TEHRAN ON THE BRINK?

My friends at RegimeChangeIran have just received a copy of a secret report prepared by the Pasdaran Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s key security forces, for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It warns they would be unable to control a demonstration or rebellion in Tehran lasting longer than six hours.

Here’s the report’s key confession:

Society is in an unstable state. Were certain sensitive locations in Tehran to ‘explode’ under these circumstances, and the capital sink into chaos, if uprisings continue unabated and grow larger for more than six hours in Tehran, the situation would become uncontrollable.

You can be sure every student protestor in Iran knows about this report by now.

Iranian State Security Forces (SSF) have already had their hands full this month. On February 13, thousands of people poured into the streets of Mahabad in northwestern Iran to violently protest cut-offs of water, gas, and electricity as well as bread shortages. Demonstrators set fire to banners and posters celebrating the 26th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in front of government offices. SSF agents and Basij paramilitary thugs attacked the demonstrators with clubs and batons, who proceeded to fight back, injuring a number of agents and thugs.

On February 21, three towns in western Iran erupted simultaneously, Sardasht, Saqqez, and Baneh. When SSF agents attacked the demonstrators protesting fuel shortages, they were violently resisted. In Sardasht, over 200 people were arrested, hundreds more in Baneh, but in Saqqez, the townspeople beat up several SSF agents and forced them to run away.

There have been dozens of very small-scale protests in Tehran over the past few months, but as word of the Pasdaran report gets out and springtime starts to arrive, you can expect that six-hour limit to be tested, and on increasingly large scales. Events in Iran may be about to move as fast as Michael “Faster Please” Ledeen never ceases to ask for.