It was Thanksgiving, and happy Thanksgiving to the Americans in the audience. It is my favorite holiday because I have a lot to be thankful for. I grew up in Iran. Not living there anymore is always what I’m most thankful for. And read below to see why. Also, it is my birthday today. So please recommend to your friends to subscribe to this newsletter. (Too cheesy? Blame inflation!)
As I’m writing this, protests are persisting in Esfehan (Isfahan), Iran’s third largest city, and the internet has been disconnected in some areas. This is coming three months after protests in the Khuzestan province, when the regime also disrupted internet connections. This time around, water shortages triggered the protests. I wrote about the growing problem of water access just last month.
In 2009, Iran saw the greatest protests in its history. The number of protesters on a street of Tehran alone in one day was in millions, accompanied by similar protests in other cities. The protests began as peaceful, but, as the response to the protests became more violent, so did the protests themselves, especially at night.
The last time something like that had happened in Iran was 1999. But at the time, the protests were concentrated at the University of Tehran’s campus and limited to students. It was brutally suppressed, and students arrested were brutally tortured and given prison sentences—a 15-year sentence in at least one case—to make a point.
The 2009 protests were quite different. They were much more widespread, and, naturally, much more inclusive of everyday Iranians. The crackdown was even more brutal then. I was lucky to get away and left the country forever two years later.
In 2017, a new round of protests erupted. It was quite smaller than the 2009 one, but it was far more violent on the protesters’ side. The 2009 protests began peacefully, and they turned violent but not very violent. The 2017 protests began violently. Iranians had given up on peaceful protests because they were suppressed violently anyway.
Two years later, the regime witnessed the first actual internal, existential crisis in its history when protests erupted in November of 2019. In 2009, protests were widespread, but the leaders of the protests were Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karoubi, both regime insiders and opposed to regime change. In 2017, the protests weren’t large and violent enough to pose an existential threat. In 2019, the movement was widespread, violent, and opposed to the regime in its entirety.
In a way, the election of Rouhani and JCPOA had backfired. If there is ever regime change in Iran, we might have to thank John Kerry for it, even though he never intended for what came next. (And to the certain readers in the audience—you know who you are—read the rest before revoking my club membership!)