With Brutal Crackdown, Iran Convulsed by Worst Unrest in 40 Years

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

Today: Iran is experiencing its deadliest political unrest in over 40 years, with nearly 200 people killed by government forces in the last few weeks. Natalie Kitroeff speaks to Farnaz Fassihi about why the United States wanted that unrest and has helped fuel it. It’s Tuesday, December 3.

Farnaz, take me back to the beginning of the recent uprising in Iran. How did it start?

On Friday, November 15, this was about 15 minutes before midnight Iran time. I was busy reporting another story on Iran that we plan to launch. And I started receiving text messages and emails from my contacts in Iran, from my family members, from friends, and from sources, asking me if I had heard anything about gas prices going up by almost 300% as of midnight. People were very alarmed. They were shocked. They thought that this can’t be. This is a rumor. How could they increase prices without telling us? How can we afford to go to work? How can we afford to buy basic goods if gas prices triple in price? There was a lot of anxiety almost immediately.

Iranians wake up the next morning. They see official announcement in the news media on state TV that this is in fact not a rumor.

And they start to panic.

They start messaging each other on WhatsApp groups, posting things on social media saying, people, let’s protest this. Let’s get to the streets and show them that we’re angry at this.

On Friday by noon, people on major highways in Tehran and other big cities had parked their cars, and created a massive traffic jam, and turned off their cars for miles, and miles, and miles.

Wow.

And people were gathering at gas stations, and putting roadblocks on gas stations, and preventing other motorists from filling up their tanks as a way to protest.

And in the first 24 hours, the protests were pretty peaceful. People were coming out. They were just voicing their concern. They were saying, we’re angry. Listen to us.

By Saturday, November 16, the protests were gaining steam, and they were changing in nature.

They had quickly shifted from being protests about gas prices and the economy to targeting the entire establishment of the Islamic Republic. There were people in the streets saying death to Khomeini, the Supreme Leader, death to the dictator.

There were reports of banks getting torched and government buildings being attacked.

As the protests spread, we started noticing that there was a disruption in our communications with Iran. I had a really hard time calling sources on their cell phones. Their mobile service was disrupted. I kept sending text messages, and it would bounce back. And by Sunday, the entire country went dark. They unplugged the internet.

So what do you do as a reporter who’s trying to cover this country from the outside? How do you get around this to figure out what’s going on?

It was very challenging. I wanted to call sources on their landlines or on their mobile service. But I was worried that if I do, those calls could be intercepted, and they could get in trouble. I tried to call my relatives and people that I thought would talk to me, and they were terrified. They would say, “Nothing’s going on. Everything is fine. How is the weather?” And try to change the subject because they thought that these calls might be monitored. We tried to monitor the videos that were trickling out. But if there were protests in thousands of cities in Iran, we were getting maybe less than a dozen videos or eyewitness accounts a day. But we could quickly tell that things were getting more and more violent.

And then what happens?

Then slowly internet and mobile service is restored. And the first accounts that we start getting are from local journalists who have access to the internet when they come to work. And they’ve gathered reporting data, and videos, and eyewitness accounts they are banned from publishing. And they start to leak it out. They start to post it on social media. They start contacting reporters like me whom they know and trust and sharing these things. So as the curtain lifts on Iran, we are able to see the scope of the disaster and the violence.

And so what do we learn about what happened?

We learned that in a space of 72 hours, Iran turned off the lights and opened fire at civilian protesters who were unarmed.

We see shocking videos of dead bodies piled up on the street, security forces chasing down unarmed protesters who were throwing rocks and opening machine gun fire on them, and people dropping dead. We see close-up assassination-style shootings where the police force would walk up to a young man, and point the gun to their head, and just pull the trigger. We start seeing videos of this one particular young man that I will name — Pouya Bakhtiari — a 23-year-old engineer who is filming his last hours of life.

He is going around in the protests. He’s saying, I am an engineer. I am unemployed. I’m coming out because I’m fed up with this system. I’m coming out because I’m so happy to see that everybody’s supporting us. And then it’s sunset, and he turns the camera to the sunset and says —

— look at this beautiful sunset. I wish for a new dawn for my country. And a few hours later, he’s shot and killed.

And how many more are there like him who were killed?

So many more. There’s so many more young men who were killed, young women, even children. The death toll ranges somewhere from 180 to 450 and continues to climb as more cities and more people get connected to the internet and have a way of reaching out and tell their stories. We found out about the city of Mahshahr on Friday just as internet went up, where the Revolutionary Guards came in a big force and started shooting indiscriminately at dozens of young men who had blocked the main entryway to the city and to an industrial complex. [SHOUTING] [GUNSHOTS] Some of them dropped dead. The others ran to a nearby marsh.

And one person was armed. They shot at the Revolutionary Guards from the marshes. The guards encircled them and with machine gunfire opened fire on them. [GUNSHOTS]

And the estimate is that between 40 to 100 people were killed in that mass-murder incident.

Farnaz, help me understand how a hike in gas prices caused all of this unrest.

What is the role of the U.S. and U.S. sanctions in all of this?

U.S. sanctions play a pretty significant role in Iran’s economy. Different U.S. administrations have imposed sanctions on Iran in order to squeeze and pressure its economy. The 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers lifted those sanctions. And it brought in a lot of hope and a lot of investments from foreign companies and a lot of job possibilities for Iranians. And then President Trump comes in.

He exits the nuclear deal. And suddenly, all of that hope, all of those financial possibilities come to a halt.

