Mediaboss Marketing

Anti-government protests have entered their third week in Iran despite severe internet restrictions and a heavy crackdown that human rights groups said has killed dozens.

Videos posted on social media appeared to show protests in cities across Iran on Friday night and Saturday, with students at several universities shouting chants such as "Death to the dictator!"

Other forms of civil disobedience, such as residents chanting from rooftops, drivers honking their horns in unison, and public figures speaking out for the demonstrators have emerged.

On Saturday, demonstrations were taking place worldwide, including in Rome, London, Frankfurt and Seoul, in solidarity.

The protests were triggered by the Sept. 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman detained for allegedly not covering her hair properly. She later died in the custody of Iran's morality police.

While it is difficult to gauge the extent of the protests given the severe internet restrictions in Iran, Hadi Ghaemi, director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, an independent organization based in New York, said the protests are "certainly continuing."

He pointed to a "bloodbath" on Friday in the southeast Iranian city of Zahedan, where at least 19 people were reportedly killed after a standoff between protesters and police. He said the protests were directly related to Amini and the rape of a 15-year-old by a police commander.

As in the earlier days of the protests, recent videos show that many of the demonstrators are women.

They have led and marched in the demonstrations, and in defiance of the Islamic regime's strict morality laws, have cut their hair in public and danced with their exposed locks flowing.

"We keep receiving a lot of videos that show women are fearless," said Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist and activist who fled Iran in 2009 and is now based in New York. "They're walking fearlessly toward the security forces. It seems that this time people made up their mind. They say that enough is enough, we are fed up with the Islamic Republic, and we want to get rid of it."

These days, Alinejad spends day and night posting images of the protests and other acts of defiance on social media for her millions of followers. The Iranian regime made it a crime for Iranians to send videos to her. It has also made her a target, even in New York City, where she spoke to CBS News from an FBI safehouse. But she said she's not afraid.

"My true leaders are these women and men inside Iran," she said. "I don't do anything, just using my freedom in the U.S., echoing their voice."

In recent years, women in Iran have taken part in other nationwide protests. But this time, the spark was the death of a woman, and a female journalist - Niloufar Hamedi of Shargh daily - broke the story. She was arrested and placed in solitary confinement in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison.

Hamedi is one of at least 19 journalists including seven women detained across the country since the protests began, according to Reporters Without Borders. (The Center for Human Rights in Iran puts the figure at 25 or higher.)

"This is the first time that women in a large number, standing shoulder to shoulder with men, are burning their headscarves," said Alinjead, who runs an online campaign called "My Stealthy Freedom," sharing images of girls and women in Iran flouting the hijab rules. "[The hijab] is the main pillar of the Islamic Republic, so they strongly believe that by burning headscarves, they're actually shaking the regime."

In the decades before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women in the streets of Iran dressed in both the hijab and the latest Western fashions. But soon after the revolution, the new Islamic regime ruled that women and girls from a young age had to cover their hair and bodies in public. Hardliners proclaimed the hijab would protect women's honor, but for many protesters, it is a symbol of oppression.

Women who have been demonstrating want to have the choice of whether or not to wear the hijab, according to Azadeh Pourzand, co-founder of the US-based Siamak Pourzand Foundation, promoting the freedom of expression in Iran.

"It's about essentially women feeling humiliated and women feeling forced to do something that they may or may not want to do," said Pourzand, who is also a PhD researcher at the University of London focusing on women's activism in Iran.

While Iranian women have pushed for legal reforms for years, very little has been achieved, she said. Women are present in society, particularly in higher education, but family and employment laws remain deeply discriminatory toward women, as do norms and practices, she said.

Still, Pourzand pointed out that the protests have united Iranians across different ages, ethnicities and cities. Demonstrators are calling not only for women's rights but they are also protesting political repression, corruption, Iran's battered economy and a climate crisis stemming from mismanagement.

Alinejad wants western countries to cut their ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran and "to recognize the Iranian uprising."

Young Iranians demonstrating in the streets believe "history will judge those democratic countries who can help us but decided to help our murderers," she said, adding, "They're saying, 'We are ready to die for the future of Iran, for having a better country to live.'"

A teacher who spoke to CBS News on condition that her name not be used said she has taken her daughter to protests twice in Tehran.

"For 43 years, we have lived and slept in fear, so much that we became accustomed to it," she said. "But now we are no longer afraid."

