Iran protests: brutal crackdown as uprising gathers pace – The Latest

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:31Transcription by CastingWords stop them. It's bad news for the protesters. If you can't get the message out to people, it's a lot easier for the authorities to use violence against them, as we have seen the Iranian regime use in the past. From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoth.

0:53We're joining me as Devika Bhatt. Thanks for coming up to the studio, Devika. So So talk to me about where these protests started, because they've been running into their second week now, so they're really significant. It started as economic protests, but it's now turned into something broader, right? They started in late December as protests led largely by merchants, shopkeepers, against a big fall in the Iranian currency, which has sort of hit a historic low against the dollar. And from that, they have now grown into something bigger. They've brought in people beyond shopkeepers. And there are now calls for political reform.

1:29So there are calls for effectively the regime to go. So yes, they started off as one thing and they've certainly morphed into another and into something that is going to be a lot harder for the regime to contain. Yeah, and the numbers are striking. They're not quite where we were when we had the last big unrest in Iran in 2022 and 2023. But it's the diversity and how widespread they are across the country. And the footage that's being shared on social media is a really big part of this story, isn't it? The video that we're seeing, people are being very brave in terms of showing their faces, sometimes masked, but sometimes their full face, saying things like death to the dictator, which clearly exposes people to great risks in Iran.

2:11And indeed, the crackdown has been brutal, to say the least. There's now been an internet blackout that was imposed yesterday. It was a complete blackout, as we believe. and it came at the same time as we were seeing these huge, these really quite amazing images coming out of Tehran and other cities of really, really big crowds of protesters, thousands on the streets, as you say, buildings on fire, cars on fire. It's bad news for the protesters, one could say, because previous internet blackouts have come just before there's been a big crackdown on protesters. Right, so a blackout would normally precede a big crackdown And indeed, as you say, that the regime has been vocal for the first time in 13 days, hasn't it, since these protests started about the extent to which it plans to increase that crackdown?

2:58Yes, that's right. So we heard from Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, for the first time today. And, you know, he has sort of reinforced this message that we started seeing trickle out yesterday, that this is something that's being led by foreign powers, namely the US. he claims that the protesters are doing the work of the Americans for them and that this is all backed by the US therefore that is giving him a sort of as he sees it legitimate excuse to now crack down on these protesters so the language that's been coming out from the regime today is very worrying for the protesters in terms of foreshadowing a crackdown Yeah and the timing of all this is obviously interesting given what happened in Venezuela with the former president Maduro over the weekend And is this type of language talking about US intervention something that would normally happen in this situation?

3:45Or is this a sign that the Iranian regime is more rattled than it normally would be given the events of the last few days? I think the regime is definitely looking very closely at what is coming out of Washington and the words being used given events in Venezuela. I mean, Venezuela, there was a big alliance there for one thing, which is now sort of shattered between Tehran and Caracas. crucially Trump has sort of shown in Venezuela that he is not afraid to come good on his threats to end a regime or take out leaders if he deems it in US interests or indeed his own personal interests and so I think the leaders in Tehran will be incredibly rattled by that and are looking carefully at how they play things now and how that and their response will be calculated with that in mind.

4:32Yeah, Trump has threatened to intervene in Iran if the government killed protesters, which has clearly irked the regime to make these public comments. But that must be emboldening and empowering for the protesters who are really putting everything on the line to turn out so publicly and in such numbers, right? I mean, I was reading that there are authorities and law enforcement turning up to hospitals to pull people out of hospital beds to put in prison that they've been able to identify through these social media videos. Yeah, the crackdown has started to already get quite brutal. I mean, again, it's hard to know the full scale of it because of the opaque nature of the regime.

5:12And even though we are seeing these amazing images, there's probably still loads more we don't know about. You know, so far we know that over 40 people, according to human rights organisations, have been killed. And according to those same organisations, over 2 ,000 people detained. And we don't know the status of those people or what condition they're in. And of that, over 40 people, it's thought eight children, which is devastating. Talk to me about how this compares to the previous protest movements that we've seen in Iran, because there were the woman life freedom protests in 2023 as a result of the death of Masa Amini, a woman in custody.

5:51But there were obviously previous cycles of unrest through the 2010s. The regime has always succeeded in the end, no matter how big those protests were in scale. to crack down. But is there something about these protests that feel different? Yeah, so I think one big factor is that the regime in Tehran is much weaker than it was when there have been previous protests. So this is largely due to the war last year between Israel and Iran, which culminated in the US striking several key nuclear facilities in Iran. That has massively weakened the regime there. You know, during the war in Gaza, the so-called axis of resistance on which Iran has relied, this combination of sort of countries and militia in the region, which have historically backed it, all of those allies are much weaker now.

6:40And that will undoubtedly influence what it can do at home. And the protest movement will know that. Although, you know, it has to be said, we don't really know yet if there's a sort of centralised figure in the protest movement. We know that the son of the former Shah, Reza Pahlavi, has been sort of calling for the demonstrations. He called the demonstrations yesterday. He's called for more tonight. But the extent of support for him is not fully clear yet, although there does appear to be some. So with all those factors combined, the fact that the Iranian regime has been so weakened, the fact that there is this US support that's very vocal in the days after a foreign leader was captured and now is on trial in a US court.

7:25Does this give us any reason to think that there could be any possibility of regime change or is that just too big to think about at this point? It's really hard to know. I mean, we know that, so Trump in this interview with Fox sort of has claimed quite breezily that, you know, Khamenei is considering fleeing the country because it's all got too much now. unsubstantiated claim. We don't know on what basis he's saying that, whether it's based on actual intelligence or just his own sort of speculative theory or indeed something just off the cuff. He has proven he's not afraid to go into countries where necessary, although going into Iran is a very different prospect to going into Venezuela.

8:06So I'd say it's really tricky to know right now how these protests are going to pan out. And part of that will depend, I think, on the next few days what we see in terms of a crackdown and whether the regime's able to kind of put a lid on things through a brutal crackdown or whether the protests will keep going. Yeah, it sounds like the next few days are going to be very important to watch. Devika, thank you so much for your time. Not at all. Thank you for having me. That's it for today. My thanks again to Devika Batt, the Guardian's Deputy Head of International News. And thanks to you for listening to the latest, the new evening edition of Today in Focus.

8:38We'll be with you every weekday evening on what you need to know about the story everyone's talking about in around 10 minutes. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff. The producers were Bryony Moore and Eli Block. The lead producer was Zoe Hitch. Today on Focus, we'll be back with you as usual on Monday morning. Have a lovely weekend.

9:00This is The Guardian.