Iran's Uprising, Regime Survival, and the View from Tehran: Holly Dagres
NatSec Matters
Holly Dagres discusses the internal dynamics in Iran following the December 2023–January 2024 anti-regime uprisings, detailing the regime's
Key takeaways
- The January 2024 protests were driven by systemic frustration with the Islamic Republic's mismanagement, corruption, and repression.
- An unprecedented massacre of protesters—estimated at over 7,000—led to widespread trauma and a breakdown in trust between citizens and the regime.
Main topics
- Anti-regime protests in Iran
- State-led massacre of protesters
Notable quotes
There's many Nelson Mandela's in Iran. All of them are in prison for the most part.
People were chanting things like, Long live the Shah, and this is the last battle Pahlavi will return.
Conclusion
Holly Dagres concludes that while protests remain a part of Iran's pol
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:01) There's many Nelson Mandela's in Iran. All of them are in prison for the most part. Speaker 2 (0:10) I'm host Michael Allen with Beacon Global Strategies. Today I'm joined by Holly Dagris, the Lubitsky Family Senior Fellow in the Washington Institute's Viterbi Program on Iran and U.S. Policy. She was previously a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Middle East Programs. Holly joins us today to discuss the latest developments in Iran, particularly the dynamics at play inside the regime and in the Iranian public. Stay with us as we speak with Holly Dagris. Speaker 2 (0:47) Holly Dagris, welcome to NatSecMatters. Speaker 3 (0:50) Thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure. Speaker 2 (0:53) Well, Holly, we're glad to have you. I have gotten to know you over Twitter. You've been one of the most prolific and insightful commenters on what's been going on, not only on the whole conflict, but in particular, you're one of the few people I think who has a view on or. has a pulse about what's happening inside Iran, especially among the people. So I know you spent your formative years there, age 13 through 20. So we would love to get into that as well. But can we rewind the tape for our listeners? We cover so much about who's shooting whom. Let's go back and how do we even get into this war? Tell us, remind us a little bit about. the protests and what brought the people out onto the streets. Speaker 3 (1:48) And I think that's a really important thing to start with because I think a lot of people forget that essentially that's what got us to this situation we're in where this war that's been waging on for months now. Speaker 3 (2:02) So we had a yet another anti-regime uprising happen, and it started on December 28th, and it was due to the collapse of the Iranian rial against the U.S. dollar. And it continued up until, I would say, January 9th. And what's really noteworthy about this anti-regime uprising is that there was a call, interestingly, made by a former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, that is the son of the ousted Shah of Iran. And he had told people to take to the streets on January 8th and 9th at 8 p.m. And what was really extraordinary about these protests, it had been decades since his father got on a plane never to return, but people were chanting things like, Long live the Shah, and this is the last battle Pahlavi will return. And so people actually went out in unprecedented numbers on January 8th and 9th, not all because of their support for the former Crown Prince, but because... They were done with the Islamic Republic. They had believed that the system was irreformable, irredeemable. There was systemic mismanagement, corruption, and repression. We had seen cyclical anti-regime protests for years. More famously, many will remember the 2022 Women Life Freedom Uprising, which was also an anti-regime uprising in spirit. And so the Islamic Republic... felt very threatened by these protests. And what we saw was an unprecedented massacre of Iranian protesters. According to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran, they had documented at least 7,000. We've heard different numbers shared. At the time, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Mayasato, had said that the number could be as high as 20,000. We've heard the president. Donald Trump say different numbers. More recently, he said 100,000. I'm a little skeptical of that number, but I've heard the diaspora cite similar numbers. But I think it's safe to say around the Speaker 1 (4:17) 7,000 plus. And Speaker 3 (4:19) this was unprecedented. Even in Syria, during the first year of the Syrian civil war, we didn't see that many dead. And so, and this... In that moment, we also heard President Donald Trump say, help us on the way, take over your institutions. And we even saw Iranian protesters before the massacre actually video themselves and actually change the names of streets to Trump Street because they genuinely believed that the president could do something to help the protesters. And of course... It was weeks that Iranians were waiting to see what happens. After the massacre, there were actually calls from inside the country for multilateral humanitarian intervention or responsibility to protect R2P. And we heard it from people like prominent human rights lawyer Nasser Nasr-e-Soudadeh. And so when the war came on February 28th, the first two things had happened. One was that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed. And it resulted in celebrations across different Iranian cities. And then there was the Internet shutdown. And so we weren't able to really see for a good few months what was happening inside the country, with the exception of people that had these smuggled in Starlink kits. And then, of course, there was the Mubarak school attack. Speaker 2 (5:45) You're really right. I mean, there's more footage about the... Tiananmen Square crackdown than there is really about people getting shot and mowed down in Iran. I don't feel like I've seen the same. Even in the iPhone era, it feels like there's fewer recordings that made it out. Speaker 3 (6:10) So it's a good point you're making because I didn't say this earlier, but there were two internet shutdowns. One was as a result of the massacre where I had never had this happen. And even during the war, this hadn't happened, which is they even cut the phone lines. So we couldn't call our families and friends in Iran and vice versa. And eventually... They started allowing one-way calls from Iran to the outside world. And that's when people that were brave enough to, because they were worried about the phone lines being tapped, started sharing these horrific stories of what had taken place during this massacre. And it took a few weeks for the Internet to get back online. And we started seeing footage peter out. And, I mean, even now, Michael, months after the fact. I still saw, I still see new footage, like horrific images. They don't really make headlines because it's no longer a real news item. It's more of a focus on the war itself. Speaker 3 (7:08) But just horrific stories. And just to summarize just a few examples, I know I've heard anecdotally when the security forces were firing on protesters, because there were so many of them, they all started running the opposite direction and they were just firing left and right. I've heard anecdotally on several instances that these protesters would be running and then people around them would just be dropping like flies because they had been shot. And there's like a very famous video of this, I think it was a firefighter or somebody had been carrying somebody on their back and I think they ended up both getting killed. And what's really sad, and there's been some news coverage of this, but not so much as I would like to see, is that during wartime, they're actually going out of their way to either arrest or punish. protesters. Some of them, a lot of these were really young people, Gen Zers under the age of 25, and they're sentencing them to death or actually executing them. They executed, I think he was a 21-year-old rapper just this past week. I saw a very horrific story about these twin sisters that just came out in the past week that had been disappeared for months, and it was only in May that their mother had found them in prison, one of them sentenced to death. And they were so horrifically tortured and abused, the mother could hardly recognize them. And this is all happening during the war. And so right now as we speak, The Abdulrahman Burman Center has documented at least a thousand executions since January. And the Center for Human Rights in Iran says that there's an unprecedented human rights crisis in Iran since January because of the massacre and the brutal crackdown since and during the war itself. And just anecdotally, another instance that maybe you've also read about in the news recent weeks, and is a friend of mine, is photojournalist Yaldam Wadi. actually has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. And she's just a photojournalist. She's done nothing. Speaker 2 (9:23) We're going to take a quick break and be right back with more of our discussion with Holly Dagris. Speaker 1 (9:28) Beacon Global Strategies is the premier national security advisory firm. Beacon works side-by-side with leading companies to help them understand national security policy, geopolitical risk, global technology policy, and federal procurement trends. Beacon's insight gives business leaders the decision advantage. Founded in 2013, Beacon develops and supports the execution of bespoke strategies to mitigate business risk, drive growth, and navigate a complex geopolitical environment. With a bipartisan team and decades of experience, Beacon provides a global perspective to help clients tackle their toughest challenges. Speaker 2 (10:07) Holly, I heard you mention a center. How do you get your information