By Mahmood Delkhasteh
Mahmood Delkhasteh is an independent researcher who specialises in the Iranian revolution of 1979, in which he was a participant
The uprising in Iran against the stolen election exposes the true character and intentions of a regime that seeks to rule without and against its people, says Mahmood Delkhasteh.
The uprising in Iran, which began as a protest against the rigged election of 12 June 2009, caught the world by surprise. No one can be certain where this uprising will lead. What is certain is that Iran will never be the same again.
The brutal, sustained crackdown after spontaneous peaceful protests; the killings, the injuries, the arrests and the Stalinist-style television confessions; the attempts to blame foreign powers for fomenting a revolt that in fact emerged from deep popular anger at injustice (and even for the death of the innocent bystander Neda Soltani) – all this has ripped the legitimacy from Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government.
These pitiless responses indicate how determined this regime is to stay in power. But they have also put the future of the regime at risk. For the protest wave has exposed the deep rifts inside the regime itself, reflecting the sense of millions of Iranians that their country has been captured and is ruled by brute force.
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