Rouhani’s Adviser, on Recent Iran Protests: Stronger Slap Is on the Way
NCRI – Hesam al-Din Ashna, Rouhani’s advisor and former security official of Iranian regime, warned the regime leaders that we would be in a disaster if we did not take the recent protests seriously.
According to the state-run ISNA news agency on 7 February 2018, he described the late December and early January 2018 protests in Iran as a serious warning to decision-makers and at a meeting on “surveying recent polls on protests of January 2018” held at the Center for Strategic Studies, said: “It is no longer easy to decide in closed rooms and not to consider the public opinion. Those who ignore public opinion have to wait to receive stronger slap from the public opinion.”
“People do not seem to have a voice,” he continued. “But when their voices reach politicians, the time for reform is usually too late. Today, the accumulation of economic dissatisfaction has reached a worrying pace, but until the lower layers (lower social classes) come to the protests, it has to be thought that the protests can still be managed. In this regard, the remedy for protests that are aimed at overthrowing the system is to reform the governance system and make it efficient.”
Ashna pointed out: “In the field research conducted during the January 2018 protests, we concluded that people do not easily separate the government from the whole system so that we can say the government is ineffective.”
He emphasized that “if current situation continues, it is likely that all of us will be losers.” Ashna also stated: “The gap between the state officials’ expressions about improving economic conditions and public perceptions of this situation is increasing. Thus, no matter how much the senior officials emphasize on the improvement of the situation, they actually lose their social capital.”
Rouhani’s adviser, arguing that we should believe that the protests were a serious warning to the decision-makers, said: “It is unclear how many of these serious warnings we will have, but what is clear is that if we do not take them seriously, we will face a disaster.”
The state-run Javan newspaper affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards Corps, noted the recent protests in Iran and wrote: “The roots of the formation of such unrests cannot be ignored, because with the persistence of the roots, at any moment, such unrests will find the ground to emerge, and the most obvious incidents in such juncture is the emergence of the spiteful and malevolent abusers to exploit and confiscate popular movements to achieve their own greed and particular interests.”
The source added: “In about 95% of the cities where the recent protests occurred, we were witnessing protests and gatherings because of objections to financial institutions and funds; the institutions and funds that took people’s capital and did not return them. It should be noted that the class gap between people is also revealed and highlighted.
The newspaper affiliated to IRGC warned: “The protests and silences can bear the warning that these protests could be repeated. What is going to happen is a surprise to us. We are also caught with surprise in the cyberspace. About 40 million (Iranian) people are members of Telegram and more than a billion messages have been sent by Iranians in Telegram.”