PROTESTS and REGIME SUPPRESSION in POST-REVOLUTIONARY IRAN Saeid Golkar

THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY n OCTOBER 2020 n PN85 PROTESTS AND REGIME SUPPRESSION IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY IRAN Saeid Golkar Green Movement members tangle with Basij and police forces, 2009. he nationwide protests that engulfed Iran in late 2019 were ostensibly a response to a 50 percent gasoline price hike enacted by the administration of President Hassan Rouhani.1 But in little time, complaints Textended to a broader critique of the leadership. Moreover, beyond the specific reasons for the protests, they appeared to reveal a deeper reality about Iran, both before and since the 1979 emergence of the Islamic Republic: its character as an inherently “revolutionary country” and a “movement society.”2 Since its formation, the Islamic Republic has seen multiple cycles of protest and revolt, ranging from ethnic movements in the early 1980s to urban riots in the early 1990s, student unrest spanning 1999–2003, the Green Movement response to the 2009 election, and upheaval in December 2017–January 2018. The last of these instances, like the current round, began with a focus on economic dissatisfaction and then spread to broader issues. All these movements were put down by the regime with characteristic brutality. © 2020 THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. SAEID GOLKAR In tracking and comparing protest dynamics and market deregulation, currency devaluation, and the regime responses since 1979, this study reveals that cutting of subsidies. These policies, however, spurred unrest has become more significant in scale, as well massive inflation, greater inequality, and a spate of as more secularized and violent. Tehran’s response, in unrest around the country. Between August 1991 and turn, has also grown more violent. Furthermore, each August 1994, major upheavals took place in Tehran, wave has prompted the Islamic Republic to augment Shiraz, Arak, Mashhad, Qazvin, and Tabriz, along its repressive toolkit in preparation for the next round. with frequent minor clashes in many other urban centers.4 Most of these incidents involved urban squatters bemoaning the destruction of their THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC AND MASS improvised communities. Unprecedented since the revolution, these urban popular uprisings were limited UPRISING in breadth and motivated by economic grievance, differing from the earlier protests focused on politics Protests during the first decade of the Islamic Republic and ethnicity. were typically driven by ethnicity and politics and led by groups such as the leftist Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) In some cases, such as Bagherabad in south Tehran rather than Islamic factions. They drew comparatively and Koy-e Tollab in Mashhad, riots started in little support from civil society and were quickly response to the municipality’s demolition of houses suppressed by an ascendant elite, bolstered by the that were built without a permit in the first decade charismatic leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah after the revolution.5 Protestors consisted mostly of Khomeini.3 Specific regime tools in crushing these rural migrants and slum dwellers who settled in protests were club-wielding civilians, many of whom these urban outskirts to “build shelters, organize were later recruited into the Islamic Republic’s communities, and acquire amenities such as fresh repressive machinery anchored in the revolutionary water and electricity, more often than not by unlawful committees, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, means.”6 They were the very “mostazafan” (lit. and the IRGC’s Basij Resistance Force. These downtrodden) or “koukhnishinan” (lit. hut dwellers) organizations later became the backbone of Ayatollah whom Ayatollah Khomeini had called the rightful Ali Khamenei’s larger coercive apparatus. inheritors of the revolution. Although small in scope, these protests turned violent THE URBAN POOR UNDER RAFSANJANI, because of the desperate conditions experienced in the affected communities. In Mashhad, protestors 1989–97 vandalized police stations and set fire to municipal vehicles. Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested Unlike Khomeini, the founding leader of the Islamic and four were ultimately hanged; six police officers Republic, his successor, Ali Khamenei, lacks both were killed.7 According to a leading official in charisma and religious credentials, shortcomings that Khorasan province, just one out of the hundreds have contributed to the various waves of protest arrested held a high school diploma—and this beginning in 1989 and continuing until the present individual struggled with drug addiction. The others day. Khamenei’s rise to Supreme Leader was battled poverty and unemployment.8 supported by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who served as Iran’s president from 1989 to 1997. Under Another notable instance of unrest occurred in Qazvin Rafsanjani, and with support from Khamenei, Iran’s in August 1994, when the Iranian Majlis (parliament) economic orientation became more liberalized, with rejected the city’s demand to become a province 2 THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY SAEID GOLKAR PROTESTS AND SUPPRESSION IN IRAN independent of Zanjan. While this riot was perceived reflecting a policy that has only hardened over the to be politically driven, the main causes were in fact years. In justifying its crackdowns, the regime blamed economic. Qazvin officials and constituents believed “foreigners,” “opportunists,” and, most important, the that by separating from Zanjan, they would receive a MEK as instigators.15 larger budget and could administer themselves more effectively. Basij and IRGC personnel from Tehran As a broader response, the IRGC became convinced province were tasked with suppressing the uprising, of the need to develop professionalized groups for following the hesitancy of Qazvin-based Guards to dealing with internal dissidents. One initial step taken do so.9 in the early 1990s was to establish security bodies including the Basij anti-riot personnel, divided into the Lacking both policing experience and anti-riot Ashura (male) and al-Zahra (female) battalions. These equipment, the regime turned to its military, battalions were initially composed of Basij members deploying weapons including the Katyusha multiple who had fought in the Iran-Iraq War. rocket launcher and shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades, according to one study.10 While no official When the protests expanded in Eslamshahr, the statistics are available, the opposition MEK claimed regime answered by establishing a new security head- that fifty people were killed and three thousand quarters as well as a military governorship for Tehran. arrested—although the group has a history of Given the city’s distinction as national capital, exaggerating such figures.11 the IRGC Ground Forces also created a security command, called the Sarallah headquarters, led in Rising inflation later in Rafsanjani’s presidential name by the IRGC commander but effectively run by tenure, peaking at around 49 percent in 1995,12 the deputy commander.16 In times of crisis, Sarallah sparked additional unrest, such as in the southern still acts today as Tehran’s military authority, managing Tehran district of Eslamshahr that April. Specific all security entities in Tehran province, including the triggers included rising bus fares, along with the police, Basij, members of the Ministry of Intelligence overall higher cost of living. The ensuing disorder and Security, and the IRGC.17 Although regarded by saw the burning of buses, destruction of banks and one source as “superficially similar to the commander government property, and looting. As in Qazvin, of the Military District of Washington,”18 the Sarallah IRGC forces from Tehran were deployed and used headquarters has enormously greater combat power military equipment to suppress the riots. Sources such and influence than its U.S. counterpart. Sarallah has as Amnesty International reported that up to ten since seen the creation of two sub-headquarters, people had been shot dead in Eslamshahr, but Nasser-e Sarallah and Qods-e Sarallah, which serve Iranian officials reported only one. Despite scant the northwest and south/southeast of Tehran, media coverage for this event, a consensus holds respectively, as well as oversee lesser security bodies. that dozens were injured, and hundreds arrested, many of whom remained in “detention without In 1996, Iran’s national police (NAJA)—formed six charges almost a year after their arrest.”13 years earlier through the merging of city police forces, gendarmerie (mostly in rural areas), Islamic Indeed, almost all the tempest of the early 1990s was revolutionary committees, and judicial police—also economically driven, led by dwellers of marginalized established a specialized unit, the Supreme Leader’s areas of big cities. The activities lacked oversight from Guardian Special Forces (Niroo-ye Vizhe Pasdar-e any political organization.14 Furthermore, the protests Velayat, or NOPO). This force serves as anti-riot received little media coverage, since almost all the police and has been used to suppress dissidents and era’s newspapers were state-owned and censored, maintain political order.19 POLICY NOTE 85 3 SAEID GOLKAR Salaam reformist newspaper.24 The protests spread to STUDENT PROTESTS AND POLITICAL universities in Tabriz, carried out mostly by university GRIEVANCES UNDER KHATAMI, 1997–2005 students demanding more political freedoms. During six days of rioting in Tehran, several people were killed, more than two hundred were injured, and Many of President Rafsanjani’s

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