Iranian power celebrated the 44th anniversary of the Islamic Republic on Saturday with rallies of tens of thousands of people in the streets, claiming to have defeated the protest movement launched in September.
As is traditional, the green-white-red flags and portraits of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei were waved in Tehran’s huge Azadi (“Freedom”) Square, as in other cities across the country.
Attendees chanted anti-US and anti-Israel slogans as Iran-made Sejjil ballistic missiles and Shahed 136 drones were displayed around the square.
The anniversary ceremony of the February 1979 revolution thus regained its importance after two years of restrictions linked to COVID-19.
It was scrutinized carefully, as it was the first major popular celebration since the beginning of the demonstrations sparked by the death on September 16 of Mahsa Amini, who died after being arrested by the morality police who accused her of having violates the strict dress code of the Islamic Republic.
In his speech delivered in Azadi Square, President Ebrahim Raisi affirmed that “the enemy had been defeated” by “the Iranian nation” which, by gathering on Saturday, again “pledged allegiance” to the Islamic Republic.
For him, the “conspiracy” was not aimed at defending “women, life or freedom”, the slogan of the protest, but at “threatening independence” and “the peaceful life of the Iranian people”.
Despite “the media war” in Western countries, “Iran did not stop” and “continued to sell its oil” to foreign countries, he added.
The conservative president, however, clarified that, in a “spirit of forgiveness”, “the arms of the nation” were “open to all”.
released
A few days earlier, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had decided to pardon or reduce the prison term of a “significant number” of convicts.
Among the thousands of people arrested in recent months, including civil society figures, lawyers and journalists, an unknown number have been released.
This is particularly the case of Farhad Meysami, a doctor and human rights activist, arrested in July 2018 and released on Friday. He had appeared very emaciated in photos after having started a hunger strike to demand in particular an end to the executions.
Four men arrested since September have been executed while authorities say hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed in the context of protests, which have waned in recent weeks.
Authorities also released French-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah on Friday, who was arrested in 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison for undermining national security.
Several dozen Westerners, including six French, remain detained in Iran, presented by their supporters as “hostages” used by Tehran as leverage for negotiation.
As the Islamic Republic’s 44th anniversary approaches, two of its former leaders — former President Mohammad Khatami and former prime minister and presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi — have called for political reforms to accommodate the CONTESTATION.
Referring to a “crisis of legitimacy”, Mr. Moussavi proposed that a “free and fair referendum be organized on the necessity or not of drafting a new Constitution”.
Published last Sunday, the statements of Mr. Moussavi, who lives under house arrest in Tehran, and Mr. Khatami were criticized by the conservative press.