By INU Staff
INU - On Thursday, World Watch Monitor featured an interview with the Iranian-born human rights activist Mansour Borji, now the advocacy director of the UK-based charity called article 18. The article added Borji’s voice to the ongoing assessments of the situation faced by the Iranian nation in the wake of mass protests that began on December 28.
According to Borji, those protests demonstrated public opposition not only to Iran’s clerical regime as it exists today but also to the entire concept of political Islam. This account of popular sentiment is in keeping with the slogans that organizations like the National Council of Resistance of Iran have reported as coming out of those protests. These include calls for the resignation of both the “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Protesters have also been heard to identify by name the reformist and conservative political factions that these two men lead, only to declare “the game is over” and suggest that there is little difference in what each has to offer the future of the Iranian nation.
Borji echoed this interpretation of public sentiment, stating that Iranians see little chance for reform from within the existing regime. “They see just survival tactics,” he said of the people’s response to Iranian activities such as the wasteful expenditure of public funds on interventions in the broader region, as well as the regime’s violent reaction to the latest round of protests.
Many observers of Iranian affairs have concluded that such violence is likely to only inflame the types of sentiments that Borji highlighted. For instance, an editorial published at Iranian.comdeclared that while the protests had largely subsided after two weeks, “the fallout from the government’s harsh response has just begun.” The article points out that the disappearance of protesters and politically active university students has brought people out by the thousands to protest in front of Iranian prisons and demand information or the release of their loved ones.
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