The Denial Narrative in the Islamic Republic
The denial narrative in the Islamic Republic, what is seen these days on the streets of Iran, tells the story of a major civil protest. Major not in the scale of December 2017, July 2018, or even November 2019, but much larger and more widespread. Protests that were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish girl from Saqqez, in the custody of the morality police, but whose scope was not limited to compulsory hijab nor merely to economic and livelihood demands. Protests that even reached elementary schools, where many books with the first page showing the current or former leader of the Islamic Republic were torn by the small hands of protesting children.
Photos of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ruhollah Khomeini are no longer safe in classrooms and are being replaced one by one with pictures of Mahsa Amini or the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom.’ Universities are now not places of higher education but of higher protests.
From sit-ins and boycotting classes to insisting on co-ed dining halls, students, despite severe crackdowns and arrests by the Islamic Republic’s security forces, continue their protests daily. In some cities in Iran, especially Kurdish areas, shopkeepers have stopped working and, instead of earning income and providing for their families, are voicing a greater concern. The streets and alleys of Iran are not peaceful even at night.
The Depth of the Protests
Sometimes the shouts of ‘shameless, shameless’ are heard from the protesters, and sometimes the sound of bullets and tear gas. This is a clear picture that even if you are not Iranian but a foreign citizen living miles away in a safe and calm country, you can understand the depth of the protests by seeing them on social media.
News that now has garnered much support from the international community, from politicians and celebrities to human rights activists and ordinary people, have been aware of the people’s protests in Iran for weeks, and each in their own way has joined voices with the protesters. Iranians abroad, too, have gone all out.
The October 22 demonstration in Berlin, the capital of Germany, which according to the police of that country had over 100,000 participants, is a rare event in the history of Germany or other European countries. However, the news network of Iran’s state television, in its 7:30 PM news segment Tehran time, without showing even a single image of this demonstration, reduced the support of tens of thousands of demonstrators for their compatriots to a protest by some Germans against the fuel crisis. A futile attempt that more reflects the surprise of the Islamic Republic at the presence and support of Iranian and foreign citizens for the domestic protests.
Just a few days ago, the representative of the leader of the Islamic Republic in Khuzestan claimed that the total number of participants in the nationwide protests was 90,000. Before him, Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel, a member of the Expediency Discernment Council and the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution in Mashhad, had claimed that the protesters numbered 200,000, and according to him, this number is not comparable to the number of people who attended the funeral of Qasem Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards. Since the beginning of the recent protests, many officials and supporters of the Islamic Republic have tried to describe the number of protesters as between 2 to 5 percent of Iran’s total population.
The Denial Narrative
The denial narrative, which the government has a long history of employing, is a policy that the Islamic Republic has consistently used regarding protesters since the victory of the 1979 revolution in Iran. One of the major examples is the protests following the 2009 presidential election, an election in which protesters claimed fraud had occurred, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s name was announced as the winning candidate at the behest of the Islamic Republic.
Protests during which, according to human rights organizations, hundreds of people were killed by security forces, but state media at best announced the death toll as 72 and said many of them were members of the Basij and were killed by protesters or, in the words of the leader of the Islamic Republic, were assassinated.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of the ninth and tenth governments, in his victory celebration on June 14, referred to the millions of protesters as ‘dust and dirt’ and few in number. In December 2017, many people took to the streets in protest against high prices and living conditions for ten days in many cities across the country, chanting slogans against the entirety of the Islamic Republic regime.
This time too, the government resorted to widespread suppression of the protesters. Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the then-spokesman of the judiciary, claimed on January 14, 2018, that only 25 people were killed in the protests, including two prisoners who committed suicide in Evin Prison, a statistic that seems far from reality given the severe crackdown on protesters by security forces.
In July 2018, many Tehran merchants protested against the exchange rate, protests that spread to several other cities, including Shahriar, Karaj, Qeshm, Bandar Abbas, and Mashhad. Despite the widespread protests by merchants and shopkeepers, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the then-prosecutor of Tehran, said at the time that the main instigators of the protesters were not from the market.
The Peak of Suppression and Denial in 2019
But the peak of lies and denial of the killing of protesters and Iranian citizens can perhaps be traced back to 2019, in two separate incidents where many Iranians were killed by the Islamic Republic. The first was the 2019 protests, sparked by the tripling of gasoline prices, starting at midnight on November 15 with the sudden announcement of the gasoline price hike, and the government resorted to widespread suppression of protesters by cutting off the internet. The leader of the Islamic Republic described the protests as not popular but security-related and the work of enemies.
The first was the 2019 protests, sparked by the tripling of gasoline prices, starting at midnight on November 15 with the sudden announcement of the gasoline price hike, and the government resorted to widespread suppression of protesters by cutting off the internet. The leader of the Islamic Republic described the protests as not popular but security-related and the work of enemies. The only statistic provided regarding the November 2019 casualties was announced by Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli in June 2020. The Minister of Interior of Hassan Rouhani’s government claimed that between 200 to 225 people were killed in the November incidents, while Reuters reported the death toll as over 1,500.
Flight 752 and Three Days of Concealment
The next incident in which the officials of the Islamic Republic employed the most denial and falsehood was the downing of Ukraine Flight 752, which was shot down by missiles from the Revolutionary Guards on January 8, 2020.
An event in which 176 people were killed. The reaction of the Islamic Republic’s officials from the very beginning was to deny involvement in causing this incident. Ali Abedzadeh, the then-head of the Civil Aviation Organization, described the plane’s downing due to missile impact as scientifically impossible and illogical rumors. Abolfazl Shekarchi, the senior spokesman of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces, referred to the rumor of a missile hitting the Ukrainian passenger plane as another conspiracy in the psychological warfare.
An incident that ultimately, due to strong evidence, after three days of concealment, the commanders of the Revolutionary Guards were forced to admit the organization’s role in downing the plane. Denial and falsehood is a policy that is systematically and increasingly used in the Islamic Republic.
This narrative is not only used regarding protesters but also about secret nuclear activities and the denial of documented historical events, including the Holocaust. A policy that now, after 43 years, can be clearly seen in larger and more widespread protests that have endangered the existence of the Islamic Republic more than ever before.
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