Iran Poll Shows Majority Backs Right to Protest After Crackdown

By Arsalan Shahla

About three-quarters of Iranians surveyed in a government-backed poll said they supported the rights of protesters to take to the streets in last month’s countrywide demonstrations, a reformist newspaper reported.

The Iranian Students’ Polling Agency, which surveyed 2,027 people in the province of Tehran, also found that 62 percent of respondents saw “dialogue with protesters” as the government’s best means of addressing popular discontent, the daily Etemad newspaper said.

The expression of support, especially in a survey conducted by a state-backed polling organization, suggests that grievances still run deep in Iran. Triggered by a steep rise in gasoline prices, November’s protests met with a violent crackdown, becoming the bloodiest in Iran since the 1979 revolution.

The government so far hasn’t provided an official death toll for the unrest, but the London-based rights group Amnesty International estimates that some 304 people were killed by security forces.

The demonstrations spread to scores of cities and towns throughout the country and several of Tehran’s districts and its outskirts were swept up in the unrest.

Officials have consistently claimed that the majority of those who took part in demonstrations and clashed with police were “rioters” and “terrorists” acting on behalf of foreign governments. Hundreds of people remain in prison.

The most deadly violence took place in the oil-rich, Arab-speaking province of Khuzestan, which the ISPA survey doesn’t cover.

According to the survey, 71% of people said impartiality at Iran’s state broadcaster, which holds a monopoly over the country’s entire broadcasting services, was “low” or “very low” when it came to covering the protests. Some 90% of respondents said they used alternative news sources such as social media and satellite TV.

Photo: IRNA

Iran's Elite Guards Warn Against Compromise With US

An Iranian military chief cautioned Tuesday that reaching any understanding with Washington, as suggested in a letter signed by a group of political activists, would spell the end of the Islamic republic.

"Today everybody knows that striking an understanding with the United States means the death of the Islamic republic," said General Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the elite Republican Guards, quoted by ISNA news agency.

"While we are not saying that it (the letter) amounts to treason, we must say that it opens the way to making concessions to the enemy," he said.

A pro-reformist newspaper, Etemad, on Sunday ran an article on a joint letter addressed to "senior authorities" from around 100 Iranian activists calling for Tehran to make "a gesture" towards direct negotiations with its longtime enemy.

The letter itself has not been published.

Ties between Tehran and Washington, already severed in the wake of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, have deteriorated under US President Donald Trump. In May, he pulled the United States out of a 2015 nuclear accord between world powers and Iran.

A signatory of the letter, Gholamhossein Karbaschi who heads a reformist party, told Etemad that it calls for Iran to say it is "ready to negotiate" if "the United States and Trump give assurances that they will never again renege on their commitments".

Also among the signatories was Abdolali Bazargan, a son of the Islamic republic's first prime minister Mehdi Bazargan, the paper said.

Photo Credit: IRNA