The violence in Iran could lead to civil war

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. “A PRINCE OUGHT to inspire fear," wrote Niccolo Machiavelli, but “he must endeavour only to avoid hatred", lest it prove his undoing. By that measure Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is failing.

As the veil of its internet blackout lifts slightly, the killings unleashed to crush protests are fuelling rage more than fear. Human-rights groups have confirmed the deaths of over 6,500 people in the recent protests and are verifying those of 17,000 more. Iran International, an opposition television channel based in Britain, puts the death toll at over 36,500.

Relatives sift through piles of body-bags, then pay for the bullets that killed their kin to recover the corpses. Eye-witnesses describe the aftermath of the protests and their repression as resembling a battlefield, with torched banks and mosques and overturned security vehicles. One claims that the university museum in Mashhad, Iran’s second city and a stronghold of the clerical regime, is in ruins.

“Anything that serves as a means to tyranny and control was destroyed," says a protester. The regime’s humiliation of the dead is radicalising a public that had already turned violent. Even if America does not intervene against the regime, how can Iran hold together as a country in the aftermath of such bloodshed? For several hours on January 8th protesters controlled the streets of Tehran and other cities.

“You couldn’t drive on the streets. There was fire here and there; debris, bricks, stones, destruction. As we marched, people bent all traffic sign posts, broke many of them and set all garbage bins on fire.