Iranian protester tells Israel TV: The regime has to fall

In an interview with an Israeli television station on Sunday, an Iranian anti-regime protester says the brutally suppressed protests of 2009 have shown the Iranian people they will only gain the rights they deserve if the ayatollahs’ regime falls.

The protester, who is shown with his features pixelated and uses the pseudonym Muhsan, tells Channel 10 TV that the Iranian people are “taking to the streets spontaneously in most cities in Iran” and have concluded that they must “get to the root” of Iran’s problems — “the regime and the leadership.”

Muhsan says the protests had initially erupted because of public anger at financial abuse. He says some of the country’s banks had stolen public money, and then declared bankruptcy, “and the worst thing is that the regime silenced protests over this.”

Exacerbating public anger, he says, was that the 2018 budget recently passed by parliament “will raise the cost of living by a great deal.” The people, he says, “can’t take it any more.”

Mohsen dismisses Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani as “like a puppet; he’s just a symbol so that they they’ll say there’s democracy in Iran.” Complete control in the Islamic Republic, he says, is in the hands of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his group of advisers.