How the protests in Iran turned into a national uprising

Iran: Police drag off man, pregnant wife 1:20 (CNN) — Nearly a month after protests began across the country, parts of Iran now show the hallmarks of battle zones, with flares lighting up the sky. , gunshots and bloody scenes recorded on video footage. “I am recording this video about the situation in Sanandaj,” a protester, his face covered with a black scarf and dark glasses, said in a message to CNN from the majority-Kurdish city in western Iran, where some of the protests have emerged. the most dramatic images of the protests, despite a near-total internet shutdown in the area. “Last night, the security forces were shooting in the direction of houses. They were using military-grade bullets,” he said. “Until now, I had not heard such bullets. People were very scared.” A video apparently shot from rooftops showed what appeared to be clashes between young protesters and heavily armed security forces. Bullets and flares streaked across the night sky and a cloud of dust and smoke blanketed city blocks. At street level, other videos showed protesters throwing stones at police, while officers, sometimes riding in a procession of motorcycles, appeared to be firing into the crowd. A large number of elements of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been taking part in the crackdown in addition to local police, say activists in Sanandaj, who accuse authorities of targeting indiscriminately. According to the Oslo-based Kurdish rights group Hengaw, a 7-year-old boy died in his mother’s arms on Sunday after security forces fired on a crowd of protesters. While it is impossible to independently verify the death toll from such clashes, gruesome images circulating online and eyewitness testimonies collected by CNN and human rights groups point to bloodshed. One video showed a driver in the city lying dead with a large gunshot wound to the face; activists said he was honking his horn in solidarity with the protesters. “In Sanandaj, they shoot people who honk their horns. And they shoot young and old alike,” another protester said in a video message to CNN. “The wounded do not go to hospitals because if they go there they are arrested by plainclothes police. “We are protesting for freedom in Iran. For the prisoners and the condemned, for the people of Iran who ask for the departure of the regime. Everyone wants this regime to go away.” People gather next to a burning motorcycle in the Iranian capital Tehran on October 8, 2022. More than ‘a protest for reforms’ Despite repeated claims by the government to have restored calm, scenes repeat themselves across the country to varying degrees, with the Kurdish majority in the west of the country appearing to bear the brunt of the repression. In a remarkable defiance, the Iranian people continue to invade the streets across the country. The protests began over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini (also known as Zhina), who died almost a month ago after being detained by the country’s morality police, but protesters have since coalesced around a series of of complaints against the regime. Increasingly, activists and pundits are characterizing the protests as a national uprising. “This is not a protest for reforms,” ​​Roham Alvandi, associate professor of history at the London School of Economics, told CNN. “This is an uprising that demands the end of the Islamic Republic. And that’s something completely different than what we’ve seen before.” In the past month, Iran’s protesters have attacked the regime’s economic and political hubs. The videos showed people throwing stones at police in central Tehran. In the capital’s bazaar, security forces were seen fleeing from protesters. Even in the conservative cities of Mashhad and Qom, the heart of the regime’s power base, protesters regularly emerge. Some oil and gas refineries have also become sites of protests, which are spreading rapidly in the south-west of the country. The country’s Petroleum Contractor Workers’ Council has said it would potentially call a strike and pause oil production. The oil industry is the lifeblood of Iran’s economy, which has been collapsing under the pressure of US sanctions unleashed by the Trump administration in 2018 and sustained by the Biden administration. US officials have been in indirect negotiations with Iran for a year and a half in a bid to restore a landmark 2015 nuclear deal, from which former President Donald Trump withdrew four years ago, that would see Iran curb its uranium enrichment program. in exchange for sanctions relief. One video suggested that the refinery demonstrations began as protests over wages but later morphed into anti-regime protests, with workers chanting “death to the dictator,” a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Across the country, protesters have promoted economic strikes with some success. In Kurdish-majority areas, where protests are believed to be more organized than in other parts of the country, social media videos showed rows of closed shops. In Tehran’s bazaar, several shops have closed in recent days, though many shopkeepers say they did so to protect their shops from subsequent protests and crackdowns. A general strike, called by Iranian activists, has yet to materialize. Crackdown on protests in Iran. Learn the story of some victims 3:01 Labor strikes are loaded with historical significance in Iran. In 1979, oil and gas refineries played a key role in the popular movement that brought down the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and paved the way for the Islamic Republic. The tip of the iceberg More widespread protest action by workers and shopkeepers, experts say, could mark another escalation in the protests. “If there is a general strike at the national level, what can the government really do?” Alvandi said. “That would completely paralyze the state and show the powerlessness of the state in the face of this movement.” Meanwhile, the crackdown continues to intensify in several parts of Iran, especially in the Kurdish-majority north and northwest, where reports of mistreatment of the ethnic minority were already widespread. Hengaw, the Kurdish rights group, believes that the reported violence against protesters in the region “is just a drop in the ocean”, with only partial information emerging on the crackdown. Authorities have sporadically shut down the internet across Iran in an apparent attempt to quell protests, with Kurdish-majority parts of the country experiencing the longest shutdowns, according to activists and internet watchdog NetBlocks. There has been a “major outage” in internet access since 9:30 a.m. in Iran (2 a.m. ET) on Wednesday, according to NetBlocks. Kurdish activists say authorities have also shut down the area’s landline network, arguing that the bloodshed seen in the videos could be just the tip of the iceberg. “The Iranian regime and its security apparatus have no limits,” said Ramyar Hassani of Hengaw. “They know no limits.” CNN’s Celine Alkhaldi and Mostafa Salem contributed to this report.