How will the protests in Iran end?

Baku/18.11.22/Turan: The strike of shop owners continues in the cities of South Azerbaijan, as well as in other cities of Iran. Shopkeepers in Tabriz refuse to open their shops for three consecutive days. In the videos posted by citizens on social networks, we see that owners of the covered markets Valiasr, Shahnaz, Sadi, Khagani, Tarbiyat, Nesfi-rah, Maralan and Amir also joined the nationwide strike. in Tabriz. Videos broadcast from the cities of Ardabil and Zanjan,  show that many shopkeepers in these cities went on a three-day strike after closing their shops.

How will the protests in Iran end?

Muhammad Rahmanifar, a South Azerbaijani political observer living in Turkey, shares his forecast on this issue in the program “A Difficult Question”.

According to him, the events in Iran should be called a revolution. “These protests in Iran are not the first ones. From time to time, outraged people in Iran go to the streets. However, the current action has three features that distinguish it from the previous ones,” says Rahmanifar. The first feature is the geography of the protests. They cover the entire country. The second feature is the duration of the shares. “The previous protests lasted at most 7-8 days and then were suppressed by the authorities and subsided. Now they have not subsided for three months already,” notes Rahmanifar.

And finally, the third difference, according to him, is that women and youth are the leading force behind these protests. “It is thanks to the youth that these actions do not subside. Unlike previous generations, they are not subject to propaganda. Thanks to satellite television, they see how their peers live in other countries. They compare how they live with how their peers live, for example, in Turkey. This comparison, of course, is not in favor of Iran,” the observer says. Rahmanifar notes that young people do not have faith in the future.

“The country is going through a long economic crisis and there are no hopes for changes due to sanctions, and most importantly, because of total corruption. And the biggest corrupt officials are just representatives of the clergy and the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). Most of all, young people are outraged by the fact that the offspring of these "priests" live in Europe, the USA, Canada. They study, work,  the girls walk freely with their heads uncovered, while the children of ordinary citizens in Iran live like prisoners.

Unemployment reigns in the country. And even after receiving a diploma of higher education, young people cannot find work. And they say, “You can't live like this. Such a life is tantamount to death.”

“If a person is not afraid of death, then it is impossible to stop him,” says Rahmanifar.