Khamenei recalls the chilling “great challenge” of 2009 popular protests .

NCR

The Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader has said that the popular uprisings in 2009 posed a “great challenge” to the clerical regime, according to state-run news agencies on Wednesday.

Speaking at a gathering of Iranian regime agents in Gilan province a year after the protests, the mullahs’ Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, implicitly acknowledged widespread popular hatred towards the regime and added, “The enemies think that they can drive a wedge between the people and the Islamic establishment.”



Khamenei’s comments were published by the state-run Khabar Online.

He also compared the 2009 massive protests to the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and said, “Last year’s sedition was a manifestation of the enemies’ plots. During this great challenge, the enemy supported the forces of sedition and even referred to them by name.”
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Regime officials remember 2009 protests as attempt to overthrow clerics

A year after the nationwide protests on December 27, 2009 (known as Ashura day protests), a number of Iranian regime’s officials have stressed that the uprising’s goal was to overthrow the entire clerical regime and warned that the “sedition” is far from over.

According to the state-run Fars news agency on Tuesday, a regime official from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Mohammad-Ali Asoudi, said, “Last year’s sedition was not a crisis … it was an all-out war.”



Asoudi, who is the IRGC’s cultural and propaganda deputy, added, “There were some people who saw the forces of sedition acting on June 13, 14, and 15, 2009, and thought that the era of the establishment [regime] has come to an end.”

A former regime Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance in the cabinet of mullahs’ President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hossein Saffar Harandi, recalled the bitter incident for the Iranian regime and said, “When rioters noticed that their numbers has increased, they started insulting at and later attacking the Bassij Force base. On December 7 [Student Day], they showed so much disrespect that they also insulted the pictures of the Imam [Khomeini] and the leader [Khamenei].”

Harandi added that the objective of the “rioters” was to uproot the clerical regime.

A member of the regime’s Assembly of Experts, Ahmad Alamolhoda, warned that, “The sedition is far from over and efforts to counter the forces of sedition are still continuing.”

Deputies in the regime’s parliament affiliated with the dominant faction have also released a statement expressing fears over being overthrown and said, “The enemy used its agents on the one hand and ignorant elements who became pawns in its camp on the other, and attacked the establishment’s foundation and principles.”