Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, to be successful to pull out his desired presidential candidate from the sham election ballot box, is creating an atmosphere of fear and horror.

By studying the history of the infamous coup d’état of 19 August 1953 against the government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, we can understand the role of villains such as ‘Shaban Jafari’, the famous ‘Shaban the brainless’, one of the thugs working for Abol-Ghasem Kashani, a cleric of that time. Through threats and bullying, these people were able to narrow the space for supporters of the national government to carry out the reactionary-imperialistic coup against the government of Prime Minister Mossadegh.

Now, by copying that event, Khamenei wants to cover up his weakness and inability, by creating an atmosphere of fear for the society to appoint Ebrahim Raisi the famous butcher of the 1988 political prisoners’ massacre in Iran.

The famous thug Saeed Ghasemi in a speech about the election attacked the rival faction, which is pretending to oppose Khamenei, and said: “Dear aunt, even if you want to come to the street and protest, I myself will confront you. You know me, I have no mercy even for my parents in front of the martyrs, let alone Zarif (Mohammad Javad Zarif, regime’s foreign minister) and President Rouhani, and the dear Mahmoud (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, regime’s former president) who is drunk.” (State-run website, No Andish, May 30, 2021)

One of the regime’s outlets affiliated with the so-called reformist faction about Khamenei’s thugs wrote:

“Really, what makes some people like Hassan Abbasi, in describing the bitter events of November 2019, simply talk about the system’s bloodletting, and someone like Ghasemi get out of control and insult the opposite side by expression that flows out of his mouth and, worse, call for a face-to-face war and a fight and possibly violence which will cause the death of others? (State-run daily Arman, June 1, 2021)

By analyzing these reactions and speeches of these regime’s famous thugs we will conclude that the addressed are not the rival faction of Khamenei, but the people, to scare them and force them to participate in the election. But the reality is that this time the majority of the people do not care anymore about the regime’s elections, as the many reactions and videos published by them on social media have shown.

In particular after the bloodbath of the November 2019 protests, people are calling for the regime’s downfall.

By reviewing the official statistics of the regime’s national organization for civil registration that exists about the November 2019 protests and the regime’s massacre, no other factor has yet been able to explain the 8,000 additional deaths in the fall of that time.
Now, monthly data show that about 6,000 more deaths were recorded in November 2019 than in November 2018.

Iran November 2019 death rate
Iran November 2019 death rate

(The Iranian opposition group MEK, estimated the massacre of nearly 1500 people, and was able to collect nearly 1000 names of the victims, but the regime’s official statistics about the death rate of that time are showing a rapid increase of deaths in that time period.)

The Arman daily has warned the regime about such mistakes which will provoke the people to came to the street in a contra-reaction and added: “Another big mistake of the principlist camp these days is to give an open stage to people like Sardar Saeed Ghasemi, whose job is to threaten and intimidate rivals and opponents. These kinds of threats only have the effect of provoking a part of the silent population to help the favorite candidates of this type of people in the elections, regardless of other aspects of the story! If the principlist camp wants such a thing, it should continue such an action. (State-run daily Arman, June 1, 2021)

The leaders of the regime, including Khamenei himself, have been afraid of the ‘street floor’ for a long time, Iran analysts say. Ironically, everything they do simply fuels public anger that could trigger further protests.