Protests at Iranian colleges and the US military threat raise tensions

Cairo — Seven weeks have passed since the Iranian government used brute force to quell massive nationwide protests. But public resistance to the Islamic Republic still flickers on Iranian college campuses.

Anti-government demonstrations were held on at least 10 campuses in the past week, according to an exiled Iranian activist tracking the country’s student movement, four students who witnessed the protests, and social media videos reviewed by The Associated Press.

The students, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, spoke of growing anger on their campuses toward Iran’s leaders and confusion about the direction their country is headed.

Tensions are rising on campuses as Iran’s government, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, faces threats of military action from the United States over the country’s nuclear program.

Theocratic government increasingly threatens students and administrators. A government official this week warned students not to cross a “red line,” while the hardline cleric who heads Iran’s judiciary said “criminals” would be punished if administrators did not crack down on the protests.

Many universities have closed their campuses and moved classes online.

The shift to remote learning is reminiscent of measures taken by authorities late last year. As word of economic turmoil in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar in December quickly spread to towns and cities across Iran, authorities ordered remote learning in early January, shut down the Internet and launched a bloody crackdown.

Total casualties from the crackdown have been slow to emerge due to internet restrictions imposed by authorities.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency has confirmed more than 7,000 deaths and says it is investigating thousands more. The government has admitted that more than 3,000 were killed, although it has downplayed or underreported casualties from earlier unrest.

At least 128 university students have died in the nationwide unrest, said Ali Taghipour, an Iranian activist in exile who tracks the student movement. “This is the biggest massacre of university students” under the Islamic Republic, he said.

“By the time the state made universities private again, it coincided with the (40 days) commemoration of the killings of the January protests,” Taghipour said. Some campus memorials sparked new anti-government protests, he said.

Protests broke out at both Sharif University of Technology and Amir Kabir University last Saturday. Videos circulating online, reviewed by the AP, showed pro-government supporters and protesters on both campuses chanting “Shameless! Shameless!” That chant is often used to taunt security forces and plainclothes agents, such as the Basij, the all-volunteer arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which maintains a presence on university campuses through student groups.

Students at the all-female Al Zahra University in northern Tehran chanted slogans against the government on Monday, according to videos reviewed by the AP. On the same day, students at the University of Tehran College of Foreign Languages ​​staged a rowdy demonstration, stamping their feet and chanting, “For every person killed, a thousand stand behind them!” That meeting began as a memorial for a student killed in a January protest.

The protests have raised fears of a new crackdown. On Tuesday, government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani warned students to be careful not to cross a “red line,” and an Iranian state television anchor read a statement to the president of Sharif University apologizing for “inappropriate” incidents on campus, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency.

On Wednesday, the cleric, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ezehi, who heads Iran’s judiciary, said in comments carried on state media that academic officials engage in “criminal” harassment on campuses. Ejehi has been the face of Iran’s latest crackdown, calling for swift prosecution of protesters.

Universities across Iran have barred some students from campus and held disciplinary hearings, Taghipura said. In the past such inquiries have led to expulsions and some students have been banned from further university studies.

College students in Iran often hold protests against the government.

In 1999, students at the University of Tehran staged some of the first demonstrations against the Islamic Republic. Campus unrest played a prominent role in protests in support of Iran’s reformist leaders in 2008–2009, as well as openly anti-government demonstrations in 2022 that called for the overthrow of Iran’s theocracy.

The refusal of Iran’s hard-liners to make any policy changes and the guts of the country’s middle class under decades of Western sanctions and economic abuse have led many college-age students to conclude that the Islamic Republic cannot reform, said a University of Tehran doctoral student.

That void opened the way for the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, who was ousted in 1979, to “become a serious political cause for some people in Iran,” the student said. Memories of the Shah’s autocratic rule are mixed in the country, although nostalgia for the period’s economic prosperity has grown.

Years of repression have crippled the ability of any organized opposition within the country. The crackdown has shrunk the space on campuses for any form of political discussion and organization, said a social science student at Tehran University. “After 2022, about 70% of the student unions were closed,” he said, including the Progressive Student Union, which he led.

The student added that there is no clear promise of where student protests today might lead in the face of foreign military threats and the government’s willingness to crack down on dissent with deadly violence.

“On the one hand, we are facing a government that is not afraid to kill anyone, and on the other hand, we are facing outside forces that support killing people.”

A university student in the northern city of Babol said fear was growing on campus about what the war would mean for the country.

The student said his personal hope is for a “democratic secular republic” in Iran, although he worries that armed conflict could lead to further suffering and “increase the risks of the country’s disintegration.” Iran is already struggling to maintain full supply of basic services such as electricity and water in some parts of the country.

A university in Babol has kept courses remote since early January, a student there said, preventing people from congregating on campus. He said many students have skipped remote courses as a form of protest.

At the University of Tehran, a social science student said he disagreed with students who support Pahlavi because the exiled opposition figure had called for a US strike on Iran.

“I will never understand someone who sits in London and yells at America to bomb Iran. How can they accept responsibility for what happens tomorrow?”