Iran marks 1979 revolution’s anniversary at time of unrest
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran on Saturday celebrated the 44th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution amid nationwide anti-government protests and heightened tensions with the West.
Thousands of Iranians marched through major streets and squares decorated with flags, balloons and placards with revolutionary and religious slogans. The military put on display its Emad and Sejjil ballistic missiles and cruise missiles as well as its Shahed-136 and Mohajer drones.
Protesters began pouring into the streets in September after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman detained by the country’s morality police. Those demonstrations, initially focused on Iran’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab, soon morphed into calls for a new revolution.
In a speech at Azadi Square in the capital Tehran, President Ebrahim Raisi referred to the protests as a project by Iran’s enemies aimed at stopping the nation from continuing its achievements.
Meanwhile, Telewebion, a web TV service affiliated with Iranian state TV, was briefly hacked during Raisi’s speech, Iranian media reported. The khabaronline.ir news website said the interruption lasted 19 seconds. “Edalate Ali” or “The Justice of Ali” hackers group in a 44-second video published on Twitter invited people to take part in nationwide protests next week and urged Iranians to withdraw their money from their banks.
The anniversary comes after two years in which celebrations were largely limited to vehicles due to the pandemic that killed more than 140,000 people in Iran according to official numbers — the highest national death toll in the Middle East.
The celebration was a show of power to the protesters. State television referred to the demonstrations as a “foreign-backed riot” rather than homegrown frustration over the death of Amini. Anger also has spread over the collapse of the Iranian rial against the U.S. dollar and Tehran’s arming of Russia with bomb-carrying drones in its war on Ukraine, which has also angered the West. Iran says it gave the drones to Russia before the war.
The Iranian government has not offered an overall death toll or number of individuals it has arrested. However, activists outside of the country say at least 528 people have been killed and 19,600 detained in the crackdown that followed.
The Islamic Revolution began with widespread unrest in Iran over the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah, terminally ill with cancer, fled in January 1979. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini then returned from exile, and the government fell on Feb. 11, 1979. In April, Iranians voted to become an Islamic Republic, a Shiite theocracy with Khomeini as the country’s first supreme leader.
Months later, anger boiled over in Tehran leading to the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in November 1979 by militant students with 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days.