Regime Fortifying Streets Amid Measures For Protests Anniversary
Security measures in Iran have been heightened in anticipation of the anniversary of Mahsa Amini's death, as activists and civic groups have called for mass rallies.
Security measures in Iran have been heightened in anticipation of the anniversary of Mahsa Amini's death, as activists and civic groups have called for mass rallies.
Iran International sources report that regime agents have set up nighttime checkpoints amid a significant buildup of security forces in city centers.
These measures include enhanced protection for government buildings, a substantial increase in law enforcement personnel, and plainclothes motorcycle patrols, according to eyewitness accounts.
The regime has also erected numerous banners in major city centers warning citizens of severe penalties for dress code violations, seemingly as a deliberate effort to instill fear and discourage potential protests.
Last year's brutal crackdown by the regime during the protests following Amini's death, resulted in the deaths of over 500 civilians, with thousands more sustaining injuries and tens of thousands imprisoned.
Despite the intensified intimidation campaign, several calls for protests and strikes have been issued online by major dissident figures and groups. In a joint statement, eight labor and civil organizations reaffirmed their commitment to keeping the revolutionary movement ignited by the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in police custody. They called upon the people to take to the streets, launch strikes, and hold gatherings on her death anniversary on September 16.
The group of eight organization referred to the anniversary protests as an opportunity for a "fresh start" in the course of the revolutionary movement, stating, "With the strength of our struggle, we will turn the anniversary of the Women, Life, Freedom movement into our annual public holiday."
The signatories of the statement include the Council for Organizing Contract Workers' Protests in the Oil Industry, the Association of Electricity and Metalworkers in Kermanshah, the Follow-up Committee for Workers' Associations, and the Independent Voice of Steel Workers.
A few days after a call for action by Iran's exiled prince Reza Pahlavi, who has become a leading opposition figure in the current wave of protests, exiled Queen Farah Pahlavi seconded the call for Iranians to unite against the regime.
The queen also urged Iran's security and military forces not to stand against the people and protect the lives of protesters against the regime's suppression apparatus. Pahlavi hailed Mahsa Amini as a symbol for all those who over the past 44 years have strived to weaken religious tyranny and redress the setbacks inflicted on the country by the Islamic Republic, stating, "This shared pain is our commitment to achieving a common cure."
Calls for national rallies on the anniversary of protests have rekindled the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, which also embodies popular anger against poverty and various forms of discrimination, particularly gender-based and sexual discrimination, for over four decades.
For several months, the Supreme National Security Council has convened various meetings to prepare for potential public protests on the anniversary of the people's uprising. These meetings have led to the detention of family members of activists and political figures. However, the regime has yet to officially disclose the exact number of detainees, their charges, detention locations, or the authorities responsible for the detentions.
Nevertheless, according to the Human Rights Organization Hengaw, at least 70 family members of detainees, including nine children under the age of 18, have been arrested in various cities since the beginning of this year (March 22).
Based on information obtained by Iran International, security entities have also summoned some participants of last year's protests and are harassing the families of dead protesters to discourage them from partaking in protests.
These individuals have been pressured to remain in their homes during the week that coincides with September 16. Intelligence agencies have issued warnings that engagement in "any kind of activity in the virtual or public space" during the period will result in detention.
Although no announcement could be found on CFR’s website, a member of the Council, Iranian Jewish well-known writer Roya Hakakian wrote a post on X sharing information that she was invited to the meeting but turned down the invitation. Iran International wrote to the Council on Foreign Relations asking for clarification but has not received a response at the time of this publication.
The date of the meeting is not clear, but Raisi will attend the United Nation’s annual General Assembly taking place in New York City from September 18-26.
Hakakian replied to the invitation saying, “Thank you for this invitation, which, I'm afraid, I must decline. While I am an absolutist when it comes to the value of dialogue, I see the presence of Ebrahim Raisi at the Council on Foreign Relations as a political baptism for a man who has been implicated in countless crimes…”
Raisi, a hardline cleric, who is fully loyal to Iran’s authoritarian rule Ali Khamenei, was elected president in June 2021, in a vote that excluded all the main candidates by a decision of the Guardian Council, a constitutional body composed of Khamenei supporters which reviews candidate credentials. The review is an opaque process and reasons for rejecting a candidate are never transparent.
Before becoming a president by Khamenei’s anointment, Raisi spent almost four decades in the Islamic Republic’s notorious “Judiciary”, also controlled by Khamenei since the early 1990s. It was there in 1988 when he was appointed to a small and secret “death commission” that decided to execute thousands of political prisoners serving their sentences.