And immediately we start seeing significant impact on the currency, on Iran’s ability to do trade. And suddenly the government’s facing a massive budget deficit.

And the stated goal of these more punishing sanctions is to bring Iran to the negotiating table in a more serious way, right?

Well, that’s the stated goal. But all along there’s been also an unstated goal and policy, which is hoping that these punishing sanctions would pressure Iranians to rise up against the regime, to start pushing the government to have no choice but to come to the table and discuss a more comprehensive deal, because not only is it facing international pressure, but the sanctions are destabilizing the society in Iran as well.

So in a sense the Trump administration wanted this uprising to happen all along.

Yes. U.S. officials have embraced these protests. The Special Envoy of Iran, Brian Hook, gave an interview and said, we’re very pleased to see the protests across Iran. Brian Hook’s comments were unusual because typically when there is unrest and protests in countries, the response from senior U.S. officials is that we’re watching what’s happening. We’re monitoring what’s happening. We support the people. But you rarely see them putting themselves at the front and center of these protests by saying, we’re very pleased. Even Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that he has asked Iranian protesters to communicate with him and send him video footage of the violence against them.

So if the unstated goal of these sanctions was to cause all of this unrest, then they worked. But what about the second part, the death of the protesters? How much was the violence that followed part of the plan?

I think the responsibility of the violence on protesters solely falls on the government of Iran because at the end of the day, they’re the ones that ordered their security forces to crush and use lethal force against civilians. So an understanding of Iran’s modern history would tell you that if there was a popular uprising, the government would crack down and crush it very quickly and with a lot of force.

We’ll be right back.

Farnaz, what is the precedent in Iran for this kind of violent response to a citizen uprising?

Unfortunately, there is a history of Iranian rulers crushing citizen uprisings violently.

In 1978 —

— the Shah of Iran opened fire at protesters at a peaceful sit-in and killed 84 people. That sparked the beginning of the end for him.

And the revolution in 1979 that brought the Islamic republic to power, the new government promised that it would abandon the ways of the Shah and create a free society where criticism was tolerated in public discourse and debates would be free. And what we’ve seen is the exact opposite. The last episode of a nationwide uprising happened in 2009 in response to a contested presidential election.

Iranians took to the streets asking for a recount of the votes and staged peaceful protests all over the country.

And the government cracked down —

— and over a period of 10 months killed about 72 people. So based on this history, the U.S. could have predicted that an uprising would result in violence. But the level of violence we saw was unprecedented. Nobody could have predicted this.

Right. So the situation in Iran is spiraling. It’s becoming more extreme than anyone thought it would be. And I’m wondering, what does that mean for the U.S. strategy? Does this outcome constitute a success?

I think the U.S. administration’s trying to portray the events of the past few weeks as a success because it’s harsh policies on Iran are resulting in a popular uprising. But if the ultimate goal is to bring Iran’s leaders to the negotiating table, that policy might have actually backfired. The U.S., by aligning itself with the Iranian people, has given the Iranian leadership ammunition to delegitimize the demands of the people.

What do you mean by that?

Well, on the surface it looks as if the comments by Mr. Hook and Secretary Pompeo will help the Iranian people because it shows that the U.S. administration stands in solidarity with their demands. But it also plays directly into the playbook of the Iranian regime, which takes all sorts of comments by the American administration and Westerners as proof that the uprising is not homegrown, that the demands of the population are not legitimate and they are being staged and instigated by Washington.

So ultimately it sounds like the U.S. strategy may end up undercutting the power of these protests.

Correct. It also undermines the ability of President Rouhani, who is considered a moderate in the political structure of Iran, to negotiate with the U.S. and to come to the table with Mr. Trump. The majority of people who handed Rouhani a victory are talking about sitting out the elections. They’re talking about boycotting the elections. So if the centrists and the reformers, if the public doesn’t vote, then the hardliners are going to win. And we’re going to see a hardening of policies in Iran, particularly about engagement with the United States.

So while the goal was to bring the Iranian government to the negotiating table, this may end with a government that’s more extreme and more anti-West.

That was always the fear with the Trump administration’s maximum pressure policy that it would actually empower the very factions that Washington does not want to see empowered.

Farnaz, what happens next for the Iranian people?

The Iranian people are terrified right now. They are coming to terms with a new level of force being used against them. The cities and neighborhoods where there was an uprising very much feel like a security zone. We’re hearing of security forces going door to door in some areas where women were cooking for protesters and arresting those women. Students are being abducted on college campuses. There was an incident where the militia hid in five ambulances, and went to the campus of Tehran University in disguise, and rounded up students, shoved them in the ambulances, and drove out. And nobody knows where they are.

The protests have been crushed. There is no more uprising, but this arrests and feeling of repression is still very much alive. The underlying reasons for this uprising have not been resolved. And we can expect that the next time there is the equivalent of a gas price increase or a political decision that’s not popular with the public, it would also spark another round of uprising. And the next wave would likely be a lot more violent and the crackdown a lot more brutal.

Farnaz, thank you so much.

Thank you very much for having me.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Monday, President Trump said he would impose tariffs on steel and aluminum from Brazil and Argentina, a move that would destroy previous agreements with both countries, damage their economies and widen a global trade war. In a tweet announcing the tariffs, Trump accused Brazil and Argentina of manipulating their currencies in a way that hurts American farmers, a claim that both economists and government officials have rejected. The decision appeared to surprise leaders of both countries, especially Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has tried to establish close ties with Trump.

Bolsonaro appeared to learn of the tariffs from a reporter, who read him Trump’s tweet.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.