As anti-government protests in Iran enter their fourth week after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, many, even in the clerical community, are now calling for the complete abolition of the Islamic Republic.
. Any time there’s any kind of instability in the country or protest against his regime, he’s always going to lash out at the United States and Israel, and place blame on outsiders for what is, in effect, the failures of his own leadership and the regime itself.
And while it is true that amongst the upper echelon of the clergy, the ayatollahs, certainly those in government positions, this theory has become entrenched, the truth of the matter is that in the seminaries in Iran, and especially in Qom, younger seminarians, mid-level clerics, the sort of what we would refer to as kind of local imams are not just debating the very legitimacy of clerical rule but are now, seemingly, coming out and rejecting it more and more vocally.
The fact that they have been able to continue these successive waves of protest bloodshed is because of a deep crisis of systemic impunity that has long prevailed in Iran. And the price of this impunity is being paid by the lives of people in the streets in Iran. And this is because there is no independent judiciary in Iran to conduct investigations.
But I think that this time — I have to be honest with you — having studied history, having lived through the 1979 revolution, this time feels different.
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