Public Comment

In a rapidly changing situation, last week there were unconfirmed reports that the Iranian regime had decided to abolish the Morality Police and lessen restrictions on women appearing in public without the required hijab or head scarf. However, these reports were soon denied by the regime; and to make matters worse, the regime began to execute the first, and now the second, protester sentenced to death for participating in the protests. Granted, at least one of these particular protesters hanged by the regime had allegedly engaged in a street battle with security elements that resulted in the death of members of Iran’s Bajis, a subdivision of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that is the most visible element of the Revolutionary Guard to participate in the regime’s maximal crackdown on the popular protest movement. 

The Revolutionary Guard has largely been involved in Iran’s foreign policies. They are charged with protecting the Straits of Hormuz against foreign aggression. They have supported, financially and militarily, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Assad regime in Syria, and various Shiite militias in Iraq. Thus far, the Revolutionary Guard has been staunchly anti-American, which is understandable given America’s longtime interference in Iran going back to the CIA’s overthrow of the democratically elected President Mosaddegh in 1953, as well as Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the Nuclear Accord successfully negotiated by the Obama presidency, and, perhaps most significantly, America’s drone attack assassination in January 2020 of Iran’s enormously popular Revolutionary Guard Major General Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad’s International Airport. 

However, if the Revolutionary Guard sought to win favour with Iran’s rebellious population once this movement succeeds in toppling the theocratic regime of the mullahs, they could do so by approving a renewed nuclear accord with the US in exchange for a significant lessening of the economic sanctions that have hurt the Iranian people. By doing so, the Revolutionary Guard would win important brownie points with the Iranian people, though this might simply be a way of paying lip service to Iranian popular aspirations for democracy while serving as a major ploy in the Revolutionary Guard’s manoeuvres to solidify their political power in post-revolutionary Iran.