What’s Happening in Iran?

of the Islamic regime or revolution. There were strikes inside the Bazzar, and so many shopkeepers and business owners just closed down their businesses and they took to the streets and inside the shopping centers and they started chanting against the regime, and they were basically protesting the horrible economic situations and the decrease of the Iranian reol or the Iranian currency against the US dollar, which was one dollar was equal to one million point four hundred thousand Iranian reols.

And then these protests quickly spread it all over the city in Tehran, and as usual this is what happens all the time, the Iranian regime forces they started attacking people and trying to control the situation, but it somehow got out of their control and the next days these protests, these strikes spread it to other cities, to other major cities from Shira's, Mashat, Isfahan, Tabriz and many other cities

got involved. But in the early January, around January five to six and seven, there were major protests in cities like Malikshahi in Ilan Province and other cities in Kermanshah Province, which are basically the Kurdish provinces in western Iran. What is really unique about this is that usually when protests happened across Iran, or when there is something happening, the

Kurdish regions are the first two react. But this time the Kurdish regions, like if I want to say, the West Azerbaijan Province and the San and Dutch Province, they were not really involved because a lot of people were saying that in the previous movements, especially in twenty twenty two, we gave too much. There were too many victims here. But the center was silent, I mean Tehran and Shiraz and these major Iranian cities. So a lot of people

didn't really come out and there was nothing happening. And at the same time, this is my personal opinion, I think because there was also a heavy snowfall in Kurdish regions and it was really cold, and I think a

lot of people just didn't want to go out. Yeah, So this was happening in Malikshahi and other cities in Elam and Kermansha Province until I think it was January fifth that there was a really really big demonstration in Malekshahi, and it's a small city, but I can say majority of the people were out on the streets and then the Iranian regime forces started shooting at people and they injured and killed a lot of people. And the hospital in that city, that in that small city was full

and they had no space anymore. So the people took the injured protesters to the center or the capital of the province in Elam City, to the Imam Romani Hospital. What happened in this hospital was that there were so many people in front of the hospital, like families and relatives of the victims. And then after a few hours,

the Iranian regime forces started attacking the hospital. There were so many videos and footage that came out, and we also posted it on hangout and all over the internet that the regime forces were basically surrounding the whole building and then they started shooting tear gases inside the hospital.

And then there was a video that came out that these regime forces were trying to get inside the hospital and arrest or kidnap all the injured people or if there was a dead body or something, and then there was some sort of resistance from the medical staff, and then they started beating the medical staff. And then a few days later we also posted about it that some of these medical stuff in that hospital were also arrested.

The same thing was also happening in a few other cities, but this was very specific and it got very viral on social media and a lot of people talked about it. And at the same time, there were massive protests taking place in Tehran and other major cities, which like, I am twenty eight years old and I think I've never seen such thing happening in Iran. It was really extraordinary.

So while these things were happening, there were also a lot of calls from people in Kurtison that they were calling on Kurdish parties to do something, to say something. So on January seven, Kurdish parties from Iran they had a meeting and they announced a call for a general

strike in Kurdistan for all over Iran. So on Thursday, January eighth, over forty cities across Kurdistan they went on a strike which was really big, and it wasn't really discussed or talked about on major media, and it was somehow ignored while it was a really big action that took place there, and usually after the strikes in Curtison, this is something that's happening for years. People take to

the streets and protest during the night. It happened in a few cities and there were some people injured and also killed. And then it's been over one hundred and twenty four hours. Right now as we're talking now that there is no internet connection in Iran and even the normal lines don't work. You cannot call anyone from outside

of Iran. However, there are some people who have access to the Starlink Internet and a few people that have access to I don't know, some sort of strong VPNs that work for a few minutes and then they disconnect. And at the same time, I have contact to two people who have been using the SIM cards or the Internet from Iraq or Turkey. They are living on the border regions, but they also have a limited access. So

this is what's happening right now. And as we were talking about this, this blackout in Iran has caused a lot of confusion, a lot of horror that the world

doesn't know what's happening exactly right now. After the blackout, there were a few videos and footage that came out that were published by major activists or journalists like Ali Jo and Marriage and so many others that they receive these videos, I don't know, from the Internet, from starlink, and you can see in these videos that in a place called Carriza, it's near Tehran, It's where the Tehran's

