More than a dozen cities across Iran witnessed protests by retirees of social security on Tuesday. These rallies against the regime not only debunk the regime’s propaganda to blame sanctions as the real reason for Iran’s economic collapse, but most importantly, show the society’s restiveness.
Retirees are protesting their low pensions, which do not cover their needs due to the high inflation rate.
While chanting “we will get our rights back only on the streets,” the retirees not only confirmed the regime is not willing to address their problems but showed the people’s dissatisfaction with the regime.
The retirees’ protests were in line with a series of protests by all walks of life within the last year, since the November 2019 uprising. These protests were held while “public anger over the current situation needs no explanation,” as the state-run Vatan-e Emrooz daily wrote on Tuesday.
The Iranian people witness that while they are grappling with poverty, the regime’s officials are plundering them by their economic mismanagement and institutionalized corruption.
The Iranian people “are crushed under inflation and their tables are becoming emptier. The prices continue to increase despite people’s poverty. Some are even desperate and ashamed to go to their families for not being able to win bread,” as the state-run Mamlekat website wrote on Tuesday.
People are hardly able to purchase fruits for their families. “When people go to the municipal fruit and vegetable marker, they can hardly afford 3 kgs of fruit with 100,000 tomans – one-and-a-half day’s pension of a retiree – because currently, the price of most fruits such as apples, oranges and tangerines is close to 30,000 Tomans,” wrote the state-run Gatreh website on Tuesday.
Now the worsening economic crisis in Iran has terrified the regime. “The emptiness of people’s tables and the increasing economic and social gaps lead to increased social anger,” wrote the state-run Vatan-e Emrooz daily on Tuesday.
The state-run media and the regime’s officials sound the alarm and warn the regime of another uprising.
“In a situation where people are going through difficult economic conditions, the observation of [the regime’s] discrimination is alike pouring gasoline on the flames of public anger. In such a situation, it is natural for people to become angry actors in facing the system,” Vatan-e Emrooz daily added in its article on Tuesday.
The major Iran protests in November 2019 rattled the Iranian regime’s foundations. The regime killed over 1500 protesters and momentarily oppressed the uprising. But officials, mainly the regime’s supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, were fully aware and terrified of the possibility of another uprising.
This fear was confirmed in January 2020 when following the regime’s admission that it had downed a commercial airliner after three days of cover-up, people poured onto the streets and renewed their demands for regime change they had shouted during the November 2019 protests.
Terrified of the restive society, the regime initiated its inhumane coronavirus policy and by cover-up and deception, used the pandemic and its mass casualties to prevent a barrier against another uprising.
While the regime aimed to prevent public protests, recent protests across Iran show that a year after the coronavirus outbreak, and despite its increasing mortality rate due to the regime’s inaction, Iranians are determined to take their rights back.
In a nutshell, the protests by the deprived people and the recent nationwide rallies by retirees all indicate the society’s explosiveness.
These protests, as Vatan-e Emrooz daily wrote, show the “accumulation of hatred and social anger that may lead to blind violence.”
This “blind violence,” or in fact the Iranian people’s abhorrence toward the regime, has terrified the regime.
As the state-run Jomhuri-e Eslami daily wrote on Tuesday: “[We] should fear the day when people’s patience ends, and they overrun [the regime].”
