A year and a half ago, Mahmoud Sadeghi, a then-member of parliament for Tehran, infamously revealed that when he asked Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli why protesters in November 2019 had been shot in the head by security agents, Fazli had answered: “We shot them in the leg, too!”
Now in a televised interview, the same ex-MP has also quoted Ali Shamkhani, the current secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, as having said during the November 2019 protests: "We shoot all the protesters, without exception or concealing it."
The latter is furious with Mahmoud Sadeghi's remarks and has threatened to sue him. Like other officials and institutions within the Islamic Republic, he is unwilling to accept any responsibility for the brutal suppression of demonstrations that winter.
What Sparked the Remarks by the Representative for Tehran?
This is the second public disagreement between Shamkhani and Sadeghi about the events of November 2019. In a speech on December 17 that year, Sadeghi had objected to Shamkhani's assertion that "85 percent of the victims were not present at the protests, or were killed with non-organizational weapons". He asked if this could reasonably be claimed by those in power, who, he said, ought to be held accountable for what had happened.
Now, Sadeghi has said that at that time, "I told Mr. Shamkhani that these are people who were killed in the streets; if people don’t go out into the streets, do you want to kill all of them? Shamkhani said, 'We shoot all the protesters, without exception or concealing it.’"
The latest revelations came just weeks after Shamkhani once again tried to justify the government’s decision to raise gas prices threefold, which sparked the initial uprisings of November 2019.
Speaking to ISNA News Agency, the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council had said: "During the events of 2019, apart from executive inconsistencies and mismanagement, a weakness in communicating with society and convincing the audience became apparent. This time, it caused a security crisis."
The former Tehran MP’s response not only refuted what Shamkhani had said, but shed light on his possible role within the chain of command in suppressing the protests. Sadeghi also claimed that the original decision to raise gasoline prices was made by the leaders of all three branches of legislative power in Iran, together with Supreme Leader.
The violent suppression of the protests, he added, had come about with the approval of the Supreme National Security Council and all of Iran’s military institutions, including the Revolutionary Guards.
Ever since the bloody events of November 2019, many IRGC officers and fundamentalists have publicly attributed the decision to increase gasoline prices – and in turn, to shoot at protesters – solely to the government. Revolutionary Guards commander Rahim Noei Eghdam, for instance, has claimed that the way the price hike was being implemented was "treacherous", and that President Hassan Rouhani had effectively declared war on Ali Khamenei by approving it. He also suggested Rouhani had taken this step in retaliation against the arrest of his brother, Hussein Fereydoun, and other officials close to his government.
In a sense, such allegations by hardliners in Iran were not dissimilar to Rouhani's own claim that he was unaware of the decision to increase gasoline prices. Everyone was blaming everyone else: a pattern that continues to this day.
During the interview, Sadeghi also said that the various MPs for Tehran, after traveling to the surrounding cities, had been able to determine the total number of casualties in their province. But they did not announce the figures, he said, for reasons of "expediency".
On January 2, 2020, the news website Kaleme reported that at least 631 people had been killed in the protests across Iran. This was about twice the number announced by Amnesty International and about half the number determined by Reuters, but less than half the number of deaths reported by some human rights organizations. Kaleme said the statistics had since been published in secret provincial bulletins.
Sadeghi also said that officials have since confirmed there was no sign of foreign opposition groups influencing the protests. The protesters, he said, were ordinary people. Previously, some Iranian politicians had attributed the protests to foreign countries or the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization [MKO] – a suggestion repeated by Shamkhani.
For his part, Sadeghi was saying this in defense of the performance of the 10th parliament. In fact, he said, the Iranian parliament had opposed the increase in gasoline prices at the time. In the run-up to the June presidential election, many candidates are likely to face questions on the events of November 2019 and may also try to position themselves as critics of the regime.
Sadeghi, Shamkhani and Pre-election Disputes
Ali Shamkhani has not yet expressed any interest in running for president. But his reluctance is unlikely to be because the conditions are not right, but rather because he is angry at his apparent role in suppressing the protests of 2019 having been revealed.
A mass movement to boycott the presidential election is gathering steam in Iran, with members citing the killing of hundreds of people in November 2019 as a key reason for their discontent. Those politicians who do support participation in the election may also have to face questions on this topic in weeks to come.
In the Islamic Republic, September 8, 1978 – a day of bloodshed in which protesters were gunned down by the Shah’s military fordes – has always been referred to as Black Friday. Now Mahmoud Sadeghi has called the killing of protesters in November 2019 the "Black Friday, Saturday and Sunday" of contemporary Iran. Mir Hossein Mousavi has also compared the killing of demonstrators in November 2019 with the state-sponsored murders of protesters in Tehran's Jaleh Square during the revolution.
These disputes, in the run up to the elections, are oddly reminiscent of Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf accusing each other in their 2013 electoral campaigns of being responsible for suppressing the Tehran University protests of July 1999.
Related coverage:
Hundreds Testify in "People's Tribunal" on November 2019 Atrocities
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