Trending News

Link:
Iran protests enter third week despite internet restrictions, heavy ...

An attack by armed separatists on a police station in a southeastern city killed 19 people, including four members of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported Saturday.

The assailants in Friday's attack hid among worshippers near a mosque in the city of Zahedan and attacked the nearby police station, according to the report.

IRNA quoted Hossein Modaresi, the provincial governor, as saying 19 people were killed. The outlet said 32 Guard members, including volunteer Basiji forces, were also wounded in the clashes.

It was not immediately clear if the attack was related to nationwide antigovernment protests gripping Iran after the death in police custody of a young Iranian woman.

Protesters make fire and block the street during a protest over the death of a woman who was detained by the morality police, in downtown Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo) (Associated Press)

IRANIAN AUTHORITIES ARREST CELEBRITIES, ARTISTS, FOREIGN NATIONALS, DURING PROTEST CRACKDOWN: REPORT

Sistan and Baluchestan province borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and has seen previous attacks on security forces by ethnic Baluchi separatists, although Saturday's Tasnim report did not identify a separatist group allegedly involved in the attack.

IRNA on Saturday identified the dead as Hamidreza Hashemi, a Revolutionary Guard colonel; Mohammad Amin Azarshokr, a Guard member; Mohamad Amin Arefi, a Basiji, or volunteer force with the IRG; and Saeed Borhan Rigi, also a Basiji.

Tasnim and other state-linked Iranian news outlets reported Friday that the head of the Guards intelligence department, Seyyed Ali Mousavi, was shot during the attack and later died.

It is not unusual for IRG members to be present at police bases around the country.

A police motorcycle burns during a protest over the death of a young woman who had been detained for violating the country's conservative dress code, in downtown Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo)

IRAN PROTESTERS INSIST ISLAMIC REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT THE PEOPLE IN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets over the last two weeks to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by the morality police in the capital of Tehran for allegedly wearing her mandatory Islamic headscarf too loosely.

The protesters have vented their anger over the treatment of women and wider repression in the Islamic Republic. The nationwide demonstrations rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of the clerical establishment that has ruled Iran since its 1979 Islamic revolution.

The protests have drawn supporters from various ethnic groups, including Kurdish opposition movements in the northwest that operate along the border with neighboring Iraq. Amini was an Iranian Kurd and the protests first erupted in Kurdish areas.

Iranian state TV has reported that at least 41 protesters and police have been killed since the demonstrations began Sept. 17. An Associated Press count of official statements by authorities tallied at least 14 dead, with more than 1,500 demonstrators arrested.

IRAQ SUMMONS IRANIAN AMBASSADOR FOLLOWING DEADLY BOMBING CAMPAIGN

Also on Friday, Iran said it had arrested nine foreigners linked to the protests, which authorities have blamed on hostile foreign entities, without providing evidence.

It has been difficult to gauge the extent of the protests, particularly outside of Tehran. Iranian media have only sporadically covered the demonstrations.

Witnesses said scattered protests involving dozens of demonstrators took place Saturday around a university in downtown Tehran. Riot police dispersed the protesters, who chanted "death to dictator." Some witnesses said police fired teargas.

People who followed the call of the German-Iranian Society in Berlin demonstrate in front of the Iranian embassy against the so-called "moral police" in their home country, in Berlin, Germany, Friday, Sept. 23, 2022. (Wolfgang Kumm/dpa via AP)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, meanwhile, reminded Irans armed forces of their duty to peoples lives and rights, the foreign-based opposition Telegram channel Kaleme reported.

Mousavi's Green Movement challenged Irans disputed 2009 presidential election in unrest at a level unseen since its 1979 Islamic Revolution before being crushed by authorities.

"Obviously your capability that was awarded to you is for defending people, not suppression people, defending oppressed, not serving powerful people and oppressors," he said.

View original post here:
Iran attack kills 19, including 4 elite Revolutionary Guard members ...

(Beirut) Iranian authorities have ruthlessly cracked down on widespread anti-government protests with excessive and lethal force throughout Iran, Human Rights Watch said today.

Based on videos of protests, and interviews with witnesses and a security force member, Human Rights Watch documented numerous incidents of security forces unlawfully using excessive or lethal force against protesters in 13 cities across Iran. Videos showed security forces using shotguns, assault rifles, and handguns against protesters in largely peaceful and often crowded settings, altogether killing and injuring hundreds. In some cases, they shot at people who were running away.

