Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon documents an important development in the Middle East.
Students at Iran’s Sharif University of Technology launched a new wave of anti-regime protests over the weekend, calling for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s death and clashing with government security forces, video footage shows. The demonstrations, which have since spread to other universities, threaten to further weaken the regime at a moment when President Donald Trump weighs strike options that include hitting Khamenei and other leaders.
The protests—which erupted as students returned to campus for the first time since the regime killed more than 20,000 demonstrators in January—quickly turned violent when regime security forces and government allies attacked the crowd.
Similar events unfolded at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University of Technology and continued into Sunday at several other campuses, where footage shows similar clashes between protesters and government forces, according to a Farsi-language report by Radio Farda.
The Iranian government’s move to violently suppress the protests suggests it fears further civil unrest after January’s large-scale uprising. Students have traditionally been at the forefront of mass movements in the country, and a new wave of protests would further destabilize Tehran’s hardline regime—and could expedite its demise should the Trump administration take military action against the Islamic Republic in the coming days or weeks. Trump is reportedly considering a range of options that includes “tak[ing] out the ayatollah and his son and the mullahs,” one administration official told Axios. The administration is also reportedly weighing options like striking remaining nuclear facilities and internal security infrastructure after the largest U.S. military buildup in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Iranian regime is expected to send a nuclear deal proposal to the United States by Tuesday in what may be a final push before a military operation.
Alireza Nader, a veteran Iran analyst tracking the uprisings, told the Washington Free Beacon that the regime is particularly worried about student-led uprisings.
