With banners praying “Death to the USA e Israel” and “The Destruction of Israel it will arrive soon”, and burning the flags of the two countries —and portraits of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu—, tens of thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets this Friday in Tehranthe capital of Iranand the other large cities of the country to protest in the annual demonstration of the ‘Jerusalem Day’which is celebrated every year on the last Friday of Ramadan, the holy month of Islam.
This march, promoted by the Government of the Islamic Republicis celebrated since the seizure of power of the ayatollahs of the Persian country, after the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
“The Palestinians are actively confronting Israel’s aggression from Gaza to the heart of Tel Aviv. Yesterday, our brothers were fighting with stones. Now they hit Israel with rockets”, said the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
During the last few weeks, the tension in Israel and the occupied west bank it has been increasing after several attacks and fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian citizens. These attacks have even occurred inside the mosque of Al-Aqsain east jerusalem. Al Aqsa is in second place, after Meccaholiest in Islam.
Israel, moreover, has exchanged artillery fire and shelling with Lebanon and Syria, two countries nominally at war against the Jewish state. This escalation of tension has been the most violent since 2006. “Israel will cease to exist in the near future. Its end is near, as it is currently facing an ascending chain of crises that will lead to its end,” the head of the Iranian Army’s military high command, Mohammad Bagheri, said on Thursday.
protests and plots
In the fall of last year, Iran experienced a wave of massive anti-government protests that began in mid-September with the death, at the hands of Iranian morality police, of a 22-year-old Mahsa Aminíwho was arrested, assaulted and later murdered for “not carrying the islamic veil properly”.
His death triggered a wave of demonstrations that put the government of the Islamic Republic in check, which did not hesitate to violently suppress protests —and use the death penalty against a dozen detainees.
The official version of the Tehran government was —and still is— that Amini died alone, due to an undetermined illness, and that the demonstrations were “orchestrated and financed for the outer enemies of the Islamic Republic”, referring to the United States and Israel. Iran, despite the accusations, has never produced any evidence pointing to any foreign government allegedly linked to the wave of protests.
“We have witnessed recent times various conspiracies of our enemies… If it had not been for the grace of god and the intelligence of our nation, they would have triumphed”, Ghalibaf, the president of the Iranian parliament, said this Friday before the demonstration in Tehran.
“This shows that we have to act with much greater attention to eliminate our weak pointsso as not to leave room for their plots from abroad”, Ghalibaf continued.
Since December, the power and strength of the anti-government protests has been weakened by the repression of the Iranian government, which has taken to the streets the basij forcesa paramilitary group made up of ex-convicts and ex-criminals joined the cause of the Islamic Republic. Today, the protests that began after the death of Mahsa Amini have disappeared from the streets.
“Today,” Ghalibaf said this Friday, “the most important fight is the fight against inflation. This is the weak point that our enemy tries to use against us.