Iran commemorates the 1979 Islamic Revolution under pressure from within and without
Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Iran marked the 47th anniversary of its 1979 Islamic Revolution on Wednesday, as the country’s clerical regime remains under pressure, whether from US President Donald Trump proposing to send another group of aircraft carriers to the Middle East or from a public that angrily denounces their pressure. Bloody suppression of protests across the country.
Trump made the suggestion in an interview published Tuesday evening as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an Iran hawk, visited Washington to push the United States toward applying the toughest possible conditions in any agreement reached with Tehran in 2018. Emerging nuclear talks.
A senior Iranian security official intends to visit Qatar on Wednesday, after having previously traveled to Oman, which mediated this latest round of negotiations.
On Iranian state television, Iranian authorities broadcast images of thousands taking to the streets across the country on Wednesday in support of the theocracy and its 86-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But on Tuesday night, as government-sponsored fireworks lit up the dark sky, witnesses heard screams from people’s homes in the Iranian capital, Tehran, of “Death to the dictator!”
In the streets, people waved pictures of Khamenei and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, along with Iranian and Palestinian flags. Some chanted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”
Iranian reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who earlier ordered the country’s foreign minister to enter into talks with the Americans, is expected to deliver a speech later in Tehran’s Azadi Square.
Among Iran’s population of 85 million, there is a hardline element of support for Iran’s theocratic regime, including members of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which decisively put down protests last month in a bloody crackdown that left thousands dead and tens of thousands arrested. Others often participate in the demonstrations because they are government employees or to enjoy the carnival atmosphere of a government-sponsored holiday.
As the commemoration ceremony was held, a senior Iranian security official, Ali Larijani, left Oman for Qatar. That Middle Eastern country hosts a major US military facility that Iran subsequently attacked in June The United States bombed Iranian nuclear sites During the 12-day Iran-Israel war.
Qatar has also been a key negotiator in the past with Iran, with which it shares a huge offshore natural gas field in the Persian Gulf.
Speaking to Russia’s official RT channel, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said that Tehran still “does not fully trust the Americans.”
The chief Iranian diplomat said: “The last time we negotiated, last June we were in the middle of the negotiations and then they decided to attack us and that was a very bad experience for us.” “We need to make sure this scenario does not happen again, and that is mostly up to America.”
Despite this concern, Araqchi said it may be possible to “reach a better deal than Obama,” referring to the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that Iran reached while former US President Barack Obama was in office. In his first term, Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the agreement.
The United States has moved The aircraft carrier USS Abraham LincolnAnd ships and warplanes to the Middle East to pressure Iran to reach a deal and obtain the firepower needed to strike the Islamic Republic if Trump chooses to do so.
Indeed, American forces A drone was shot down They said they got too close to the Lincoln and came to the aid of an American-flagged ship that Iranian forces were trying to stop in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf.
Trump told the Axios news site that he is considering sending a second aircraft carrier to the region, noting, “We have a fleet heading there and another may be heading.”
It is still unclear which tanker could go. The USS George H.W. Bush has departed Norfolk, Virginia, according to U.S. Naval Institute News. The USS Gerald R. Ford remains in the Caribbean after the US military raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
