Benni Avni
The New York Sun, Sept. 27, 2022
“It reinforces the regime’s narrative that the protest is foreign-controlled to distract and deflect [but]the protesters see right through it.”
Unable to quell a revolution sparked by the killing of a 22-year old Kurdish-Iranian woman for violating Hijab rules, Tehran is attacking Kurds at home and in neighboring Iraq.
As Iran’s “hair revolution” intensifies, with ever-bloodier clashes taking place across the country, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is turning its ire on the region’s perennially oppressed minority — the Kurds.
The ongoing uprising in Iran, the largest so far against the Islamic Republic’s rule, ensued after young Mahsa Amini traveled to Tehran from her Kurdish hometown, Saqqez. Her now-infamous arrest, and her September 16 death at the hands of her morality police captors, angered her fellow Iranian-Kurds, who started clashing with authorities.
After starting in the Kurdish areas, the protest quickly widened to the rest of the country, and currently encompasses at least 46 Iranian cities. Iranians of all stripes cite the killing of a young woman for failing to comply with ill-defined and unjust dress codes for females as a symbol of the regime’s rigidity and cruelty. Unlike past unrest, protesters are explicitly calling for the toppling of the Islamic Republic.
As the IRGC joins police and Basij militias in counter attacks against the rebels, the death toll among protesters and police has reached 41, according to the latest reports from state-run television. …SOURCE