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An empty street in Tehran, image via Wikimedia Commons
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1.838, December 4, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The low number of protesters who took to the streets of Iran in response to the Mohsen assassination Fakhrizadeh, as well as other forms of evidence reveal that the Iranian regime is dangerously isolated from the country’s citizens. The disconnect between the regime and the people is reminiscent of the Soviet regime in its last years in power.
The dramatic and perfectly executed assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, revealed, even more than the assassination of Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani, in January, how porous and exposed the Iranian security system is. Dozens, if not hundreds, of well-located and well-informed Iranians appear, whether for political or pecuniary reasons, to be willing to work with the US and Israeli security services. The control and vigilance exercised by the regime over the state is clearly lax, despite its numerous security forces. Not only was the regime failed to thwart the assassination, it has so far failed to arrest the culprits.
Fakhrizadeh’s assassination revealed the greatest danger threatening the Iranian regime: its isolation from its own citizenship. It’s reminiscent of the kind of isolation that led Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to try to reform the system for fear that he and his colleagues at the top would face fatal retribution from a population that had long lost faith in the regime. .
Thirty years ago, a move as shocking as the assassination of a key security figure inside Iran would have brought dozens, if not hundreds of thousands of citizens into the streets chanting “Marg bar Israeel” (Death to Israel) or ” Death to the little ones. ” Satan and the great Satan [the United States]. “The flags of both countries would have been trampled and set on fire.
Thirty years later, photos from the streets of Iran after Fakhrizadeh’s assassination show a number of protesters that can be counted on the fingers. In total, protesters in various cities numbered in the hundreds at most. Such is the loss of ideological ardor among ordinary Iranians.
Google Trends data confirms the message the photos represent.
Searches for the phrase “Little Satan,” a term used in the Ayatollah’s new language to refer exclusively to Israel, show that its highest peaks in popularity since 2004 occurred at least a decade ago. (Note that Internet penetration has increased enormously since then, which means that the graph does not show the relative decline in searches given the increasing use of the Internet in Iran.)
Google searches for “Little Satan” within Iran
Source: Google Trends
It’s also telling how limited the term’s popularity is in terms of location. Frequently searched terms can also be broken down in Google Trends by location (usually by province or district) or by type of location (city or country). For example, Iranian searches for the word “Khomeini” are frequent enough for Google to provide the breakdown by province. But for the phrase “Little Satan”, there weren’t enough searches to provide such a breakdown.
Similarly, the popularity of the song “Death to Israel” has waned over time.
Popularity of the song “Death to Israel” within Iran
Source: Google Trends
While Internet searches for this song were numerous enough to provide a breakdown by province, interest was limited. Google Trends was only able to generate data for nine of Iran’s 31 provinces.
The results of the breakdown by province are not surprising. Qom Province (population 1.1 million), home to the city with the highest density of Shiite religious schools and institutions and the burial sites of revered religious teachers, leads the country in the quest for “Death to Israel.”
On the contrary, at the bottom of the list is the province of Tehran, which has more than 14 million inhabitants (12 times more than Qom) and is the political and economic capital of the country. Searches for “Death to Israel” in Tehran province relative to its population accounted for one-thirtieth of the relative number of searches in nearby Qom province.
Altogether, the small number of protesters and little interest in the regime’s hackneyed chants and rituals are reminiscent of the later years of the Soviet Union, when only staunch Communists supported the system.
Why should it be any different in Iran? The Russian on the street in the last days of the USSR could not understand the economic and military generosity of his country towards Nasser’s Egypt and Hafez Assad’s Syria at his expense. The average Iranian also cannot understand how the Islamic regime funnels Iranian money and other resources into Syria. Just as the Russians began to resent the Soviet Union for wasting blood and treasure in distant Afghanistan while waiting in line for food at home, the Iranian people wonder why the regime is doing the same for Hezbollah in Lebanon at their expense. .
Even fewer can understand why they, many of whom yearn for a good education and the opportunity to participate in the broader world of science, technology and international business, should be expected to spend their time singing “Death to the United States. United “and” Death to Israel. “
Apparently no murder of a regime superstar will persuade them otherwise.
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Prof. Hillel Frisch is Professor of Political Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University and Senior Research Associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
