The knife and the bone

There is a popular proverb in Farsi, one attendee of the Free Iran Summit tells me: “at some point, the knife reaches the bone”. We are sharing a glass of Sharbat, sheltering from the Paris heatwave one of the few, slim sliver of shade available in the compound of the National Council of Resistance in Iran. “That is to say, there is a point at which no more pain can be inflicted — and no more can be endured.” I tell him I like this phrase.

A society, like an individual, may absorb a great deal of pain, but eventually the knife reaches the bone. But has that point yet been reached in Iran?

In December, before the war with America, Iran was gripped by a severe economic crisis and the collapse of its currency, which placed immense pressure on ordinary citizens and left merchants struggling to price their goods. Protests first erupted in Tehran’s labyrinthine Grand Bazaar before quickly spreading to other cities and all of Iran’s 31 provinces, where they took on an increasingly anti-government character.

By early January, the protests had spread into the biggest movement in Iran since the Revolution. On 8 January, a reported 1.5 million people were protesting across the nation.  The state was quick to crack down, with then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, denouncing protesters as “rioters” who should be “put in their place”.

So they were: security forces responded with lethal force and mass arrests. Over 50,000 were arrested in total, and hospitals were soon overrun with injured protestors. They were still not safe: in some hospitals, security forces obstructed doctors providing potentially life-saving care. In some, they executed the patients.

The regime has used the war as a shield: in Trump’s address to the Iranian people, he encouraged them by saying “when we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take”. In response, Iranian police chief general Ahmad-Reza Radan warned on state TV that “if people take to the streets to protest, we will do what we did to the enemy. Our hand is on the trigger.”

Dissidents are executed one or two at a time, to maximise their impact

In the wake of this violence, executions have reached a level not seen since the mass executions of 1988. An internet blackout draws a veil over the true scale of the regime’s crackdown, but data compiled by the Iran Human Rights Society suggests that the regime has carried out 784 executions so far this year. Dissidents are executed one or two at a time, to maximise their impact.

The regime’s crackdown is not limited to its geographic boundaries. The day before the summit, late on a Friday evening, we are given a briefing by a member of the National Council of Resistance in Iran, who have organised a protest against the regime in the centre of Paris. The briefing is derailed by fresh news: far past business hours, French police have banned the event. “In the current particularly tense national and international context”, their statement reads, “there is a serious risk that, during this demonstration, clashes may occur between activists holding opposing views which could seriously disrupt public order”. There are supposedly 50,000 attendees on their way.

The spokesman, Shahin Gobadi, left Iran to study in California when it was still controlled by the Shah. In his first year, the Ayatollahs overthrew the Shah: he has never been back, and has spent most of his life trying to bring democracy to Iran. His lively wit and Persian verbosity cannot hide his obvious outrage. He shrugs when asked why the French authorities have done this: following the Memorandum of Understanding between Iran and America — signed in Versailles on Wednesday —there was a phone call between the French and Iranian foreign ministers the following day, he says. A shrug, before he adds “a crackdown on us is always one of the foremost demands of the regime when they speak to other countries”.

Paris is a uniquely poor place to defy French authorities, for two reasons. The first is that Baron Hausmann’s urban planning was designed specifically to prevent street protest breaking out into violent disorder. This involved the swiping away of its tiny, winding alleyways through which knowledgeable locals could outflank the army, and the installations of wide boulevards and voluminous squares, so that violent protests could be funnelled and cut off. It is a city designed, very carefully and very well, to allow authority to maintain control over the public square.

The second is the muscular style of French policing: by unhappy coincidence, they meet at Place Vauban. Before the tomb of Napoleon, they are given the “whiff of grapeshot” that has been the mark of French authorities’ approach to disturbance ever since. The morning of the protest, 20 protestors are arrested. 12 are seriously injured.

By the time I arrive, the work has been done. There are not thousands: there are barely hundreds, and they are dwarfed by the size of the square. They are ringed by French riot police, who maintain a tight cordon. At the centre, those few protestors still able to stand the 35 degrees heat make up for their lack of numbers with enthusiasm. They hold portraits of Maryam Rajavi, president of the NCRI; they chant through loudhailers; they wave the pre-Revolution flags of Iran, of the Iranian Lion, of Kurdistan. As many of these flags are abandoned in the shade of trees than are being waved: protesters lay them down whilst they take temporary refuge from the blazing sun.

In response to the cancellation, the NCRI host an impromptu press conference in their compound. Boris Johnson is scheduled to appear and be televised to the protest: French authorities force the screens to be packed away. “We know why we’ve been prevented from having a proper rally”, he bellows, “the French Foreign Ministry got on the blower, as we say, to Mr. Araghchi in Tehran, and they decided that on the whole, it would be more politic not to allow the Iranian opposition to assemble.”

“The French government”, he booms on, “has bowed cravenly, has capitulated to a regime in Tehran that tortures and kills its opponents on an industrial scale, that authorises the murder of young women simply for wearing head coverings of a kind they do not approve of… and for half a century has promoted across the entire Middle East an agenda of terror and mayhem”.

France is not the only country facing such interference from Tehran

France is not the only country facing such interference from Tehran. Research published last June by the US-based think tank the National Union for Democracy in Iran found that Britain had become a “flashpoint” for Iranian influence. Earlier this year the “Protecting our Democracy from Coercion” report by Lord Walney found that the regime not only engages in disinformation campaigns in Britain, but has also built a broader network of influence, with more than 30 UK charities and community organisations allegedly acting as “soft power” vehicles for the regime.

Last year the Director-General of MI5, Ken McCallum, announced the intelligence service had “tracked more than twenty potentially lethal Iran-backed plots” that year. Those targeted included opponents of the regime, journalists, Israelis and Jews. Many of these are conducted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which — despite a long-running debate — as yet remains unprescribed. One might suggest it is another in the long list of Boris Johnson failures he decries out of office, but there has always been a hesitance to ban the IRGC in the Foreign Office. It would likely result in the end of diplomatic relations with the regime. Keeping channels open is important: but — as has been shown by Britain’s irrelevance in the war and the ceasefire negotiations — without hard power, it is little more than an end unto itself.

The question Iran poses to the world is, given the world’s repeated failure to bring the regime down, an almost intractable one: how does one overthrow a regime that is prepared to execute people, while possessing enough reach and influence to compel foreign governments to suppress protests abroad?

Perhaps the knife has yet to reach the bone. Or perhaps another Farsi expression is more appropriate: in her speech, Maryam Rajavi promises to “keep rowing the boat of resistance through a sea of suffering and blood.” Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.