Forcenic Medical Center is located. You can see in these videos that countless of bodies, maybe hundreds or maybe thousands of bodies are just on the ground. They're in body bags and desperate family members, relatives, all traumatized, they are looking for their loved ones and it's just like it's so unbelievable. It's like movies. And apparently the regime forces

have machine guned all these people. Jesus, And right now, because of the blackout, we really don't know how many people are exactly killed, how many people are injured, how many people are arrested, or these things. You know, we don't know the exact numbers, and it makes things so hard. But today, a few hours ago, there was a report from Iran International that stated that over twelve thousand people have been killed. But this also is not fully confirmed

because they just got these things through some sources. And then at the same time, CBS News also published a report and said that between twelve thousand to twenty thousand people have been killed, but again this is not really fully confirmed or verified because there is no information coming out that much. At the same time, we also got reports from Kurdistan that in the city of Kermanshah, these

regime forces were taking the dead bodies with bosses. We don't know how many, but we know that they were taking these bodies with bosses like we don't know how many hundreds. And from this footage that you can also see that the regime is taking all these bodies with containers with talks all over the city in Tehran and they're bringing it to the center that I mentioned before, and all families are looking for their children and their people.

At the same time, I also got this direct information from someone who is from Rush in north of Iran. She was traveling from Tehran to Rush and she said that the people have burnt down most of the mosques and also the banks and other government buildings. Are also footage all over the internet that in most of the cities that people have burnt down the whole mosques and buildings belonging to the government. And at the same time she also said that in that city there are so

many people that are killed. She doesn't know how many or who, but families were desperately looking for their loved ones on the streets or anywhere. This this is basically the same in almost every major city or even small city. We don't know exactly, but this is the footage that we got from tehronly that it shows what's going on.

We don't know if they're really going to do that or whatever, but this is a really big sign that a lot of people are warning about it, like human rights organizations, and that the regime might carry out mass executions everywhere and just to take control over the situation, right, this is also something that might happen.

general overview of what's happening. And as I said before, because there is no internet connection and if there is, it's very limited, nobody knows what's happening exactly. Nobody knows the exact scale of the the crimes that are taking place right now there.

access to the internet. And I think there's some idea that like this isn't armed uprising, and I think it would be good to explain to people that like that there are people clearly the present there is presence of like armed groups who apposed a regime in Iran, right, but they are not necessarily the ones like leading the charge here. So maybe we could explain a little bit

about both the arm groups who are Kaddish. There are some arm groups in Balochistan as well, and like where they sit in relevance to these protests.

seven major Kurdish parties from Iran. They are not taking really a real military action because there is a big fear that if they do this, the regime might bomb the cities and kill thousands of civilians with heavy weapons and even missiles. So this is also one of the main reasons that even the parties have talked about it many times before when people called for a military sport.

But of course I can also confirm this that all of these parties, all of these organizations have some sort of networks inside Iran that they are monitoring the situation, they are collecting information, and they are like connecting people together, and in some cases that I am aware of that happened in my hometown in Urmia in twenty twenty two, some of these parties also have been able to lead the protests, like to organized protests. So this is for

now the presence of these parties. But for Baluchistan, I can also say that I think it was in October or November twenty twenty five that all these groups in Baluchustan they had a conference and they announced that they are all united and they're all working together under one banner. So they also carried out a lot of attacks on the IRGC bases and vehicles in the regions in the past few months, but so far we haven't heard much

from them in the past few weeks. We don't know they're not doing anything, or if they are doing anything, it's not on the internet or it's not published yet. Yeah, this is the situation right now with these groups. But at the same time, groups or parties actually like Pijak, they also have warned that this was like, if I want to say, quote unquote, don't play with fire, they

were warning the Dreaming regime that they shouldn't play with fire. Yeah, this is a situation right now that's going on with the parties as well.

right familiar. I think like maybe we should take a step back even further and just explain I guess the concept of Iran as like a contiguous empire might be a good way to see it, right, with different ethnic groups currently under the control of one state, Can you just explain that for people if they if they're not familiar it, Because I think in the US, like Persian identity and Iranian identity by people who are not familiar with it, are conflated, right, But if you could explain

the different nations that exist within the state, that might help people.

but their numbers are really small. And at the same time there is also the Mazandharrani or the Gilak people that live in the Caspian Sea coast. There are also a different ethnic group. They have a different linguistic background, but because of the Iranian state policies of one hundred years, majority of them are assimilated and no longer carry that cultural heritage or identity. But in Kurdistan, in Baluchistan, in Ahwas, in Azerbaijan, it's it's really different, and also in the

