Why Are Licensed Gatherings and Assemblies Attacked?

In liberal democratic societies, individuals enjoy four types of freedoms: expression, media, assembly, and organization. These freedoms guarantee the expression of diverse voices, protests, information dissemination, gathering like-minded individuals to express an opinion or present a work, and organizing to advance a goal, program, and policy. Thousands of reports and narratives have been presented regarding the lack of freedom of expression, media, and organizations in the Islamic Republic. This article focuses on the lack of freedom of assembly in the Islamic Republic. The 'people' from the perspective of the institutions and officials of the Islamic Republic are only the loyal and steadfast supporters of the regime and the Supreme Leader. The rest are generally ignored, and if they express clear opposition, they become agents of the enemy. They have no right to assemble. The Islamic Republic has various mechanisms to limit gatherings and meetings: 1. The necessity of obtaining permission for gatherings. For this reason, the number of gatherings and meetings held in Iran is nearly zero compared to free societies. For comparison, consider the number of meetings held annually in a hotel in free societies versus the number of similar meetings in a hotel in Iran. Also, compare the number of gathering and concert halls in Iran with other parts of the world. Due to these limitations, there are fundamentally no significant capacities and infrastructures for gatherings like hotels, concert halls, or even cinemas in Iran. The number of these infrastructures has been continuously decreasing. To escape these limitations, the people of Iran have turned to informal, unannounced, and underground gatherings in homes and gardens around cities or even in mountains and plains. 2. Permanent restrictions on certain activities such as music concerts at universities or mixed student activities or gathering of youth to watch sports competitions in cinemas and restaurants. Khamenei and other clerics emphasize these prohibitions. 3. The existence of a paramilitary party throughout the country to attend any gathering and control and monitor it, and if ordered from above or with prior coordination, to disrupt it. A nationwide organization in Iran with a capacity of between 25,000 to 50,000 people does this (based on estimates made regarding the presence of these organizations at various events to disrupt them: an average of 50 to 100 people in 500 cities across the country). These are the Swiss Army knives of the regime for suppressing opponents and dissenters when the regime's interests do not necessitate the use of the Basij, Revolutionary Guards, and police forces (attacking former or current officials) or when these forces are insufficient (such as during the protests of 2009). In cases where voices cannot be silenced through censorship, filtering, jamming, refusal to issue speech or meeting permits, detention, and threats, direct and physical confrontation is considered. In hundreds of cases, even permission to hold memorial ceremonies has not been granted to survivors. Even memorials for individuals killed by the regime or those who opposed it are canceled, or after obtaining permission, they are attacked. Former loyalists and those who deviate from the regime's path must be indirectly punished, and as the government puts it, 'popular opposition' must be communicated to them. No official of the Islamic Republic has spoken in a way that diverges from Khomeini and Khamenei without being punished by these groups. The message of these confrontations to all citizens of the country is that the cost of opposition and criticism is high, and dissent and criticism should not take a collective form. The government also does not want anyone to feel secure in expressing criticism and opposition to the policies of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. Operational factors? The executors of such operations are members of the Basij, mosques, and government propaganda and guidance institutions (the headquarters for promoting virtue and preventing vice, the headquarters for holding Friday prayers in various cities, the Islamic Propaganda Organization, the Islamic Warriors Association affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, and the Ammar Headquarters) who have close ties with the coercive powers such as the Ministry of Intelligence, the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence, and the office of the Supreme Leader. For this reason, the police stand by and observe them. These individuals are organized in paramilitary institutions, and their salaries are paid by the Basij or other government institutions. Besides their salaries, these individuals receive their rewards in university quotas, government rents, employment in state centers, and similar benefits. The seven trials of obtaining a permit for a concert, festival, camp, speech, prayer ceremony, or even a party require individuals and groups to pass through seven trials of Rostam. The Ministry of Culture, Interior, Higher Education, Labor, and other agencies have special regulations for issuing permits and try as much as possible to deny permits for gatherings that smell of opposition to the regime or that the paramilitary and military forces and religious bureaucracy are not pleased with. Thus, perhaps most possible gatherings in Iranian society do not find the opportunity to be held. The possibility of obtaining a permit by someone or a group that is not a loyalist or does not have a familiar loyalist in the permitting or controlling institutions (the places administration) is very low. However, even that very small percentage that does obtain a permit is not held safely and securely because there are groups that do not want to tolerate them in political competitions or differences of opinion, and since they have the power to disrupt them, they do not refrain from doing so. After 37 years of the Islamic Republic's existence, even former and current officials do not have security for speaking or attending certain gatherings. There is a long list of individuals who have been attacked by groups known as 'self-styled' or 'pressure' over the past four decades: the most famous among them are officials from the executive and legislative branches, including individuals from all factions and tastes: from Mehdi Bazargan and Sabaghian (national-religious) to Mohammad Khatami, Mehdi Karroubi, Mousavi Lari, and Abdollah Nouri (religious left), and from Ali Motahari and Ali Larijani (religious right) to Karrbaschi and Faezah Hashemi (pragmatists). Student, party, dervish gatherings, and concerts have been the most targeted by these attacks. Additionally, hundreds of speeches have been canceled solely due to threats from paramilitary groups and plainclothes agents (such as the speeches of Zibakalam and Kvakbiyan in November 2015). These confrontations were sometimes spontaneous and without coordination with the ruling clerics in the early years of the Islamic Republic, but after 1981 and the elimination of political rivals during Khomeini's leadership and later during Khamenei's leadership, they became organized and institutionalized. Even in one case, the attackers were not arrested, and if a case was formed against them by individuals close to the ruling clerics, ultimately the attackers were not punished. It is clear that the centers of power fully support them, and they enjoy judicial immunity in their operations. Even if high-ranking officials disagree with the methods and excesses of the operational forces, they do not take action against them because they need them for suppression in other cases. Recent attacks have sparked three concerns among reformist political activists and those close to the Rouhani government. The first concern is the intensification of the atmosphere of repression against the media and political activists on the eve of elections: from the 'infiltration' project, the scenario of which is written by Khamenei and executed by the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence, followed by attacks on gatherings by the paramilitary party. The second concern is the militarists' prevention of warming up the election atmosphere for the tenth parliamentary elections. The less presence in the elections, the more likely it is that the majority of the parliament will be in the hands of groups opposed to reformists and moderates; and the third concern is the military's interference in the election process with specific candidates and spending several thousand billion tomans, which has also been a precedent in previous periods. The attackers also have three reasons for attacking reformist-moderate political activists: 1. The authoritarian camp is a very fragmented camp, and their trio of elders, namely Mohammadi Kermani, Yazdi, and Mesbah (secretaries of the Society of Teachers and the Combatant Clergy plus the spiritual leader of the Stability Front) have not been able to resolve this fragmentation. The differences among Mohammad Reza Bahonar, Ali Larijani, and members of the Stability Front among previously allied groups in parliament are also serious. 2. The possibility of the tenth parliament being dominated by the government's allies, who are moderates and reformists, is very high, provided their candidates can pass the Guardian Council's barriers. After the nuclear agreement, the social atmosphere is in their favor; and 3. The international atmosphere is also in favor of reformists and moderates against militarists and Sharia advocates in the context of the terrorist operations of ISIS.