The regime knows its days are numbered. You can see this by watching the relentless increase in the oppression of the Iranian people. Last time I checked, there were half again as many executions under Rouhani as there had been under Ahmadinejad, the former often described as “moderate,” while the latter was considered some kind of bloodthirsty murderer. Today Rouhani sits at the right hand of the chief tyrant, while Ahmadinejad is under house arrest, as are the leaders of the Green Movement who challenged his legitimacy after the phony elections of 2009. Rouhani is forever promising reform, but delivers only mayhem.
The most recent horror is the “suicide” of a beloved environmentalist, Kavous Emami. He was arrested on January 24th, and was suicided within two weeks. Hardly anyone believes he killed himself; he was undoubtedly executed, as even the very cautious New York Times Iran correspondent made clear. And the Iran Sociology Association also spoke out: "The information published about him is not believable and we expect officials to respond and to provide the public with information concerning his death."
Emami was one of many scientists warning of a nationwide water shortage that is one of many grotesque failures of the regime, reminding one of the similar ruination of the environment in the last days of the Soviet Union. Unsurprisingly, many of Emami’s colleagues have been arrested and still others are rumored to be in prison. Of late, political prisoners have been housed in safe houses run by the Revolutionary Guards instead of the infamous prisons such as Evin in Tehran, where they had routinely been incarcerated. The families of the new wave of political prisoners do not know where to go to find their loved ones, which is exactly what Khamenei et al desire. They fear protests in front of the jails.
The Emami case is instructive, because he was hardly an anti-regime activist. He was a campaigner for a cleaner environment, and so far as I know was not involved in political protests. He was extremely popular, and his work was dangerous to the regime simply because it documented the failure of the system.
As the tempo of oppression mounts, the regime is scrambling to find some way to “demonstrate” its “successes” and “popularity.” The anniversary celebrations were supposed to achieve just that, but instead showed the regime’s failure and unpopularity. If you can’t get a decent turnout for the Islamic Republic’s most important holiday, you’re in trouble.
