Defeated at war, enemy opens new front: Unpacking foreign-backed riots in Iran

By Amirreza Abbasi

Mossad-CIA sleeper cells have operated in active mode in Tehran and several other Iranian cities over the past few weeks, setting ablaze bus stations, shops, mosques, banks, and medical clinics.

Armed with Kalashnikov rifles and Molotov cocktails, these foreign-backed rioters have gone berserk, terrorizing ordinary people on the streets and not even sparing women and children.

A three-year-old girl, Melenai, was killed by armed rioters in western Iran’s Kermanshah province. A young nurse was burned to death in the northern city of Karaj after her clinic was set ablaze by rioters.

Many security personnel were shot in the head by sharpshooters who were evidently trained by foreign spy agencies for the job. This was neither accidental nor spontaneous, as many would like to believe.

It has been a meticulously engineered project to foment chaos and mayhem inside the Islamic Republic, picking up from where they left off in June after suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of the brave and united Iranian nation and their armed forces.

What the 12-day war did was strengthen unity inside Iran against an enemy that does not distinguish between Iranians, cutting across political, ideological, and even religious lines.

More than 1,000 people who were martyred in the imposed war came from different walks of life, ranging from ordinary citizens to nuclear scientists and military commanders.

The illegal and unjustified aggression against the Iranian nation bore the clear stamp of US President Donald Trump, who recently vowed to “come to the rescue” of Iranian “protesters.”

The son of the deposed Iranian monarch, who is hated both in Iran and across the Diaspora, was among those sellouts who openly and unapologetically backed the Israeli-American aggression against Iran, the country he claims as his own and the country he wants to “liberate.”

He was celebrating with war hawks in Washington while Iranians were burying their dead. The same man who excitedly met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and held secret talks.

What we witnessed in Tehran and some other cities on Thursday night, and to a lesser extent on Friday night, was the continuation of what we saw in June – in a different form this time.

These were not “protests” over economic grievances or concerns related to the depreciation of the rial, which is a legitimate concern acknowledged by the Iranian leadership.

These were organized riots, straight out of the Israeli-American “regime change” playbook for the Islamic Republic of Iran, a playbook that has failed umpteen times since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The murder of the three-year old girl in Kermanshah cannot be described as “protests” over economic woes. The little girl had done nothing to deserve such a painful and tragic death.

As one social media user rightly wrote, referring to the cold-blooded murder of the Iranian girl: these are not protesters – they are terrorists trained to create mayhem inside Iran.

Another heart-wrenching incident was reported from Karaj, a city near Tehran, where a young paramedic and the mother of a three-year-old was burned to death by an armed mob of rioters.

She was attending to patients in her clinic when the terrorists surrounded the facility and lobbed Molotov cocktails inside, triggering a massive blaze. Unable to escape, she died inside.

These incidents bear the hallmark of Israeli-American terrorism against the Islamic Republic – terrorism that we saw in June and terrorism that has taken many forms over the past 46 years.

Anti-Iran propaganda outlets have framed these riots differently to amplify their own distorted narratives and influence public opinion in the West, as they did in the 12-day war.

But this time, people inside and outside Iran have reacted intelligently. The volume of reactions on social media suggests that their spin-doctoring won’t work this time. It’s no longer about the economy or inflation. It’s a project to destroy the country.

The deteriorating economic conditions in Iran are largely the result of unjust and crippling sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western countries under pretexts that defy logic.

These sanctions, better described as economic terrorism, have already claimed tens of thousands of lives over the years. Yet the Iranian nation has refused to surrender or submit to coercion.

The worsening economic situation has been intentionally engineered by Western powers to install a “regime” in Tehran that is subservient to Washington and friendly to the illegitimate regime in Tel Aviv.

That objective, however, has not been achieved for obvious reasons.

More recently, they imposed a war on the Iranian nation to achieve the same goal, and failed yet again. The more Iranians are pushed into a corner, the more they become stronger and united.

Iranians know who their well-wishers are. They know who the enemy is. And they will never fall into the vicious trap laid for them. We have witnessed this repeatedly since 1979.

As Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said clearly and categorically in his recent speech, peaceful protests are legitimate, and authorities must listen to the demands of merchants and address their concerns over price fluctuations.

But, Iran will stand firm against vandalism and foreign-backed unrest and “will not back down” in the face of those acting to curry favor with the US president.

“There are people whose job is destruction. Last night in Tehran, and in some other places, a bunch of vandals came and damaged buildings that belong to their own country,” he said during a meeting with the families of martyrs on Friday.

That is precisely the point. Riots have no place in a democratic society. Protesters do not riot. They do not burn public property, destroy mosques, vandalize banks, kill fellow citizens, or play into the hands of enemies.

Since Friday, massive marches have taken place in Tehran and other cities, with people condemning the foreign-backed riots and those behind them. While acknowledging the difficult economic situation, demonstrators have made it clear that the Iranian nation refuses to be manipulated by those with the blood of more than a thousand Iranians – killed in the 12-day war – on their hands.

They reminded Trump that the young woman killed by anti-immigration police in Minneapolis a few days ago was not carrying any firearms or cold weapons. Yet the megalomaniac US president backed the ICE killers and blamed the victim.

Before claiming to “come to the rescue” of Iranian rioters, he must ensure justice for the American woman who was killed in broad daylight for no crime.

Iranians reject any outside interference in their internal affairs, and they reject those who murdered their fellow citizens in June, as well as those who held them hostage before 1979.

This phase shall pass too and those who wish ill for the country will repent in the end.

Amirreza Abbasi is a Tehran-based writer and activist.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)

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