An incubator of political change for decades.. The revival of “University Student Day” in Iran with protests and escalation

Tehran -

Today, Wednesday, Iran commemorates the 70th anniversary of the first harbingers of its revolution against the former Pahlavi regime, and the role of universities and their students in the 1953 uprising that established a new phase in the country's modern history.

And “University Student Day” will take place in Iran this year, more than two months after the start of the protest movement against the death of the young woman, Mahsa Amini (22 years), in mid-September, after she was arrested by the “morality police” in Tehran on the pretext of her failure to wear modest dress

Popular and student groups anticipated the occasion this year by publishing calls for escalating anti-protests and organizing nationwide strikes and civil disobedience during the days of 5, 6 and 7 December.

These strikes were relatively active in the shopping centers located in the northern regions of the capital, Tehran, but not in the southern regions.

The campus of a number of the capital's universities, such as "Sharif Industrial", "Amir Kabir", the University of Tehran and "Allameh Tabatabaei", witnessed student gatherings punctuated by chants against the regime in Iran, and various regions and neighborhoods in Tehran witnessed night gatherings on the eve of the University Student's Day. to continue the protest movement.

Night protests by students of Sharif University in Tehran after the death of Mahsa Amini (Associated Press)

Student's Day.. Back to the fifties

The reason for calling the seventh of December the University Student Day in Iran is due to the first indications of the Iranian revolution against the rule of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and the demonstrations organized by Tehran University students in 1953 to protest the visit of former US President Richard Nixon's assistant to Tehran.

The Iranians at the time were accusing the United States of conspiring with the Pahlavi regime in the 1953 coup that overthrew the government of Muhammad Mossadegh, which was formed after the constitutional revolution.

The Pahlavi security forces responded to the university students' demonstrations with an iron fist, killing 3 of them (Ahmed Qandji, Mahdi Shariat Razavi, and Mustafa Buzurgnia), injuring and arresting hundreds of others, turning the occasion into the beginning of a new chapter in Iran's modern history.

After the victory of the Iranian revolution at the end of the seventies, the Islamic Republic approved this occasion as a national day for the university student in the Iranian calendar, which is celebrated annually in the presence of the Iranian president in a public university.

However, the celebrations are not without criticism of the student movement, which has become a significant weight in the election of Iranian presidents, and gatherings against the policies of the ruling class.

Incubator of political and social transformations

Since then, the student movement has become a main engine in the stability or shake-up of the political system in Iran, but it has been marginalized since the first Ahmadinejad era, after it rose to prominence during the reign of former President Muhammad Khatami, says Iranian academic Fadel Khamisi.

Khamisi describes - in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net - universities as the main incubators for any political or societal transformation in Iran during the past century, stressing that university students have taken the task of directing society upon themselves and have been relatively successful in putting pressure on the ruling authorities, "However, the dualism stemming from belonging The student movement of the right and left has diverted the movement from its real goals.

He explained that, contrary to the political openness that the student movement enjoyed during the era of reforms, Ahmadinejad's conservative government worked to confiscate the leftist student movement "Tahkim Vahdat" and established a new wing loyal to it.

The Iranian academic described the era of President Hassan Rouhani as having provided the student movement with an invigorating dose that prevented his final death, explaining that the movement these days is characterized by extremism, as it has gone beyond the rhetoric that it has been practicing during the past decades.

Khamisi concluded that politics has come to dominate the scientific side in Iranian universities these days, attributing the reason to political restrictions and the abolition of the role of political parties as mediators and the true spokesperson for society.

Non-stop protests in Iran since September (Reuters)

Between support and demand for the overthrow of the ruling class

By the way, Al-Jazeera Net surveyed the opinions of a number of students at the University of Tehran in the center of the Iranian capital.

Which varied between desperation in defending the Islamic Republic and its support at the levels of domestic and foreign policy, and others that favored moderate discourse, acknowledging the existence of mistakes - especially in the field of citizen s' livelihood and personal freedoms - and demanding a course correction.

While a significant segment of the students does not see a way to save the country except by overthrowing the ruling class.

For his part, Muhammad Amin (22 years), a member of the Student Mobilization Committee of the Revolutionary Guards, spoke of "a soft war and riots for which foreign operations rooms were prepared, and others rough, as some foreign countries worked to bring arms shipments into the country," stressing that the Iranian revolution triumphed in 1979 By supporting the student movement, whose return has intensified and strengthened after 4 decades, and that it will not allow the blood of the martyrs that watered the tree of the revolution to be lost.

As for the 25-year-old student, Samana, she believes that the academic community should demand political openness and the participation of parties in running the country, taking into account the diversity of Iranian society in its races, traditions and sanctities.

While the 19-year-old student, Saman, advised his colleagues to take into account the proverb that says, "He who has tried the experimenter will have regrets." He believed that it is the duty of the student movement to lead society towards final liberation, he said.