No Fireworks for New Year
It appears that the Feast of Fire celebrations may not be quite as noisy as before. Under pressure from the regime’s security forces, no firecrackers have been seen for sale in the bazaar. So people are making their own. In line with the suppression of New Year’s joy , the Public Prosecutor of Iran said, “There are whispers that some people intend to carry out measures in the last days of the year in some places. Offenders will be arrested and it is even possible that they make (may) deprive their families from the sweetness of the New Year’s holidays.” In other words, don’t go to the Feast of Fire celebrations that are anti-regime.
Jafari, the head of the Revolutionary Guards Corps expressed concern over the ongoing uprising in Iran and said that “we have to be ready to counter the new plans of the enemy”. According to state-run media, he expressed concern over what he described as a ‘great danger’ and told RGC forces that the “nature of the events will change in the future… Currently there are several think tanks outside and inside of the country against the Islamic Revolution and it is natural that they would want to act out these malicious thoughts with new measures and plans and we have to have the necessary preparedness to predict such a thing and counter it in the future”.
The Assemble of Experts in their closing statement described the period of the Iranian people’s uprising as the ‘period of hardships’ and said that the government has received irreparable damages. “The events after recent elections, despite the fact that it had irreparable material and immaterial damage on the national and international level… but in return… led to the identification of impurities and the separation of good and evil”. They stressed in their statement on the maintenance of the ‘leadership’ as the main pillar of their system and announced that the preservation of the system depends on the preservation of the (supreme) leadership.
In the end, the Assembly of Experts said that the current obsequious behavior of the minority faction in the regime in regards to the leadership was not enough and warned them that they have to repent and come back into the arms of the Velayate Faqih (religious leader). In fear of the ongoing protests of the Iranian people, this Assembly also requested from security forces and RGC forces “not to allow the security of the people to be damaged and decisively deal with any suspicious action and anything that will lead to a crisis”.
Analysis. The regime is fully aware that it does not have total control of the people. This may or may not have anything to do with Iran removing its enriched uranium from underground storage. As yet no logical reason for this act has been seen in any credible publication. However, some publications have suggested that the Iranians are trying to bait Israel into attacking.
The leadership in Tehran, whoever that actually is at the moment, is facing some serious choices. Their objective is to bring forth the Mahdi. To do that they must have a war. The Assembly of Experts statement makes it cleat that the regime does not have the monolithic control it had under Khomeini. It will not be able to generate the waves of teenagers armed only with their plastic “keys to Heaven” to assault the Iraqi defenses on the way to the Imam Hossein mosque to see the Mahdi arise. Even if they do get there, the only thing they may see is a smoking, glowing hole where the well used to be.
A war, the regime evidently believes, may also serve to unite the populace where religious entreaties and sheer terror have not. That tactic has worked before for other nasty regimes. Given the depth of discontent in the populace that is doubtful. The people are more likely to attempt to depose the regime while the troops are at the front if the troops will even go to the front. That is why I believe that Iran is poking all its possible enemies with the proverbial sharp stick to see who will react violently. Starting a war by claiming that (Israel, the United States, whoever) was about to attack Iran will probably not work as a unifying device.
The display last week of Israel’s long range drone was supposed to be a warning to the Iranian regime that Israel may not have to use manned aircraft to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. I doubt that possibility influences the Iranian regime in any way. They already know they can’t stop an aerial attack on their facilities. Perhaps they are baiting the Israelis with what they said is their enriched uranium.