For the second consecutive day, young iranians have protested on Sunday against the authorities due to the demolition of the flight PS752 the company Ukraine International Airlines and the death of all their occupants, the majority of citizens of Iran and Canada (although a good part of these are also of iranian origin). The protests, some of which were repressed by security forces, open up an important gap in the image of national unity that the regime had tried to give in its confrontation with the united States for the murder of general Qasem Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guard, the same military that launched the missile against the device failing.
The demonstrations began on Saturday in the form of vigils for the 176 victims, but quickly became a protest against the authorities of the Islamic Republic, who are calling her a “lying” and called for his “resignation” to hide for three days the truth. During the first few days, Tehran maintained that the plane was precipitated by a technical failure, while the emergence of intelligence information and videos on the social networks that showed the hypothesis of the knockdown forced the authorities to admit that, due to a “human error”, launched a missile ground-to-air against what was felt to be an enemy attack in place of a civil flight.
“to Keep secret the shooting down of the plane was a stupid act. The people who went on that flight represented the dream iranian; they were bright researchers, academics, people of new technologies, who had studied in the best universities of Iran, and then had emigrated to Canada,” he explains to THE COUNTRY Kaveh Nematipour, exiled iranian and analyst: “those Who are now in the streets are university students and middle class people who aspire to do the same thing that those who were on that flight. They feel that the regime has shot down his dream”.
During the Sunday school day in Iran, opposition media reported new protests in half a dozen universities of Tehran and other centers of Isfahan, Arak, and Damghan. In the videos posted on social networks shows dozens of people —hundreds in some cases— gathered and chanting slogans like “Down with the dictatorship!”, “Oh, the guardians [of the Revolution] incompetent!” and “Murderers of the people!”. At the University Beheshti of Tehran, the students refused to pass over the flags of the united States and Israel, permanently painted on the floor to be trampled on. By late afternoon, protests spread to the Azadi square (Freedom) in Tehran, where they chanted slogans against the Revolutionary Guard and the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, until the police dispersed the protesters by force.
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“The events of the past two months are a manifestation of the inefficiency of the system of iranian government. A system whose only response to any crisis is repression,” reported the students of the University of Amirkabir in Tehran —to which belonged several of the victims—, linking their protest to the social events of the past autumn by the rise in the price of fuels, which were harshly repressed by order of the Revolutionary Guard. Amnesty International estimated that there were then more than 300 dead, although the iranian authorities refuse to give data. Students of Amirkabir they also criticized the “imperialism” of the united States in the Middle East, “he has not done, but do proliferate chaos”, but urged the Government not to use it as “excuse for internal repression”.
on the other hand, the Efe agency reported that some 200 people —supporters of the wing more rigorist regime— marched to the Embassy in the Uk calling for its closure after that the british ambassador, Robert Macaire, was briefly detained for participating in the vigils of the sabbath. On Sunday, the Foreign Ministry iranian summoned him to ask him for an explanation and reminded him of his diplomatic status does not allow him to participate in acts that are “illegal”.
“The environment is emotionally very loaded. The people is angry because it believes that the Government withheld information”, explains to THE COUNTRY Abas Aslani, a researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies on the Middle East of Tehran: “it Is still early to say whether the protests will continue, although I think that will become extinct in a few days, because at the moment they are fewer in number and intensity than those of some months ago. And although they have some impact on the drive that was created during the funeral of Soleimani, that doesn’t change that the majority of iranian society is still considering it a murder against a very popular figure”.
In fact, the murder of Soleimani unleashed criticism against Donald Trump for adding tension in an area that is already a pure powder keg. Soleimani had sanctioned for supporting terrorism since 2007, but the operation was carried out behind the backs of Congress and without conclusive evidence of the imminent threat with which Washington justified the attack. The episode of the plane crash, on the contrary, it gives air to the republican Administration by questioning the credibility of Tehran and show an alarming: the shooting down of a commercial flight confused with an aircraft hostile, and the subsequent denial of the facts for two days.
Donald Trump took advantage of the conflict that this issue has sparked in the own iranian society to point to the regime. “The leaders of Iran: don’t kill their protesters. Thousands of them have already been killed or imprisoned by you and the world looks at them. Even more important, the united States looks at them. Returned to the Internet and allow journalists to move freely. “Stop killing your wonderful iranian people!”, wrote this Sunday morning on her Twitter account. The previous night, also sent a message of support to the protests in the street, highlighting the “courage” of the people and highlighting the support of its Government.
To the head of the Pentagon, Mark Esper, the demonstrations show the aspiration of the iranian society “for a better Government, a different regime”, while Washington has made it clear that that change is not an american policy. The secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, spoke in a similar vein on Twitter: “The voice of the people of iran has been clear. Are sick of the brutality, the lies and ineptitude of the islamic republic under the kleptocracy of Khamenei”. Even so, Esper appreciated the final assumption of responsibility for Tehran on the plane and gave as good an explanation of the error. “I have the feeling that it was an accident,” he said in an interview on the Fox, and added that the regime “at the end did the right thing to admit it”.
Even so, the question for the Management of Trump on the death of Soleimani continue, due to concerns about threats to the united States. The president claims that up to four us embassies, including that of Iraq, were the target of attacks planned by the general. Hope admitted this Sunday at the Fox that he had not seen the risk on diplomatic missions in particular, but “probably went after the embassies, which are the most prominent of american presence in a country.”
Accusations internal
The divisions also affecting the heart of the regime. “There are people very critical within the system, as can be seen in the front pages of the newspapers in iran. Given that these journals represent each voice of a different part of the power structure, we can see that they are accusing each other,” says Hakki Uygur, director of the Center for Iranian Studies of Ankara. Although all of the newspapers appeared this Sunday and pray for forgiveness for what happened, some of them were especially hard. “Unforgivable,” was the owner of Iran, the official journal of the Government. Etemad, of the reformist current, and entitled to the entire page: “Discúlpense. To resign”, a message directed to the dome of the Revolutionary Guard. Not only the iranian society is divided by their support or opposition with more or less nuances to the regime of the ayatollahs, but also the State is strongly crossed by factions within and between their constituencies: the power to elect, the religious power, the regular Army, the Revolutionary Guard…
Precisely, the chief of the guards, Hossein Salami, appeared in Parliament to explain the “error” that led him to shoot down aircraft Ukrainian. Other officers of this military body deeply ideological accusations have been leveled at the Government and the Armed Forces for not having made the case to his request that the day of the attack with missiles at us bases in Iraq —hours before pouring down the plane— are closed the air space to civilian flights. While the Government and the supreme leader have ensured that they didn’t know until the Friday what had actually occurred.
Nematipour believes that the protests are not yet closed. Those who died in the incident are not like those who died in the repression of the protests of autumn —people pull humble and rural areas, but “people with money and well-connected”. “When you bury your family, you will begin multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the State and not be content with that is use as a scapegoat to the operator of the missile, they will want authorities at the highest level to assume their responsibility,” he says. Iran does not pass precisely through its best moment, with an economy in crisis and sunk by the growing sanctions from the united States.
In the paragraph diplomat, the leader of qatar, emir Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, arrived in Tehran on his first visit to the country since he came to power in 2013, to meet with president Hasan Rohaní. “We are convinced that the only solution to the crisis [with the U.S.] goes through detente and dialogue,” he said after the interview.
