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Less than a week since the Iranian government hiked gasoline prices by dozens of percentage points, the regime is at the lethal phase of quashing the demonstrations. While an internet blackout has greatly impeded the flow of information among protest groups and between them and the outside world, more than 100 people are thought to have been killed, with some reports putting the figure as high as 200, and thousands injured or detained.

Reports relying on sources in the Basij, the volunteer forces of the Revolutionary Guards, tell of training exercises to suppress protests. They also say the Guards are on high alert and might deploy armored vehicles in cities.

At the beginning of the week the government apparently still thought it could calm the public; for example, by handing money directly to the 20 million or so needy Iranians as compensation for price rises. But now the leadership seems to realize that its facing the threat of an all-out civil insurrection, as the protests spread to about 100 cities amid the burning of banks and government offices, damage to schools of Islamic studies, and slogans and graffiti demanding death to Rohani, death to Khamenei.

While such phenomena happened during the major protests of 2009 and 2017-18, this time the government is having a hard time distinguishing between reformists and conservatives, and thus separating those it calls loyal to the revolution from those it deems domestic enemies operated by the United States, Israel and the arrogant forces of the West.

At the beginning of the protests, demonstrations broke out in Tehrans neighborhoods that are racked by poverty. But within three days they had spread to north Tehran, Shiraz, Yazd and Isfahan, as students, young people and middle-class folks march together. The head of the Revolutionary Guards has said the response to protests will be decisive and revolutionary, while the editor of Kayhan, a daily controlled by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has demanded that the regime execute the protesters. This reflects the tension, not to say panic, among the regimes leaders.

In contrast to 2009, when it was clear who was leading the protests and who the protesters were, this time, like last year, there are no known leaders with a cogent ideology or clear political strategy. This means that even if the regime is willing to negotiate with the protesters, as it did with striking teachers, truck drivers and protesting government factory workers, there is currently no clear group that it can neutralize to achieve calm.

And a violent suppression can entangle the regime even more by possibly bringing other sectors of society into the protest. One danger is that the Basij volunteers, many of them from poor neighborhoods and some who were forced to volunteer if they wanted a job, will leave the organization and join the protest.

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The regimes legitimacy is compromised further by the unified front presented by Khamenei, President Hassan Rohani and Chief Justice Ebrahim Raisi, who have fully backed the governments decision to raise taxes. In doing so, they have increased the sense of alienation and hostility for the leadership.

In previous protests, Rohani came out against the use of force and said people had the right to nonviolent protest. He even accused certain religious institutions and the Revolutionary Guards of graft. This time, Rohani has remained silent despite the shooting at protesters and the many casualties. The deep economic crisis and the lack of a political will to implement the economic reforms Rohani wanted have trapped him in a dead end where only a dramatic step like a hike in gas prices could help plug the budget deficit that has reached 8 percent of GDP.

Of course, the regime could reverse its decision to raise taxes, or do so gradually over a year, but such a decision would mean not only giving in to the publics demands, but deviating from the strategy of resistance economics that Khamenei has said is the way to overcome the steamroller of sanctions. Thus, suppression of the protests is necessary ideologically, not only politically. Meanwhile, the regime is relying on experience and is certain that this time too it will be able to quash the protests before they become a dangerous civil insurrection.

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Iran's attempts to quell protests bring them closer to the boiling point - Haaretz

(This Nov 18 story corrects Liz Cheneys title to representative from senator in eighth paragraph.)

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo answers questions during a news briefing at the State Department in Washington, U.S., November 18, 2019. REUTERS/Yara Nardi

By Daphne Psaledakis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Monday it will no longer waive sanctions related to Irans Fordow nuclear plant after Tehran resumed uranium enrichment at the underground site.

The right amount of uranium enrichment for the worlds largest state sponsor of terror is zero ... There is no legitimate reason for Iran to resume enrichment at this previously clandestine site, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters.

