Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has threatened people not to take to streets anymore saying that Saturday is the day that protests will be over.
During a speech at the funeral of those killed in an attack on a shrine in the city of Shiraz, Hossein Salami claimed that young Iranians are deceived but they must not sell their honor to America.
“Take off the uniforms of the American army,” stated Salami.
The Islamic Republic routinely blames most economic and political problems on enemy plots, meaning primarily the United States and also Israel and often European countries such as Britain and France
Elsewhere in his remarks the hardliner IRGC commander addressed young Iranian protesters saying that “Some of you may think this isn’t an American plot. But don’t think Joe Biden, General Martin Dempsey, Frank McKenzie, Benny Gantz, Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid or Mohammed Bin Salman would call you on your phone and ask you to pour into streets. No! They do it through their media.”
Salami also urged the students not to turn universities into a “battlefield for America against the nation.”
In November 2019 when protests suddenly erupted in the country, the IRGC immediately resorted to large scale killing of protesters using military weapons often at close range. At least 1,500 people died, and thousands arrested. This time there has been less use of assault rifles and machine guns against protesters, but shotguns and beatings have killed around 270.
With Salami’s warning, the concern now is that the IRGC will soon resort to fill military intervention against unarmed protesters as a desperate measure against the longest-running daily protests in the 43-year history of the clerical regime.
The Islamic Republic calls the United States its arch enemy and refused to meet American diplomats in direct negotiations during 17 months of nuclear talks from April 2021 to August 2022.
Salami’s statements regarding an end to demonstrations came at a time when students have been staging more protests at different universities on Saturday blaming the IRGC for the Wednesday attack on a Shia shrine in Shiraz in which over a dozen lost their lives and many more injured.
Students chanted slogans against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the IRGC forces during their gatherings saying that they are “murderers”.
There are also signs that older Iranians have started joining the protests and the regime has begun to fear the wrath of the people who this time clearly have one demand: regime change. They are not asking for reducing the 40-percent inflation rate or lifting the mandatory hijab rule. They are openly demanding a different kind of government.
The regime still has its supporters who are either religious or receive benefits from the government. But they seem to be in a minority.