The Iranian authorities brutal response to protests across many cities indicates concerted action by the government to crush dissent with cruel disregard for life, said Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. The security forces widespread shooting of protesters only serves to fuel anger against a corrupt and autocratic government.

Protests began on September 16, 2022, after 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Aminis death in the custody of Irans abusive morality police. Concerned governments should cooperate to increase pressure on Iran and undertake a United Nations-led independent inquiry into serious abuses committed during the protests and recommend avenues for holding those responsible to account.

Human Rights Watch verified 16 videos posted on social media that depict protests from September 17 to 22. The videos show police and other security forces using excessive and lethal force against protesters in Tehran, the capital, and the cities of Divandarreh, Garmsar, Hamedan, Kerman, Mashhad, Mehrshahr, Rasht, and Shiraz. They include instances of security forces using firearms, such as handguns and Kalashnikov-pattern assault rifles. Human Rights Watch also interviewed five witnesses to the crackdowns in Sanandaj, Marivan, Saghez, and Mashhad, and a security forces member.

Human Rights Watch also analyzed photos and videos showing grievous, and sometimes lethal, injuries to demonstrators. This research did not include the deadly crackdown by security forces in Zahedan on September 30, nor subsequent attacks against protesters, including on Sharif University Campus in Tehran on October 2.

Human Rights Watch compiled the names of 47 individuals whom human rights groups or credible media outlets documented as having been killed, most by bullets. These included at least nine children, two of them girls, and six women. As of September 31, Iranian state media-affiliated outlets reported the death toll to be around 60 and also announced the death of 10 security forces members. The death toll of protesters is likely significantly higher. Iranian authorities continue to heavily disrupt internet access in large parts of the country and block messaging applications, making documentation and verification more difficult.

We had gathered to chant, [when] security forces on motorcycles came toward us, said a 35-year-old year woman from Sanandaj city about a protest that took place near the Gendarmerie (Palestine) intersection on September 17. We ran toward the alley as they followed us and started throwing teargas and some started shooting bullets. A man behind us was shot in the leg and fell on the ground. People dragged him into another alley and inside someones home. [...] His wound was bleeding very heavily and was very deep.

In one video, filmed in Shahre-Rey city, south of Tehran, a security force member wearing camouflage clothing and surrounded by others in riot gear is seen aiming and firing twice with a Kalashnikov-pattern assault rifle at targets that are not visible. In another, filmed in the city of Rasht, a police officer leading a team of riot police is firing a handgun.

Human Rights Watch also reviewed and verified four videos of security forces firing at crowds of protesters, some fleeing. At least four videos showed security forces using shotguns, which can be loaded with ammunition containing multiple rubber or metal pellets. A security force member confirmed that police forces typically use Winchester shotguns with different ammunition rubber or metal pellets.

A woman from Sanandaj city said that on September 21, security forces there directly shot at her upper chest using so-called less lethal ammunition, causing superficial injuries, when she asked them not to detain a teenager.

[Security forces] ran toward a 13-year-old boy who was standing among the crowd, she said. He was so delicate and small that he didnt even resist. He was on the grass protecting his head while they were beating him. I yelled Leave him alone! and walked towards them. They fired in the air and people started fleeing while they dragged the boy across the street. While I was running, I kept yelling He is my brother!, thinking that was going to provoke their mercy. I saw an officer turning, sitting down, and aiming at me. I saw the fire from his weapon. I got scared and ran away. I had a burning sensation until I got home and realized that I was hit in my chest.

The UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms prohibit the use of firearms except in cases of imminent threat of death or serious injury. The UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has stated that Firearms are not an appropriate tool for the policing of assemblies, and must never be used simply to disperse an assembly. [A]ny use of firearms by law enforcement officials in the context of assemblies must be limited to targeted individuals in circumstances in which it is strictly necessary to confront an imminent threat of death or serious injury.

The 2020 UNguidance on less-lethal weapons in law enforcement says, Multiple projectiles fired at the same time are inaccurate and, in general, their use cannot comply with the principles of necessity and proportionality. Metal pellets, such as those fired from shotguns, should never be used.

A woman in Saghez city, in Kurdistan province, said that on September 18, the second day of the protests in the city, security forces shot at their group of protesters when her friend started filming security personnel striking their batons at a houses metal door, forcing them to seek refuge inside a nearby house. She said: After some time when we felt that it was safe, we left the house, but security forces were hiding behind the trees at the end of the street and started shooting at us from behind as we were running away.

