{"id":13580,"date":"2018-01-01T13:48:17","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T19:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=13580"},"modified":"2018-01-01T13:48:17","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T19:48:17","slug":"finding-the-real-motivations-ctd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/01\/01\/finding-the-real-motivations-ctd\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding The Real Motivations, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

The protests<\/a> continue in Iran. WaPo<\/em><\/strong> reports an interesting tidbit<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

On the fourth day of the largest protests since an uprising over disputed election results in 2009, Iranian protesters chanted \u201cDeath to the dictator!\u201d as they tore down posters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds absolute authority in Iran. Public criticism of Khamenei is generally taboo.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s the sort of thing I’d expect would draw significant attention. Is someone operating under the cover of the protests to push their own agenda? Or is this an upheaval? And this is a little hard to believe:<\/p>\n

Allies of Rouhani, including Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, initially suggested that his political opponents had orchestrated the demonstrations. But as they escalated and many chanted for the return of Iran\u2019s monarchy, several conservatives disavowed the protesters and called for a tougher response.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Return of the monarchy? Yeow. Meanwhile, according to AL Monitor<\/strong><\/em> the Iranian conservatives continue to blame<\/a> the protests on economic issues:<\/p>\n

Some of the most interesting comments have been made by conservative officials and pundits\u00a0who have all previously condemned protests, especially the 2009 Green Movement protests. Ahmad Tavakoli, a former parliamentarian and member of the Expediency Council, called the street protests \u201cpredictable<\/a>\u201d due to the administration\u2019s economic policies. He compared the policies to those of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s presidency in the 1990s; Tavakoli\u00a0called\u00a0them \u201charsh policies,\u201d presumably referring to\u00a0neoliberal economic measures to cut\u00a0subsidies.<\/p>\n

Addressing the protests that started in Mashhad, former hard-line parliament member Hamid Rasaei\u00a0accused media linked<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Rouhani of censoring those who are \u201cprotesting the current situation.\u201d Mehdi Mohammadi, the former adviser to Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrote that \u201cprotesting against economic difficulties is the\u00a0right of the people<\/a>.\u201d Conservative analyst Vahid\u00a0Yaminpour tweeted<\/a>, \u201cIt has been reported that the president has called an emergency meeting. I hope that before the security and intelligence ministers give their reports on how to quiet the protesters, the economic ministers will think about how to improve the current situation.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The protests continue in Iran. WaPo reports an interesting tidbit: On the fourth day of the largest protests since an uprising over disputed election results in 2009, Iranian protesters chanted \u201cDeath to the dictator!\u201d as they tore down posters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds absolute authority in \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13581,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13580\/revisions\/13581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}