March
15, 2023
Eleven
people were killed and more than 3,500 injured during celebrations for Iran's
traditional fire festival ahead of the Persian New Year, state media reported
Wednesday.
The
fire festival, called Chaharshanbe Suri in Farsi, is celebrated every year on the
night of the last Tuesday of the Iranian calendar year, which ends on March 20.
"Since
February 20, 26 people have died in incidents related to Chaharchanbe
Suri," including at least 11 on the day of the event along with more than
3,550 injured, emergency services chief Jafar Miadfar told state television.
During
the festival, participants jump over bonfires to purify themselves and ward off
evil spirits, while chanting "I give you my yellow colour" (indicator
of disease) and "I take your red colour" (symbol of life).
The
festival is part of Iran's pre-Islamic heritage and generally frowned upon by
the Shiite clerical establishment.
But
it is popular with young people, many of whom make their own fireworks for the
event, a practice that sometimes results in injury or even death.
Women across Iran defy authorities by releasing illicit dance videos
March
15, 2023
A
dance video posted by five Tehran girls that went viral has inspired others
across Iran to make and post similar videos with the same song in a new form of
protest against the clerical regime.
The
‘copycat’ videos amount to a risky act of defiance as women in Iran are
forbidden by the ruling clerics from dancing in public.
The
five who put out the original video were reported by official media to have
voiced contrition. But whether they have done so or not, or have done so
without duress, is unclear.
The
dance videos released on social media can be seen as an imaginative alternative
format for protest as activists try to bring the anti-regime demonstrations
that first broke out last mid-September back to the boil.
The
unrest was sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, who died in the custody of
the Tehran morality police. Amini was detained for wearing attire, including a
hijab, or headscarf, in a way that ideological police officers claimed breached
the Islamic dress code that applies in Iran.
Iran’s messaging on Saudi deal is anti-Israel strategy game – analysis
March 15, 2023
Iranian pro-government
media messaging in the wake of the Iran-Saudi deal has portrayed the deal as a
major setback for the US and Israel. This is interesting because the pro-regime
analysis at news organizations such as Tasnim News in Iran appears to dovetail
with some commentators in the West who also see the deal as a blow to the two
Western allies.
It is clear that Iranian
pro-regime media is not coming to this conclusion in agreement with those in
the West who are pro-Israel and critics of Iran but worried about the deal’s
ramifications.
Instead, Iranian media,
with support from the regime and the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps),
is messaging about this deal in such a way as to portray it as some kind of
real-world chess game.
The concept of
three-dimensional chess is one in which something is overly complicated and not
played out in a linear or two-dimensional landscape. Iran’s regime doesn’t want
to send the message that the deal with Saudi Arabia was simply due to necessity
and pragmatism and that Iran is now pro-Saudi. Instead, it wants to message
that it is doing more than just normalizing ties with Riyadh, pretending that
it has done so to undermine the US and Israel.
According to the Tasnim
International News Agency report, “the developments in the region in the recent
stage have moved in different directions, which shows that the period of
maneuvers and benefits of the US and the Zionist regime – from the tension in
the relations of the countries of the region to stabilize the existence of
Israel and create a Zionist-Arab coalition against Iran and the axis of
resistance – is over.” This convoluted statement means that the new Saudi-Iran
deal is part of a larger process by which Tehran and its “resistance” allies in
the region are reversing several years of Israeli success that came about via
the
The Abraham Accords
concerned Iran
IRAN WAS very worried by
the Abraham Accords. It was wary of Israel’s ties with Bahrain and the UAE and
potential ties with Saudi Arabia. Iranian media often tried to undermine the
Gulf States that were working with the Jewish state. Iran also mobilized groups
like the Houthis to threaten Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. The Houthis in
Yemen are also anti-American and anti-Israel.
Iran’s pro-regime media had
several articles this week describing the Iran-Saudi deal as a blow to the US
in the region. The recent report says that this is “the beginning of the
decline of American influence in the region.” This narrative is interesting
because even though the Islamic Republic’s media says the agreement is
important and changes seven years of tensions between Iran and Saudi, the
claims also portray this as part of the process of US withdrawal from
Afghanistan and also say that the US has failed in Syria and Ukraine.
Why does Iran’s regime
think it also has to portray the deal as a setback for Israel? Iran is
spreading this message because of this “3-D chess” game, where it wants to
pretend it did one thing – signing a deal with Riyadh – in order to achieve
something else: the erosion of Israeli influence in the Gulf.
There’s no evidence that the
deal with Saudi Arabia is a setback for Israel, however. Iran wants to spread
this message precisely because this is not actually an aspect of the deal. The
Saudi-Iran deal reported elsewhere in the region, such as Turkey, is seen as
pragmatic and will include potential trade and investment. This is a
“constructive” deal, according to an article at Turkey’s Anadolu.
Iran’s messaging is
different. It wants to claim the deal is actually related to the US and Israel.
Tehran has been claiming to “resist” them for decades.
This is part of its general
propaganda in the region. It mobilizes Hezbollah, militias in Syria and Iraq,
and the Houthis in Yemen under the banner of fighting Israel and the US. But
this “axis of resistance” is largely a propaganda story. Iran uses claims of
opposing these two Western powers as a way to get its foot in the door in
places like Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
It then exploits local
conditions to get a stranglehold on the economy and politics, and to hollow out
the state and profit off the decline of these countries. While it puts up a
banner of “opposing the US,” overall everyone who has watched Lebanon over the
last decade and a half should notice that the “resistance” has bankrupted
Lebanon, but hasn’t opposed the US or Israel any more than it used to. This
shows that Iran’s messaging is largely used to sugar-coat reality.
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