In an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes last September Raisi did not deny his involvement.
Young men and women belonging to opposition groups, some violent, were summarily tried without due process and up to 5,000 were killed in prisons.
“Dialogue is reserved for those with whom we have disagreements. For criminals like Raisi, the only venue for conversation must be a court of law,” Hakakian wrote to CFR.
But Hakakian and many other Iranian Americans are furious not just for Raisi’s culpability in one crime in 1988, but also for his role and responsibility as President during the Women, Life, Freedom protests that rocked Iran after Mahsa Amini’s death in hijab police custody last year.
As young people came into the streets to demand answers for her death, security forces armed with shotguns and military grade weapons began shooting them, a behavior that occurred repeatedly for months. The real death toll has not been announced but human rights groups have estimated that more than 500 civilians were killed, hundreds seriously injured and around 22,000 arrested. After hasty trials without due process, seven people were hanged and several face execution and the death penalty.
Raisi and his government have repeatedly said that the protests were riots instigated by the United States and have not held any law enforcement agent of official responsible. In December, he vowed “no mercy” in dealing with the protesters.
“As a proud naturalized American citizen, I cannot help but think that providing such a storied platform to such a man will be legitimizing him, and it is, therefore, an insult to the memory of the protestors who were, and are, fighting for democracy, and it is, therefore, profoundly unamerican,” Hakakian told the Council on Foreign Relations.
The ruling in favor of the three children of Abbas Amir-Entezam was announced by Herischi and Associates, a Washington-based law firm that represented them in a US federal court in the District of Columbia.
The law firm sued the Islamic Republic and the Revolutionary Guards in July 2019 on behalf of Amir-Entezam’s children -- Ardeshir, Anoush, and Elham – who were 2, 6, and 9 at the time of his imprisonment.
Herischi and associates have also represented the families of ten crew members of Sanchi oil tanker, family of Omar “Chicho" Mahmoudzadeh, a US citizen who was killed in an Iranian ballistic missile and drone attack in Iraq, the families of victims of the Ukrainian flight PS752 which was shot down by Iran’s air defenses on January 8, 2020, shortly after it took off from Imam Khomeini Airport, Tehran, and US-based activist Masih Alinejad.
The plaintiffs who never saw their father again were awarded $3.25m in compensatory damages and $3.25m in punitive damages for a total of $6.5m each. Amir-Entezam passed away in Tehran in July 2018 at the age of 86. The fine is to be collected from Iranian funds in the US allocated to provide compensation to American victims of international terrorism.
Amir-Entezam was a France and US-educated civil engineer was appointed as deputy prime minister and government spokesman in the interim cabinet formed by Mehdi Bazargan immediately after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. He was sent to Sweden a few months later as ambassador when some political groups objected to his qualifications.
Amir-Entezam was summoned from Sweden and was arrested upon his arrival at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport in December 1979, soon after revolutionary students took over the US embassy in Tehran and was later charged with spying for the United States based on embassy documents the students had seized.
These documents were minutes of the meetings between Amir-Entezam and the US ambassador and other diplomats in Tehran when he was deputy prime minister.
Amir-Entezam who was one of the first political prisoners, and the longest-held, in the Islamic Republic, always insisted the charges of espionage and said these had held routine diplomatic meetings.
He also alleged that he had been a victim of the prevalent anti-American atmosphere in the country at the time, created by the Soviet Union and the Toudeh party in Iran which upheld Soviet interests.
The former official and diplomat was reportedly held in solitary confinement for over 550 days without access to lawyers during which time he was subjected to many tortures. He was subsequently sentenced to death by a revolutionary Court.
The death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment with Bazargan’s help. It took seventeen years before Amir-Entezam was allowed to leave the prison and live in his own house, under constant supervision.
Even his limited freedom did not take long, and he was sent back to prison three months later in 1998 after criticizing Assadollah Lajevardi, the warden of the Evin Prison where he had been held, in an interview with the Voice of America, and calling him “an executioner”.
Amir-Entezam was released and sent back to prison twice more after that for objecting to the principle of a ‘Supreme Leader’ being the absolute ruler of the country and proposing a referendum on the Constitution in his interviews and writings. In 2003 authorities decided to release him from prison due to serious health issues but he was never allowed to leave the country.
Some Iranians have criticized the ruling and similar cases when US courts awarded monetary judgments to plaintiffs to be paid from Iran’s funds in the United States. They argue that these funds belong to the Iranian people and should be returned once the Islamic Republic ceases to exist.