Human Rights Watch examined two photos that Rohini Haar, an independent medical analyst, said showed protesters with serious injuries that are diagnostic of those sustained by metal pellets.

In two videos, one of them graphic, verified to have been filmed in the city of Kerman, demonstrators can be seen carrying away an unconscious woman bleeding from the head while a large crowd runs away.

Videos also show police officers and other security forces members, including plainclothes agents, operating side-by-side with the police, punching, kicking, and beating peaceful protesters and bystanders with batons. Police forces also used less-lethal weapons, including pepper ball launchers and riot guns.

The 35-year-old woman said that on October 1, she saw security forces attacking a group of women peacefully protesting in Sanandaj with metal cables and batons. She said that in response, we also started protesting. They rushed towards us and the rest of the crowd. ... A person in plain clothes started hitting a woman. I went forward, I cursed him, I told him not to. He came back toward me and started hitting me with a metal tow cable. One of them grabbed my neck when I was leaving and the other two came and hit me one or two times. She shared photos of hematomas on her back, arm, and abdomen that she said resulted from the beatings.

Human Rights Watch found that most protesters were peaceful, but some threw rocks and other objects. In some cases, protesters assaulted security forces. The use of violence by protesters does not justify the excessive use of force by security forces, Human Rights Watch said.

In Garmsar, graphic videos show security forces responding with automatic weapons fire to protesters attacking a police station with rocks and other projectiles. In one graphic video, a protester who appeared to present no imminent risk to security forces collapses immediately after gunfire is heard. A later graphic video shows the protester dead with a catastrophic injury to the head.

Since September 16, Iranian security agencies have also arrested hundreds of activists, journalists, and human rights defenders outside the protests. These include Niloufar Hamedi, a reporter of the Shargh Daily paper, and Elaheh Mohammadi, a reporter with Hammihan daily paper, both of whom reported on the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini. Aminis family requested the presence of independent medical reviewers to determine the cause of her death.

Under Iranian law, women who appear without proper hijab in public, based on the judgment of the countrys abusive morality police, can be fined or sentenced from between 10 days to two months in prison. Irans morality police regularly arrest women in public places. Over the past five years, authorities have prosecuted several activists, including the prominent lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh as well as Yasman Ariani, Saba Kordafshari, Monireh Arabshahi, Mojgan Keshavarz and Farhad Meysami for their peaceful opposition to compulsory hijab laws.

Since the outbreak of the protests, Iranian authorities have heavily disrupted internet access across the country. They have blocked several social media platforms, including WhatsApp messaging application and Instagram, since September 21 by an order of Irans National Security Council. Over the past four years, Iranian authorities have used partial or total internet shutdowns during widespread protests to restrict access to information and prohibit dissemination of information, in particular videos of the protests, Human Rights Watch said.

Internet shutdowns violate multiple rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and access to information, and the rights to peaceful assembly and association. Under international human rights law, Iran has an obligation to ensure that internet-based restrictions are provided by law and are a necessary and proportionate response to a specific security concern. Officials should not use broad, indiscriminate shutdowns to curtail the flow of information, nor to harm civilians ability to freely assemble and express political views.

Over the past four years, Iran has experienced several waves of widespread protests. Authorities have responded to these widespread protests across the country with excessive and lethal force and the arbitrary arrests of thousands of protesters. In one of the most brutal crackdowns, in November 2019, security forces unlawfully used excessive and unlawful lethal force against massive protests across the country. Amnesty International estimated that at least 340 people were killed during the 2019 protests. Iranian authorities have failed to conduct any credible and transparent investigations into the security forces serious abuses.

People in Iran are protesting because they do not see the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini and the authorities crackdown as an isolated event, but rather the latest example of the governments systematic repression of its own people, Sepehri Far said.

Link:
Iran: Security Forces Fire On, Kill Protesters - Human Rights Watch

An 85-year-old American and former U.N. official was allowed to leave Iran today after being held there for more than six years.

Baquer Namazi is flying to Muscat, Oman, said a lawyer representing the Namazi family. "After a short layover, he will be leaving Oman and heading to Abu Dhabi," said lawyer Jared Genser. While in the United Arab Emirates, Namazi will undergo surgery to clear possible arterial blockages that could lead to a stroke.

The case of Namazi and his son, both dual U.S.-Iranian citizens, has received international attention and been the subject of indirect talks between the United States and Iran for years.

