Night of fire: Iranians mark arrival of spring with anti-regime riots Mikhail Shereshevskiy's analysis

"Chaharshanbe-Suri" (Ilahir Chershenbe) is a traditional fire festival on the eve of Novruz, associated with the celebration of the arrival of spring and the rebirth of nature. As fires lit up across Iran on March 15 night, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets. From Azerbaijani Tabriz to Tehran, from Zahedan, home to the Baluchis, to Kurd-populated Kermanshah, and still across Fars and Isfahan, a cry resounded across the country: "Death to the dictatorship! Death to the Islamic Republic!". The festive night became a night of defiance.

Iranian authorities have used firearms and prisons to quell protests that began last September after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, was beaten to death by vice police in Tehran (for "improperly wearing the hijab"). Their main slogan was "Woman, Life, Freedom!" and a demonstrative refusal to wear hijabs. Protesters soon began chanting slogans against the Iranian regime in general, advocating its dismantling.

Six months later, the number of protests has dropped sharply. This is not surprising, as pro-government Basiji militias and other security forces killed around 500 demonstrators and executed several others while suppressing protests. However, the causes of the riots have not gone anywhere. There is widespread poverty (more than half of the population is at or below the poverty line), worsening working conditions (temporary employment), inequality, economic stagnation, constantly rising prices, suppression of free speech, attacks on women by security forces, and an unelected dictator in power.

The existing economy is inefficient: the public sector is bureaucratised, corrupt, and incapable of generating growth, while US sanctions severely limit oil export opportunities.

The ruling class (corrupt millionaires - officials and their kin from the private sector) controls the big companies and receives state orders. It is isolated from all other social classes - workers, students, small and medium businesses, all those at whose expense it lives. A handful of super-rich officials and businessmen talk about "religious piety" while their children live in luxury villas in the Emirates. The Iranian top brass has long been despised in society. Its very history has confirmed the view of the Iranian philosopher, Shiite theologian Ali Shariati, a proponent of direct democracy of workers and the power of the Muslim community - the Ummah, not the theologians. According to Shariati's teachings, religious theologians and jurists, once given supreme state power, are likely to use it not for the good of society, but rather to subordinate both society and religion to the task of maintaining and expanding their power and privileges, distorting faith for their material and powerful political interests and causing suffering to the majority of poor and disadvantaged people.

In recent months there have been a series of attacks on women's schools in Iran. Gas has been used against them - thousands of schoolgirls have been poisoned and many are now afraid to return to their place of study. Only the regime itself has the capacity to carry out such a large-scale attack. Some in the opposition claim that the attacks on the schoolgirls are linked to their large-scale participation in the protests and are intended to intimidate them, and that it is a centralised attack by the state. Others believe that one of the regime's most conservative factions, emulating the Afghan Taliban, is behind the attacks and that its aim is to destroy women's education in Iran. But either way, there is no doubt in the minds of many Iranians that the government is behind the attacks.

Since the November 2019 uprising, some members of the regime have spoken of a "new normal". According to their theory, Iranian society periodically erupts in protests, the authorities suppress them and it becomes a familiar cycle of "uprising - suppression - lull - new uprising". In November 2019, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets of cities and began smashing up government offices and banks; the security forces responded by killing up to 1,500 people in a week, after which the protests ceased. However, the "Mahsa Amini protests", which began in September last year, have been longer and more widespread; in places (Kurdistan and Sistan-Baluchistan) they have escalated into guerrilla warfare.

The new outbreak on the night of the Chaharshanbe-Suri clearly took the authorities by surprise, it proved to be quite massive, with homemade bombs thrown at security forces across the country. A new normal? Perhaps. But each time the protests change shape, they become more violent and more massive, though it is a non-linear process. For a long time now no one talks about peaceful protests - with a regime that kills its opponents there is no point in talking about the benefits of non-violence and Gandhism. When confronted by the security forces, people put up resistance, sometimes using weapons.

A recent survey conducted among Iranians by the Sentiment Analysis and Measurement Group in Iran (GAMAAN), based in the Netherlands, showed interesting results. The poll, titled "Iranians' attitudes towards nationwide protests in 2022", was conducted on December 21-31, 2022 and its authors received responses from nearly 200,000 participants, of which 157,000 were from inside Iran and 42,000 from outside Iran. The data shows that 81 per cent of respondents inside Iran oppose the Islamic Republic and only 15 per cent support it. Among Iranian respondents abroad, 99 percent oppose the Islamic Republic. When asked about their preferred form of government, most opponents of the Islamic Republic said they would prefer a presidential republic. The poll showed that 80 per cent of Iranians at home support the recent anti-government protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.

There are also more radical sentiments. Small groups of workers are organising illegal strikes to take over factories and plants - they are probably supporters of socialism. On the other hand, there are groups advocating the restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty monarchy. There are also supporters of the Islamic Republic, who believe that the present authorities have distorted its original "correct image", and there are also representatives of national minority movements demanding autonomy (Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis). Such differences of opinion should not be surprising. The protests are multi-class. Besides, Iran is a huge country with a population of 90 million, and there are different opinions there.

More and more people, especially young people, perceive the regime as almost occupationist. Some 46 per cent of respondents in the country said they were happy about the Iranian national football team losing to the US team (at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar), another about a third said they were indifferent, and only 23 per cent said they were sad. Football is usually a way of mobilising the national sentiments of the population. But in Iran, many celebrated the defeat of the football team, believing it represented the regime rather than society. With this attitude towards the authorities, new riots and uprisings on a much larger scale are almost inevitable.

Power in Iran is brutal. It relies on tens of thousands of well-fed security officials who are willing to kill for money. Probably some of them are indeed loyal to the regime. But Iran is too big, too different, too denying that power. The giant is awake. Its body is convulsing and it is unlikely that the regime will be able to hold it forever.