assadollah Assadi, are scheduled to face trial in Belgium on November 27. But many critics of the Iranian regime – including several speakers at Tuesday’s NCRI-organized conference – have expressed concern that convicting the terrorists themselves would not be enough to send a clear message to Tehran. What’s more, that clarity is considered especially vital in light of the apparent fact that the terror plot was ordered from the highest levels of the Iranian regime, channeled through the diplomatic infrastructure, and closely connected to human rights violations inside Iran.
The two Iranian uprisings and the terror plot in France are collectively indicative of a sort of feedback loop between the regime’s domestic and foreign strategies for maintaining its hold on power. Having failed to halt unrest through its crackdown on people and their organized resistance in January 2018, Tehran set its sight on the opposition leadership abroad. After these terror plots also failed, the regime was soon forced to re-focus its attention on outrage among people, and authorities naturally made the decision to dramatically increase their repressive measures.
Tuesday’s NCRI conference was clear about the potential consequences of this feedback loop continuing uninterrupted. It was equally clear about the potential for a different set of Western policies to change the regime’s calculation when it comes to both foreign terror and domestic violations of human rights. In separate speeches as part of that conference, European lawmakers and Iranian activists offered specific recommendations for such policies, including expanded human rights-related sanctions, the designation of the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group, and closure of the embassies and “cultural institutions” through which terrorists like Assadollah Assadi operate on behalf of the Iranian regime.
In absence of these measures, global security will continue to degrade while the Iranian people face even worse political violence in response to the next major expressions of outrage at Tehran’s illegitimate rule and disinterest in public welfare. Despite all the pressure the regime maintains on people, the Iranian people will not be discouraged from resuming their unrest altogether. This is inevitable.
The January 2018 uprising was the culmination of decades of simmering dissent, which was given a productive outlet through the efforts of MEK’s Resistance units. The November 2019 uprising was proof that those efforts would not easily be disrupted. And this in turn helped to confirm that the regime’s propaganda against the Resistance movement had no basis in reality. The Iranian Resistance has been gaining in power and organizational strength ever since Tehran failed to stamp it out through a series of mass executions in 1980s. And despite the effects of escalating crackdowns today, it is poised to guide the Iranian people toward a democratic revolution, with or without help from the West.
As Mrs. Rajavi reiterated on Tuesday conference, the Iranian Resistance expects Iran’s future to be determined solely by the Iranian people, particularly the young generation that has grown up in the shadow of the regime’s abuses, but with a clear view of modern democratic societies.
Still, the nations of Europe have a significant role to play in determining how much more those young Iranians will have to suffer for their cause. It is time for the European countries to end the wrong policy of appeasement and support the Iranian people’s right to resistance and overthrowing the mullahs’ regime.