In 2015, son Siamak Namazi was arrested while on a business trip to Iran. The elder Namazi was arrested on a visit to try to free his son - both sentenced to prison for what the U.S. says were fake spying charges.

Through their family lawyer, Namazi's other son, Babak Namazi, said, "It is impossible to articulate and describe sufficiently how I am feeling. I am just so grateful that after so long, I will shortly be able to embrace my father again. In recent years, I thought this day would never happen."

But he noted that the "nightmare" continues for his brother and for two other Americans held in Iran.

Siamak Namazi, 51, was in Iran's notorious Evin Prison until the weekend, when Iran allowed him to go to a family home in Tehran for a week-long furlough where he could re-unite there with his father. The furlough could be extended but he is not allowed to leave Iran.

The United Nations and Oman helped broker the releases. Iranian officials have repeatedly said they would like to swap westerners they're holding for Iranians being held in the U.S. and elsewhere.

In 2016, as the Iran nuclear deal was implemented, the Obama administration released seven Iranians from jail and dropped charges on others as Iran released Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and four other Americans. In 2019, the Trump administration released an Iranian scientist accused of violating sanctions, in return for a Princeton University graduate student studying in Iran.

Iranian media said the travel permission for Baquer Namazi comes as part of a deal to release some Iranian assets frozen in foreign banks. But the U.S. state department denied that Tuesday, calling it, "absolutely false."

Continue reading here:
Iran allows ailing American Baquer Namazi to leave the country for treatment - NPR

The Islamic Republic of Iran has survived longer than anyone had a right to expect. Today great revolutions are rare, because revolutions require the unflinching belief that another world is possible. In 1979, when clerics took power in Tehran, another world was possible. This is the world that Iranians still live in. A largeand apparently growingnumber of them dont seem to like it. After a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody on September 16 after being arrested for wearing her headscarf improperly, anti-government protests spread across the country, just as they seemingly do every few years.

Kim Ghattas: A whole generation revolts against the Iranian regime

Forty-three years after its founding, the Islamic Republic sputters along as yet another repressive, sclerotic regime. What makes the Iranian system differentexceptional, evenis the arc of its tragedy and the unusual role played by an entirely novel theological doctrine. In the beginning, the Islamic revolution was popular. Otherwise, it wouldnt have succeeded. The aggressive secularization under the shah in the 1960s and 70s had been discredited, and millions of Iranians turned to Islamic symbols, concepts, and leaders for inspiration. If the shahs Westernization project was the problem, then perhaps Islam could be the solution. And yet that solution took a peculiar form, one that foreordained todays discontent: Irans new rulers created a system far more intrusive than clerics of previous centuries could have ever imagined.

If one could sum up the original intent of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeinis revolution, it was, quite simply, to preserve Islam. In his most influential treatise, Islamic Government, published in 1970, Khomeini wrote, The preservation of Islam is even more important than prayeran odd if maddeningly vague claim. In practice, however, this meant something quite specific. For Khomeini, Islam could be preserved only through Islamic government. And this, in turn, was possible only if juriststhat is, clerics specializing in Islamic jurisprudenceled the government as guardians of Islam.

The reason this Islamic regime can seem so un-Islamicmerciless and absolutistis because it did something without precedent in Islamic history. What came to be known as wilayat al-faqih, or guardianship of the jurist, married clerical and executive power and intertwined them in a sort of Frankenstein ideology. In the great Islamic caliphates of the premodern era, the legal system was decentralized and the states reach was limited, with clerics enjoying considerable autonomy. As the keepers of sharia, Gods law, they interpreted how it applied to matters as varied as criminal codes, business contracts, and inheritance. But these clerics had never ruled directly. Instead, the caliphwho, in most cases, was not trained as a religious scholarwas responsible for executing laws and devising new ones on issues not explicitly covered by sharia. In revolutionary Iran, such distinctions would be put to the side, with a notably sectarian element added to the mix. Irans clerics, like the overwhelming majority of Iranians, were part of the Shiite branch of Islam. They would take Shiisms historical reverence for clergy and fuse it with a modern conception of the state.

Until the Safavid empire emerged in Persia in the 16th century, Shiite Muslims had largely lived as minorities under Sunni rule. Because Shias were rarely in a position to govern, Shiite doctrine had relatively little to say about the appropriate exercise of political power. Shias believed that legitimate authority was to be found in the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, unlike Sunnis, whoin theory, if not necessarily in practiceselected their leaders through a consultative process. Importantly, Shiite tradition held that the imams in the line of the prophet were divinely protected from error on theological matters.