The U.N. atomic watchdog and Iran itself said this month Tehran is again enriching uranium at the sensitive site, which Iran hid from U.N. non-proliferation inspectors until its exposure in 2009. [nL8N27R5MN]

While European countries have tried to salvage the 2015 nuclear nonproliferation agreement, Iran has increasingly distanced itself from the accord since the United States withdrew last year.

The pact requires Iran to restrain its enrichment program in exchange for the removal of most international sanctions, and it called for Fordow to be converted into a nuclear, physics and technology center.

Despite its withdrawal, the Trump administration has granted sanctions waivers that allowed foreign firms to do work in Iran that advanced non-proliferation. Those included Russias Rosatom at Fordow.

Pompeo said the waivers will end on Dec. 15. The State Department had said last month that it renewed waivers for 90 days.

Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham and Representative Liz Cheney praised the decision and called on the Trump administration to also end the waiver for the Arak heavy water reactor, where Chinese state-owned China National Nuclear Corp has operated.

There is no justification for extending that waiver in light of recent confirmation that Iran is violating its heavy water obligations, let alone for letting Iran continue to build up its program not at Fordow, and not at Arak, the senators said in a statement.

Kelsey Davenport, director of the Arms Control Association, said Mondays decision could further jeopardize the nuclear accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

This step further risks collapsing the JCPOA because it removes a tangible benefit to Iran under the deal, Davenport said.

Pompeo also called on Iran to end violence against protesters, as demonstrations have spread across the Islamic Republic since Friday. Irans powerful Revolutionary Guards warned on Monday of action if unrest over gasoline price hikes does not cease. At least 100 banks and dozens of buildings and cars have been torched, state media reported.

We condemn strongly any acts of violence committed by this regime against the Iranian people and are deeply concerned by reports of several fatalities, Pompeo said.

Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Matt Spetalnick, Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Grant McCool and Cynthia Osterman

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U.S. to no longer waive sanctions on Iranian nuclear site - Reuters

The protests began last Friday, and before the weekend was over, the Islamic Republic of Iran was in a state of insurrection. Major disturbances have been reported in more than 100 towns and cities across Iran, from Ardabil in the north, on the Caspian Sea, to Bandar Abbas in the south, on the Persian Gulf.

Officially, at least 12 people have been killed and 1,000 demonstrators have been arrested, but its impossible to know how deeply the uprising has taken hold. A regime-ordered internet shutdown has cut digital communications across Iran by roughly 95 per cent, according to the global internet monitoring agency Netblocks.

But Iranians with access to satellite communication have managed to transmit images and videos to human rights activists in the Iranian diaspora, and the crisis is clearly far deeper than the government is letting on. Across the country, government offices, police stations and a major oil depot have been burned down. Independent reports indicate a death toll of at least 36 people. Government officials say more than 100 banks have been set ablaze, including the Central Bank of Iran in Tehran, the capital.

Sparked by a surprise announcement on Friday that the government was imposing drastic hikes in fuel prices, the focus of the protests quickly turned to demands for the overthrow of the Islamic regime itself. Shouting death to the dictator, hundreds of thousands of protesters have been streaming through the streets of Tehran and Mashad, Tabriz and Shiraz. Billboards and posters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have been put to the torch.

Im getting first-hand information from people in the streets in different cities. Theyre mostly young people, and theyre crying, but theyre full of hope. People are very angry, the prominent womens rights activist Masih Alinejad told me on Sunday. These people have nothing to lose. Theyre fearless now. It is the government that is full of fear.

READ MORE:As protests deepen in Iraq, Canada is caught in the middle

A high-profile Iranian journalist, Alinejad was forced into exile 10 years ago. Alinejads My Stealthy Freedoms campaign against Irans compulsory hijab law, launched in 2014, has grown into a major protest movement. Begun as a Facebook page that invited Iranian women to post pictures and videos of themselves with their heads uncovered, the movement continues to grow, even though Tehrans Revolutionary Court ruled in August that women who send Alinejad their pictures and videos face prison terms of up to 10 years.

