On Saturday, the Iranian regime marked the 44th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution amid nationwide anti-government protests of an unprecedented scale and rising tensions with the West.
Iranians marched through the main streets and squares, which were decorated with flags, balloons, and banners bearing revolutionary and religious slogans.
The army displayed its “Imad” and “Sejil” ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, in addition to the “Shahid 136” and “Muhajer” drones, according to the newspaper. Washington Post.
The celebrations of the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, which witnessed the clergy’s seizure of power 44 years ago, come in light of unprecedented tension in terms of area and duration, as anti-authority demonstrations swept through major cities, calling for the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime, more than six months ago.
Demonstrators disaffected with the regime began invading the streets since last September, after the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian-Kurdish woman, who was detained by the country’s morality police, where she was brutally murdered, according to the demonstrators, due to her supposed violation of the Islamic dress code.
And those demonstrations, which initially focused on compulsory veiling in Iran, soon turned into calls for a new reform revolution.
In a speech delivered in Azadi Square in the capital, Tehran, President Ebrahim Raisi referred to the protests as a project of Iran’s enemies, which aims to prevent the nation from continuing its achievements.
Raisi described the ceremony as “epic” and a display of “national unity”, praising the country’s post-revolutionary achievements.
These remarks prompted the crowd to chant “Death to the United States.”
Meanwhile, Telewebion, a web-TV service of Iran’s state television, was briefly hacked during a president’s speech, Iranian media reported.
News website khabaronline.ir said the outage lasted 19 seconds.
In a 44-second video posted on Twitter, the “Idlat Ali” or “Adala Ali” hacker group called on people to take part in nationwide protests next week and urged Iranians to withdraw their money from banks.
Chants including “Death to Khamenei” and “Death to the Islamic Republic” can be heard on the video and the message read by a masked figure in a woman’s voice.
The group had previously breached the notorious Evin Prison and other government facilities.
The anniversary also comes after two years in which celebrations were largely confined to cars due to the pandemic that has killed more than 140,000 people in Iran according to official figures, the highest national death toll in the Middle East.
On Saturday, the processions began in Tehran from several points and converged on Azadi Square.
Television showed crowds in many cities and towns, and said hundreds of thousands took part. The celebration was a show of strength for the demonstrators.
State television refers to the demonstrations as “foreign-backed riots” rather than domestic frustration over Amini’s death.
Anger also spread due to the collapse of the Iranian rial against the US dollar and Tehran’s arming of Russia with drones carrying bombs in its war on Ukraine, which also angered the West.
Iran says it sold the drones to Russia before the war.
While the pace of protests continues unevenly from one city to another due to the violent repression, the Iranian government has not provided a total death toll or the number of individuals it has arrested.
However, activists outside the country say at least 528 people were killed and 19,600 arrested in the ensuing crackdown.
Last week, Iranian state media said the supreme leader had ordered “tens of thousands” of people detained during the protests to be pardoned or reduced, acknowledging for the first time the scale of the crackdown.
Ali Khamenei’s decree, part of the supreme leader’s annual pardon ahead of the anniversary, came as authorities have yet to say how many people they have arrested in the demonstrations.
Referring to the amnesty, Raisi on Saturday urged those “deceived by the enemy” to “go home” and promised that his administration would “have mercy on them”.
The crowd waved Iranian flags, chanted slogans and carried banners with traditional anti-Western slogans such as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.
Some burned US and Israeli flags, a ritual at pro-government rallies.
The Islamic Revolution began with widespread turmoil in Iran due to the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The Shah was suffering from cancer, but he did not announce it, and he fled Iran in January 1979.
After that, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile and the government fell on February 11, 1979, after days of demonstrations and mass confrontations between demonstrators and security forces.
Later in April, Iranians voted to become an Islamic, Shiite republic, with Khomeini as the country’s first supreme leader, with the final say on all matters of state.
Months later, when the United States allowed the shah into the country for cancer treatment in New York, anger boiled over in Tehran, leading to the radical student takeover of the US embassy in November 1979, while the ensuing hostage crisis ignited decades of animosity.