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DUBAI, Oct. 20 (AP) As protests rampant at home, Iran’s theocratic government is flexing its military might overseas: Tehran provided Russia with drones that killed Ukrainian civilians Exercises were conducted along the border with Azerbaijan and Kurdish positions in Iraq were bombed.
The moves signal an attempt by Iranian leaders to garner support from hard-liners in the country, as the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in the custody of the country’s moral police on September 16, continues for weeks. protest activity.
They also remind the wider Middle East and West that the Iranian government remains willing to use force at home and abroad to stay in power.
Further increasing the risk of destabilization is Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran now has enough highly enriched uranium to make an atomic bomb, if it wants to — and continues to make more as talks with world powers over a broken deal break down.
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Online videos from Iran show people from all walks of life, from school-aged children to the elderly, taking part in protests that activists say have swept more than 100 cities since Amini’s death. Women have removed their headscarves during demonstrations and daily life in Tehran.
As Iran faces worsening economic woes, even threats of arrests, beatings and even deadly violence by security forces have failed to quell the anger. The militant group said thousands had been detained and more than 200 had been killed.
Meanwhile, the Iranian government has sought to provide counter programming for events in Tehran and elsewhere, rallying flag-waving men and women in all-encompassing black burqas. Late on Thursday, the semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Iran’s Deputy Attorney General Kazem Gharibabadi as saying that 30 members of the security forces were killed and more than 5,000 wounded during the protests.
Gathering its supporters remains crucial for the Iranian government as it faces its worst crisis since the Green Movement protests in 2009. As part of that effort, Iran has tried in recent weeks to show that it can fight back against its enemies, real or hypothetical.
Its first attack came in late September, when Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards launched drone and missile strikes on areas where Kurdish separatists live on the Iraqi border. Kurdish officials said the attacks killed at least 16 people, including an American citizen, and wounded dozens more.
At the time, Iran claimed without providing evidence that Kurdish separatists sparked demonstrations over the death of Kurdish Amini. Rumours of a large military presence in western Iran persist amid repeated clashes between security forces and demonstrators in the Kurdish region.
There is also military activity on Iran’s northern border with Azerbaijan, where the Revolutionary Guard, which is responsible only for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been conducting military exercises for several days.
On Wednesday, the semi-official Tasnim news agency released a video showing guards installing pontoons on the Arras River at the border before driving tanks and trucks across the river.
Azerbaijan has been locked in periodic fighting with Armenia, the most recent round killing 176 soldiers in September.
Azerbaijan’s ties with Israel have angered Tehran, especially between 2016 and 2020, when 69 percent of all its major arms imports came from Israel, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Iran also wants to maintain a 44-kilometer (27-mile) border with landlocked Armenia — which could be threatened if Azerbaijan goes to war to claim new territory.
Then there was the Russian war against Ukraine. Moscow, which has depleted its stockpiles of precision-guided munitions in the months-long war, turned to Iran to supply it with low-cost “suicide” drones. They function like a slow-moving cruise missile that buzzes before approaching the ground, then dives in and explodes on impact.
In the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, Iran’s Shahed-136 drones – known for their distinctive triangular designs – have blown up apartment buildings and other targets. Iran and Russia have denied Tehran provided the drones — but Khamenei telegraphed his approval of their lethal capabilities on the battlefield in a speech on Wednesday.
“A few years ago, when pictures of our advanced missiles and drones were released, some said they were Photoshopped,” Khamenei said in a transcript on his official website, “but now they say: The Iranian drone is very dangerous, why did you sell it to so-and-so? Why did you give it to so-and-so?
Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear program continues to accumulate more highly enriched uranium.
Amid the ongoing demonstrations, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price’s recent efforts to develop a roadmap to restore the tattered 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers “is not our focus right now.”
While critics of Iran’s crackdown on protesters applaud Washington’s shift in language, the prolonged failure to revive the nuclear deal has also increased the risk of nuclear proliferation posed by Tehran — another possible trigger for regional tensions.
Iran now enriches uranium to 60 percent purity—just one step closer to the weapons-grade level of 90 percent. In recent months, Iranian officials have even publicly discussed bomb-making, once considered taboo.
Israel has warned that it will never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons – which have carried out airstrikes in the past to destroy atomic energy programmes in Iraq and Syria. While tensions over Iran’s plans have kept the region’s rate of violence low since 2019, it also poses risks to the broader conflict.
Meanwhile, the United States continues to say it remains prepared to use force in the region if needed. The nuclear-capable B-52 bomber, which began under President Donald Trump, continues to fly under President Joe Biden.
Earlier on Thursday, the U.S. military’s Central Command acknowledged that its top commander boarded a nuclear-armed U.S. ballistic missile submarine in the Arabian Sea – an unusual take on one of the top U.S. weapons in an atomic arsenal near Iran Access. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from the Syndicated News feed, the body of the content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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