Alinejad said that while it is impossible to predict what will become of the current uprising, the spontaneous eruption that began last Friday is more radical than the protest movements that preceded it.

The 2017-18 revolt that began in Mashad was slow to take off, and centred on reformist demands. The failed Green Movement of 2009 erupted when a dubious presidential vote resulted in the election of the now-sidelined Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. This time its different, because of how rapidly the protests spread across the country, Alinejad said, and because its not just about corruption and the cost of living, like the protests of two years ago.

Although the gas price hikes triggered the protests that began last Friday, the popular demands explicitly call for regime change. Unlike 2009, the current protests are leaderless and organic, and thus more difficult to decapitate. People are angrier and getting angry faster. The regime is already using live bullets, firing into crowds.

This is the first time the government is afraid of the people right away. They shut down the internet right away. Straight away the government is full of fear. A leaderless movement is more dangerous. If the movement had a leader, they would go and arrest them. Now everyone is a leader.

The current protests are more like the events that ousted the western-backed Shah Reza Pahlavi and brought the Khomeinists to power in 1979, Alinejad said.

Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli is warning that security forces will act to restore calm if the protests continue, but whatever happens in the short term, the regimes prospects are dim.The International Monetary Fund reckons inflation could hit 40 per cent this coming year, and the newly re-imposed U.S. sanctions are beginning to bite. The Iranian economy shrank by nearly four per cent last year, and the IMF is forecasting a further contraction of six per cent over the next few months.

In the meantime, the Iranian people are being held hostage by the regime. Hostage-taking is in the Iranian governments DNA, Alinejad said, noting that the Khomeinist theocracy began with a hostage-takingthe capture of 52 American diplomats and citizens in November, 1979. They were held captive until January, 1981. The regime persists in jailing Iranian dual citizens and holding them to political ransom, Alinejad pointed out.

This is when the conversation turned personal.

On Sept. 23, Khameneis Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps showed up at the home of Alinejads brother, Ali. He was handcuffed blindfolded and taken away. Amnesty International calls Alis arrest a despicable and cowardly attempt to silence Alinejad and bring to an end her campaign against the compulsory hijab. Ali remains in Evin Prison.

This is another hostage-taking, Alinejad said. They want to keep me silent. They want to shut down the movement I am leading. They want me to feel guilty about my brother being in prison, and its not easy to deal with this feeling. When I am sitting down to dinner with my family, I have this feeling like someone is squeezing in my heart.

This is how the government is mentally torturing me. They want me to suffer every minute of my life. And this is the mentality of the government. So I have two options. To feel guilty and stay silent, or fight back against this oppressive regime. To fight back is the choice I have made. They havent broken me. They want me to stop spreading the message of Iran. They cannot stop me from giving a voice to voiceless people.

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The uprising in Iran: These people have nothing to lose. Theyre fearless now. - Maclean's

Just how durable is the Iranian economy, really? As the Trump administrations maximum pressure campaign against Iran marks its one-year anniversary, thats the question many policymakers in Washington are asking.

Iranian officials have been eager to supply the answer.According to the countrys Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, U.S. pressure has foundered in the face of Irans heroic revolutionary resistance. America, Khamenei recently intoned, was deluded in thinking that it will bring Iran to its knees by focusing on maximum pressure, particularly through economic sanctions. Other top Iranian decisionmakers have said much the same, taking pains to minimize the impact that U.S. pressure has had on the countrys economic health.

Look a bit closer, however, and it becomes clear that the Islamic Republic is profoundly ailing. This summer, the World Bankestimatedthat the countrys gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to shrink by some 4.5 percent this year alone a much steeper decline than the 3.9 percent economic contraction the international financial institution had initially predicted.

Part of the reason for this decline is undoubtedly American pressure, which has deftly managed to exploit the Islamic Republics myriad economic vulnerabilities. But the true causes of those vulnerabilities are distinctly local in nature.

