\u201cThe main difference between the current protest compared to the green movement in 2009 is that now people are fighting back; they are not afraid of the brutal regime,\u201d said Sima Sabet, an Iranian journalist and presenter on the Iran International TV station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDemonstrators are now burning ambulances because the government is using ambulances to move their security forces not to rescue people. The protesters are now using different tactics; they move between all cities and make it hard for security forces to control all locations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Firuzeh Mahmoudi, executive director of human rights NGO United for Iran, said the recent unrest followed months of Iranians being prepared to hold smaller protests on an array of issues: \u201cThe uprising in 2009 in some ways was more expansive in certain cities,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had millions of people protesting in certain cities during the biggest day of that protest. It was the biggest thing since the [1979] revolution. They did not see it coming and were very surprised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNow we\u2019re seeing not only big cities, but smaller cities that we\u2019ve never seen before. We\u2019re now also seeing unprecedented ways in which people are showing up, in the messaging and the boldness. Things are a lot more unified.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mahmoudi said chants heard at rallies, such as \u201cWe\u2019ll support our sisters and women, life, liberty\u201d, had been heard around the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is unprecedented for us. We have never seen women take their hijab off in mass like this. Burning down the police centres, running after their cars, burning down the pictures of [supreme leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some demonstrations appear to have at least in part been organised, with a restive urban youth and others opposed to strict societal rules, including on how women conduct themselves, and what they wear, coalescing around the death of Amini, who was accosted by morality police in Tehran for refusing to wear a hijab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Drawing on lessons learned over the past decade in anti-government uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East, smartphones have been used as organising tools, with messages and places of demonstrations widely circulated, despite widespread cuts to the country\u2019s internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey have tactics about how to send their videos outside of Iran despite the cut-off of the internet,\u201d said Sabet. \u201cFor the first time now in Iran women are burning their hijabs with the support of men.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Substantial numbers of Iranians have long been opposed to unflinching societal rules and the reach of the state\u2019s security forces, which have enforced one of the region\u2019s most formidable theocratic states over more than four decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ramin, 29, a demonstrator from Urmia, north-west Iran, said: \u201cEven the cutting of the internet or significant threats from the regime have not stopped the people from protesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, a number of Iranian celebrities in and outside the country have announced their support for the protesters, this includes actors, actresses, athletes. Some female celebrities have removed their hijab.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As long as the protesters continue to protest on the streets and wear out the security forces, they will sustain and maybe expand the momentum. In at least one small city, Oshnavieh, in north-west Iran, the regime has lost effective control and retreated to the outskirts. Internet provider Starlink has announced that it will activate its satellite so the internet can be accessed inside Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another demonstrator, Haval 29, said that a state crackdown is starting to be felt on the streets: \u201cThings are not going well, there is violence, there is an army in the city today with civilian outfits. They are shooting people so it\u2019s making it hard for protesters. You cannot go out at night because it\u2019s dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIran doesn\u2019t have enough military forces to stop all these protesters. The police are saying that if this situation continues for more than two to three days, they won\u2019t be able to handle it any more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hundreds of expatriate Iranians rallied in Paris and other European cities on Saturday to denounce Iran\u2019s crackdown on protests following the death of Amini after her arrest by morality police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Protesters gathered in the centre of the French capital and chanted slogans against Khamenei and also urged French president Emmanuel Macron to halt negotiations with Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKhamenei get out of Iran!\u201d, \u201cMacron enough silence!\u201d and \u201cDeath to the Islamic republic\u201d were among the slogans shouted by the demonstrators in French and Persian, an AFP reporter said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The demonstrators expressed fury that Macron had met and shaken hands with Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York this week as Paris seeks to keep the 2015 deal on Tehran\u2019s nuclear programme alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other protests, Iranian women in Athens cut their hair in a gesture of solidarity with Amini, brandishing placards reading: \u201cSay her name!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Demonstrators in the centre of the Swedish capital, Stockholm, also cut their hair while another group outside the Swedish parliament held up pictures of those killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Additional reporting by Nechirvan Mando and AFP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Iran\u2019s president has vowed to \u201cdeal decisively\u201d with protests that are gathering momentum across much of the country one week after the death of a woman in custody who had been detained by the morality police. Demonstrations have spread to most of Iran\u2019s 31 provinces and almost all urban centres, pitting anti-government demonstrators against regime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":25902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[8217,6975,10879,12793,10446,11583,5520,11961,11555,9331,11996,9171,5262,7234,10418,12326,9387,5241,524,9505,4313,12210,6351,9407,2264,5696,10840,12773,10954,11062,13157,1759,6030,9515,10634,414,8006,12309,8719,5572,9683,12287,8000,990,7964,6666,11973,8353,1253,1198,421,3805,8005,11377,5561,11171,10722,9205,5655,3446,11187,12794,9209,7444,5465,1687,6348,3954,5273,5320,594,5784],"class_list":["post-25901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","tag-army","tag-arrest","tag-athens","tag-ayatollah","tag-burning","tag-capital","tag-cars","tag-celebrities","tag-citizens","tag-city","tag-crackdown","tag-crowd","tag-cut","tag-death","tag-death-toll","tag-decade","tag-detained","tag-died","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-european","tag-executive-director","tag-female","tag-french","tag-french-president-emmanuel-macron","tag-government","tag-hijab","tag-human-rights","tag-increase","tag-international","tag-internet","tag-islamic","tag-iran","tag-journalist","tag-killed","tag-lost","tag-macron","tag-mahsa-amini","tag-men","tag-middle-east","tag-military","tag-millions","tag-movement","tag-negotiations","tag-new-york","tag-north","tag-nuclear","tag-one","tag-outrage","tag-paris","tag-parliament","tag-police","tag-president","tag-president-ebrahim-raisi","tag-presidential","tag-protest","tag-protesters","tag-removed","tag-satellite","tag-security","tag-smartphones","tag-starlink","tag-supreme-leader","tag-swedish","tag-tehran","tag-un","tag-un-general-assembly","tag-us","tag-will","tag-woman","tag-women","tag-who","tag-youth"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Protesters](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/06b6e4f1f8bab7f6e6b3f1ba3d2cea8c68402db9\/0_205_2739_1644\/master\/2739.jpg?width=620&quality=85&fit=max&s=42ae347122631af58b1afbb77ed6d3d6\")