Turkmen regions. Basically this is what Iran looks like. Of course, there are other small minorities like Armenians even Georgians that migrated to like hundreds of years ago. There are also several religious groups like the Shia Muslims are the majority, with Persians and ozo Re Turks are basically the followers of this religion. And then there are Sunni Sunni Muslims who are like majority of them are Baluchis and Kurds

and Hawazi Arabs or other groups. And then we have several other groups from Jews, Christians and also the Yarsanis which is a Kurdish religious minority, and they're about one million to two million people. Yeah, this is what Iran looks like.

what's called Iran. Right now, for example, if I want to talk about the language right now, the only official language is Persian, and in the past one hundred years this language has not just been a language of communication,

it has been a language of oppression and similation. And there are many regions in Iran that were For example, if I want to talk about Kurtism, there are many regions in Kermanshah and Elam provinces and other regions that used to be fully Kurdish and they used to speak Kurdish just a few decades ago, but now they are completely assimilated. The same policy was also followed strictly but heavily in Turkey and also in Iraq and also in Syria.

So this is how this has been working in the past century, and how all these ethnic groups with different languages and cultural backgrounds and identities have been forced to accept an Iranian identity that evolves that turns around the Persian identity and Persian language and history. Yeah, so this is also like a general overview of the oppression if I want.

I wonder like we should talk about the possibilities and to an extent, the demands here, right, because in the US it seems to be that there is a binary choice, or that it's presented as a binary choice between the current state in Iran and a monarchy, and it doesn't seem to be an option for self governance, right, for Iranian people to have democracy, to have liberty, and that's evidently not the case, right, Like, when you have this

many people in this that's how democracy works. But let's talk about the sort of the demands and then the possibilities that it being co opted and turned into another type of state.

self governance. At the same time, this idea of federalism and self governance or self determination is nothing that, let's say that the dominant group would accept because they don't understand it. Because for them, I wouldn't say all of them, because I cannot. We cannot generalize everyone. But when you look at it, the dominant group sees Iran as an entity. That's that's not the verse. It's just Iran and everybody's Iranian, just like the way Turkey or the Turkish government sees

everything everybody's Turkish. But in Iran, they also say everybody's Iranian. We will have an election, we will choose a president, we will have a parliament, and that's it. That's what is also being let's say offered. But at the same time, there is also a call for monarchy. But this is also something that not majority of people, even Persians, majority of them don't want monarchy back because there is a huge discussion between people that here we are fighting against

a dictatorship, why would we bring back another dictatorship. Overall, I can say that the minority groups majority of them for now, I would say like if the regime is going to be changed, they want self governance, but maybe in the future also independence. We don't know that this is something complicated to talk about, but for now, this is what minority groups want. But in the Persian community, some of them want to have like a republican system or whatever, but some of them also want to have

monarchy back. And there are also other groups who reject both republicans and also like monarchists, and they want to have more diverse and more open system for the future. But again this is something that we cannot say how it's going to be preceded because we don't know how the situation is going to be and how these opposition groups are going to work together in the future. Are they gonna start a civil war or are they gonna

sit down together and find a solution. This is all depends on how the regime falls and when, and the destruction of this regime is the biggest priority right now.

listeners are in America. The way that people may have engaged with this is through Donald Trump's posting on truth social where he has said that help is coming recently, Like, let's talk about what US intervention means, like, especially in the in the context of a like the US having intervened all over the Middle East, and what that has meant and be Like the US's recent national security strategy, which suggests that basically they don't care about the region

and they don't want to be involved in the region. Let's talk about what that means and what it might not be the panas here people think it is.

like there were like thousands of people in the regional. Yeah, like a crash. They were crushed. And this is so unbelievable. He's making these comments and then he's just threatening the regime all over it again. And just a few hours ago, as you mentioned, he said that the help is coming and he's asking people to keep fighting and keep protesting and things like that. However, we should also, like regarding this, we should talk about what people also want from Trump.