The problems begin with the Iranian banking system, which is now teetering on the verge of full-blown crisis. A Summer 2019 study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a prestigious Washington, D.C. think tank,foundsignificant liquidity and solvency problems among the countrys fragile financial institutions, which are now deemed to be in a precarious position. The problems, moreover, are ongoing. While a collapse of institutions may not be in the offing in the short run, bankingdistress will continue to mount, making the system more vulnerable to an external shock like a military conflict or further slowdown in oil exports, says Adnan Mazarei, a former deputy-director at the International Monetary Fund.

The state of the regimes retirement funds is also dire. Most of the countrys pension funds are now considered insolvent and rely heavily on government subsidies to stay afloat. Last year, Iranian Vice President Eshaq Jahnagiriadmittedthat between 70 and 80 percent of the nations retirement funds and the entirety of its retirement planning for the Iranian military are paid for by the government.

Such a state of affairs would represent a severe economic burden under the best of circumstances, but Irans demographics make the situation simply unsustainable. This is because the Iranian population is aging quickly and rapidly outpacing the ability of the regime to adapt. As of last year, the official number of Iranian senior citizens stood at 7.4 million, or roughly nine percent of the countrys total population of 84 million. But by 2050, that number is expected to skyrocket to 30 million, putting massive strain on the countrys retirement system in the process.

Irans labor market, meanwhile, lies fallow. Last year, the IMFgaugedthat the unemployment rate in Iran was at nearly 14 percent, and rising. According to the IMFs projections, unemployment in Iran is expected to rise sharply for the next half-decade at least, reaching nearly one-fifth of the total population by the mid-2020s. That dire prediction isnt adequately captured by official Iranian estimates, which paint a comparatively rosy picture of the employment situation within the Islamic Republic.

This state of affairs is most acute among young Iranians.According to the Iran Statistical Center, a government agency under the control of the countrys president, the official unemployment rate hit 27 percent among young Iranians last year, and a whopping 40 percent among university graduates. Simply put, the Iranian regime has systematically failed to create enough jobs to accommodate the countrys labor force, thereby adding fuel to thegrowing discontent now visibleon the Iranian street.

All of these problems, in turn, are creating a secondary crisis in Iranian healthcare. The Islamic Republic now faces what could be called a medical brain drain, as more and more doctors and nurses seek an exit from the country. The results are dire. The Iran Student News Agencyhas reportedthat there are just 1.6 doctors and medical specialists per 1,000 Iranians far below the World Health Organizations estimates of the resources necessary for primary care. And, as the countrys currency (and by extension its purchasing power) has cratered, Iranhas also begun to experienceshortages of badly-needed foreign-made medicine.

Irans economy, in other words, is sick, and getting sicker. Of course, Iranian officials have styled the countrys current economic woes as nothing more than the product of malign Western imperialism. A closer look, however, indicates that the true causes of the countrys economic malaise are distinctly local and that the Iranian people have their own government to blame for their current condition.

Ilan Berman is senior vice president at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C. An expert on regional security in the Middle East,he has consulted for the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense, and provided assistance on foreign policy and national security issues to a range of governmental agencies and congressional offices.

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Iran's economy is a house of cards | TheHill - The Hill

Key Point: Tehran keeps coming up with fake planes or tries to make older fighter planes look new.

In February 2017 I published an article on the Iranian Saeqeh (Thunderbolt) fighter. Billed as Irans first domestically-built jet fighter to enter operational service, the Saeqeh.

Fast forward and we are again greeted with headlines for yet another 100% indigenously made fighter jet, this time a state of the art two-seater called the Kowsar. And yet it appears identical to an F-5F Tiger II two-seater jet.

If anything, it is far less original than the Saeqeh, which has airframe modifications including enlarged strakes and twin vertical tail stabilizers. The Kowsar doesnt appear to have any external changes from the F-5F. How was this jet even worthy of the photo-op with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the instructors seat for Iranian Defense Industry Day?

