https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15254/iran-mullahs-losing
After initial hesitations the elite regained its unity by responding in the best way it knows, not to say the only way it knows: a brutal crackdown that claimed hundreds of lives and over 10,000 arrests.
Translated into simple terms, Khamenei is calling on the “prosperous 30 percent” not to take their current well-being for granted and to help the regime crush the mass of the poor who wish to upset the apple cart.
The danger to [the Shah’s] regime came from urban middle classes that in any society do not remain content with economic prosperity and social freedoms for long; they always end up demanding political rights commensurate with their economic and social status.
[I]f he [Khamenei] manages to crush the 70 percent, thus removing their threat, he would face the 30 percent’s increasing demands for social and political freedoms no clerical regime can grant. And, if he fails, the 30 percent in question will look for someone else who can do for them what the Khomeinist regime cannot. In either case, the “Supreme Guide” is playing a losing game.When popular protests erupted in Iran’s top 100 cities, including the capital Tehran, last month, it soon became clear that the ruling elites were at pains to decide what was really going on.
The faction led by “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei started by dismissing the uprising as a déjà vu version of the protests that have punctuated Iran’s history since the 1979 revolution. The daily Kayhan, reputed to reflect Khamenei’s views, dismissed the uprising as “sporadic disturbances fomented by a handful of hooligans.” Khamenei himself saw it as “a bump on the road” to the “Great New Islamic Civilization” he says he is building.
The official media dismissed what it claimed was “a blind riot with no leadership.”