This has been like something that a lot of people, again this is not the majority, but a lot of people have been calling on him or basically on America or something to do an action against the regime, to do something against the regime or damage the regime so that people can get rid of it. And right now I saw some screenshots from people who were able to

get access to the internet for a few moments. I saw one there was shared on the internet that a woman from Tehran was saying that they were killing everyone. I don't know where my children are. One of them is nineteen and the other one is twenty three. She was just saying, please, please be our voice and just tell them to attack tell Trump to help. So this is also something that there is a call for attacking Iran and destroying the regime, but again we don't know

if Trump is really gonna do this or not. There is also like threats coming from Europe as well in UK, but again, as you mentioned, if these attacks happen, we don't is it gonna be something like Iraq or Afghanistan or other places, or is it gonna really help the people of Iran, the people inside iron to get rid of the regime, which is also really hard to understand because Trump hasn't been really clear about all these things.

On one side, he was also asked if he has any talks or connections with the so called Prince Razaphalavi, and he said no, he's a good guy, but I don't want to talk to him. But then now you can see that on Fox News, like all the Trump affiliated or pro Trump media, they are promoting this guy all the time. And at the same time, Rizzopelae was also on TV and he was on CBS and he said that he's directly in touch with Trump administration. So we don't know like what exactly. I mean, it's so

hard to understand what exactly the US is going to do. Yeah, they also announced that we're going to put more like twenty five percent tariff on countries who work with her on or trade with her on. And then the European Parliament also announced that we're going to ban all Iranian

diplomats from entering the European Parliament. Not made to begin with, all these comments that are coming out, they are so vague, and at the same time, there are calls from Germany, France and I think Australia too that they were calling on the citizens that are in Iran, like tourists or whatever, to immediately leave Iran. Yeah, this is also something that we don't know, like Trump is not somebody that you could trust. Yeah, ask people and Jia. And at the

same time, sorry, this is also important. There was also some news that the Iranian authorities in the Foreign ministry were trying or they contacted some people from Trump administration for negotiations, but then Trump said that we will not negotiate anything. So this is all like all these contradictions that Trump is just talking about, and he's denying that the regime is killing people and people are just being killed because it's too crowded.

we will deal with them in the harshest way. And then the president of Iran, Pishkiki, and he also came out and he said almost the same thing, and then he started threatening people. And a few days after that, the head of the judiciary, the Iranian judiciary came out and said that like in a very very aggressive language, he said that we will deal with you in the worst ways possible, we will destroy you, and things like that. It's he posted a lot of texts on his Twitter account.

His name is Moscid. So yeah, there is also like a huge online fightings between these politicians and so called leaders that makes the situation even more complicated and hard to understand.

Likely what they would do is just bomb stuff. That's kind of the approach it most likely here in it. Bombing alone is unlikely to remove the regime.

in Rojova, in in in Syria. That's how they they've been working with the Kurdish groups even though they're related to PKK and PKK is on the terror.

or you know, terrorism stuff. I guess finally we should just talk about one other thing that mainly said, which is like that American and Israeli shipping would become legitimate targets if you thought the Americans were involved, right, Just to explain, this is the possibilities of people if they're not familiar.

it at all. But at the same time, this is also something that I think that if the regime falls, and if it's the last moments, they would probably try to do something to damage the region or to damage the people as much as they can, and then they would just give up on everything and just disappear. So

they could do that. But if I want to go back to to last year, we also need to understand that after the Twelve Day War, Israel also destroyed a massive amount of Iranian military basis and all these buildings and structures. But still nobody don't truly understand how much has been destroyed. But the Iranian air force is really really weak right now. I'm apparently completely destroyed, so Iran

is not as strong as before. So there could be a possibility that Iran actually doesn't have the capability to attack US BASS across the region anymore. Yeah, So this could be also a possibility that they are just threatening there. They really don't have anything left anymore, or their military capabilities are completely down.

on Iran is very hard to find in America. So where would you suggest people look Either you know, your own stuff, or at the sources you suggest people should look to.

Rahan Buruman Center for Human Rights in Iran. There are several organizations, human rights organizations that are constantly reporting and they are trying to reflect what's happening, and there I could say majority of them are honest and there are not trying to push for a specific narrative, especially the Palabis, because right now, if you check the media, the international media, the Iranian media such as Iran International or BBC Persian and all of these major medias even in the US,

they are pushing for the monarchist and they are completely ignoring the other groups like, for example, the Kourdish people. I said, I mentioned that there was this great and big strike that happened in forty cities. It's a very big social act, but barely anyone talked about it, Barely anyone mentioned it. So I think it's for people, it's better to follow human rights organizations and do not really fall for the things that some media that are just

promoting a specific person because they're just taking away the truth. Yeah.