It happens there really is a program to build a combat-capable Kowsar advanced jet trainer. It simply wasnt the aircraft on display this summer.

According to Iranian aviation expert Babak Taghvaee, the Kowsar may merely be an avionics testbeda regular F-5F fitted with new avionics (rumored to be of Chinese origin) eventually intended for use in the Saeqeh fighter, spruced up with a fresh coat of gleaming paint for the photo-op. The test-bed used may date all the way back to Iran's first attempt to reverse-engineer the F-5 in the 1990s, the Azaraksh. This was because the real Kowsar-88 wasn't ready yet.

Iran had announced back in 2013 it was developing a Kowsar-88 trainer which could also serve in the light attack role. In 2017, footage of a prototype undergoing taxi trials was unveiled which you can see here.

Though influenced by the F-5, the prototype is a different airplane and is much shorter. Interestingly, it bears a striking resemblance to the Taiwanese AIDC AT-3 jet trainer. Details are scarce, but the actual Kowsar-88 apparently would have a digital glass cockpit using three multi-function displays and uses two J85-13 turbojet engines reverse-engineered from the F-5.

The public has had short memories as President Rouhani also attended a ceremony showing off the Kowsar-88s in July 2017. Even the most uninformed observer can compare this Kowsar to the one displayed August 2018 and see they are not the same airplanes.

According to the European Defense Review, sixteen domestically-built Kowsar-88s are planned to take over training duties currently undertaken by the more capable Saeqeh jets in the next decade. Iran will attempt to acquire additional J85 engines on the black market, but if that fails, will cannibalize the parts from twelve older F-5A and B model aircraft.

Meanwhile, Tehran reportedly plans to deploy fifty single-seat Saeqeh-1 fighters and fourteen two-seat Saeqeh-2 fighters by rebuilding additional rusty old F-5E and F-5F airframes. Depending on the status of international sanctions, Iran may also seek to procure Russian Yak-130 or Chinese JL-10 (aka L-15 Falcon) supersonic trainers.

Versatile trainer/light attack jets continue to be popular with militaries across the globe from Chinas L-15, to the Nigerian Alpha Jets fighting Boko Haram, to South Koreas FA-50 Golden Eagle, which has seen a lot of combat in The Philippines. In addition to being forgiving stepping stones for training fighter pilots to fly more demanding aircraft, advanced jet trainers can perform counter-insurgency and strike missions far more cost-efficiently than a high-performance jet fighter. Supersonic trainers with radar can also perform light air defense duties.

Of course, these are not the sort of aircraft one uses to fight off F-15 Eagles or F-22 stealth fighters, which is precisely the major threat Iranian defense have to worry about coming from the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Instead, programs like the Kowsar reflect Tehrans plans to shore up fighter pilot training and sustain the number of operational airframes capitalizing on the raw material furnished by America prior to the Iranian Revolution if international sanctions curtail foreign procurementas seems more likely since U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

The latest episode with the not-Kowsar fighter illustrates yet again the casual dishonesty of Tehrans propagandists. Iranian industry wanted to display the Kowsar-88 for an expowhich does appear to be a real airplane! However, the actual Kowsar-88 wasnt ready for display this August, so Tehran simply took an old, very well-known jet fighter and claimed it was a new one, in full view of domestic and international audiences that would know better.

The irony is that Tehran doesnt need to be ashamed of its resourceful use of old jet fighters. In the nine-year-long Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s, Iranian fighter pilots fought one of the most intense air wars in recent history defending their home soil. Though higher-performance F-4 Phantoms and F-14 Tomcats shot down dozens of Iraqi fighters (and suffered losses in return), even the F-5s chalked up a number of kills against MiG-21 fighters and Su-20 attack jets.

Sbastien Roblin holds a Masters Degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared earlier in 2019.

Image: Wikimedia.

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Fail: Why Iran's "New" Saeqeh Fighter Isn't Any Good - The National Interest Online