The problem was that the 12th of these imams went into occultation in the 10th century. He was, and still is, the hidden imam. Because he was endowed with infallible powers of religious interpretation, his absence deprived the Shiite clergy of their source of authority and led themalbeit with some exceptions centuries latertoward a politics of political resignation. As the Islamic legal scholar Mohammad Fadel notes in a forthcoming paper, All hopes for political transformation were deferred to an indefinite, apocalyptic future.

For Khomeini, the future arrived in 1979. Any number of questions about how to govern legitimately while the imam was in occultation remained unresolved. Khomeini provided an answerthe responsibilities of the inerrant imam were to be, in effect, delegated to the jurists, and then more specifically to the jurist. It just so happened that Khomeini was that jurist.

In fairness to Khomeini, when he was giving the lectures that would form the core of Islamic Government, he probably hadnt fully entertained the possibility that, one day, hed return triumphant to Tehran and get the chance to implement his ideas. Beyond the sort of vague sketching that one tends to do in exile, Khomeini had offered few specifics about how he might actually govern. Some of this ambiguity was strategic. To avoid frightening leftist and liberal allies during the revolutions honeymoon, he and his supporters downplayed the harder edges of juristic rule.

Ideas matter. Ideology made Irans Islamic revolution possible. But ideas do not come fully formed in a vacuum. Unusual ideas are typically the product of unusual situations. As perhaps all political doctrines are, the unadorned radicalism of Khomeinis philosophy of government was a reaction to what had come before. The shah wasnt just any dictator. He was an exceptionally brutal one. More than that, he fashioned himself an authoritarian modernizer, like Turkeys Kemal Atatrk before him, who would cut Islam down to size and reorganize society on strictly secular lineswith Western backing no less. The orchestrated attack on Islam that many Iranians perceived was made more sinister by the unfortunate fact of a CIA-supported coup that had ousted the democratically elected prime minister in 1953, thereby elevating the shah.

Khomeini, along with a growing number of conservative clerics and laymen, came to believe that Islam was in danger of being extinguished. If as much as Islams very preservation was at stake, exceptional measures would have to be taken, with a frown and a grimace if need be. This helps explain how Khomeini could possibly declare that the absolute mandate (velayat-e-motlaq) of Islamic government was the most important of the divine commandments and has priority over all derivative commandments, even over prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca. In another time and place, this would have been dismissed as nonsensical ranting, or worse, heresy.

Khomeinis radicalism was real and deeply felt. His grievances were legitimate. But the totalizing nature of the dictatorship to come was not predestined. Another ingredient was necessary. That something else was the modern state, in all of its sprawling, overbearing glory. Until the 20th century, states simply could not be authoritarian in the fullest sense of the word. Their bureaucratic, technological, and surveillance capacity was limited. Even under despots, ordinary people could still live relatively free lives because the state could only extend its tentacles of control so far. The introduction of the nation-state removed any such constraints. Leaders could seek dominion not just over government but over society, too. Not only did they want to change your behavior; they wanted to transform the way you perceived the world.

Read: Sons of the Iranian revolution

If the shahs strong state was what threatened Islam, a strong stateand perhaps even a stronger onewould be required to protect it from its enemies at home and from those abroad as well. This expansiveness is in the character of revolutions, when they succeed. They are wondrous events. As the longtime Berkeley professor Hamid Algar once argued, perhaps with a hint of hyperbole, the Iranian revolution was the most significant, hopeful, and profound event in the entirety of contemporary Islamic history. But many revolutions prove too wondrous. Because they fight against great injustice and promise, in turn, a great reordering, revolutions cant help but forge a stronger state than the one they seek to destroy.

The irony is that the clerics were well aware of these pitfalls. As the Iranian American sociologist Said Arjomand writes, Khomeinis original vision was one of a withered state. For both better and worse, this antiauthoritarian impulse is embedded in Islam. In the fall of 1979, during the early, heady days of revolution, Khomeini observed that dictatorship is the greatest sin in Islam. On this, he wasnt necessarily wrong. But for the ayatollah and his heirs, the modern statein all of its powerproved too alluring.

Go here to read the rest:
The Reason Iran Turned Out to Be So Repressive - The Atlantic