Protests persist at Iranian colleges and raise tensions as US military threat looms

CAIRO -- It has been seven weeks since the Iranian government used brute force to extinguish huge nationwide protests. But public resistance to the Islamic Republic is still flickering on Iranian college campuses.

Anti-government demonstrations were held on at least 10 campuses in the past week, according to an exiled Iranian activist who tracks the country's student movement, four students who witnessed protests, and social media videos verified by The Associated Press.

The students, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, all spoke of rising anger on their campuses toward Iran's leaders, and of confusion about the direction their country was headed.

The simmering tensions on campuses come as the Iranian government led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei faces threats of military action by the United States over the country's nuclear program.

The theocratic government is increasingly threatening students and administrators. One government official warned students this week not to cross a “red line," while a hard-line cleric who heads Iran's judiciary said “crimes” would be punished if administrators didn't rein in the protests.

Many universities have shut down their campuses and moved classes online.

The switch to remote learning was reminiscent of steps authorities took late last year. As December protests in Tehran’s grand bazaar over spiraling economic conditions quickly spread to towns and cities across Iran, authorities ordered remote learning in early January, shut off the internet and embarked on a bloody crackdown.

A complete toll of casualties from the crackdown has been slow to emerge because of internet restrictions imposed by authorities.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency says it confirmed more than 7,000 deaths and that it is investigating thousands more. The government has acknowledged more than 3,000 killed, though it has undercounted or not reported fatalities from past unrest.

An exiled Iranian activist who tracks the student movement, Ali Taghipour, said at least 128 university students died in the nationwide unrest. “It was the biggest massacre of university students” under the Islamic Republic, he said.

“By the time the state made universities in-person again, it coincided with the (40 day) memorials of the killings of the January protests,” Taghipour said. Some campus memorials sparked new anti-government protests, he added.

Protests erupted last Saturday at both Sharif University of Technology and Amir Kabir University. Videos circulating online verified by AP showed scuffles breaking out on both campuses between what appeared to be pro-government supporters and protesters yelling, “Shameless! Shameless!” That chant is often used to taunt security forces and plainclothes agents like the Basij, the all-volunteer arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard who maintain a presence on university campuses through student groups.

Students at the all-female Al Zahra University in northern Tehran chanted anti-government slogans on Monday, according to videos verified by AP. That same day, students at the University of Tehran’s College of Foreign Languages held a rowdy demonstration, stamping feet and chanting, “For each person killed, a thousand stand behind them!” That gathering had begun as a memorial for a student killed in the January protests.

The protests have raised fears of a new crackdown. On Tuesday, a government spokeswoman, Fatemeh Mohajerani, warned students to be careful not to cross a “red line,” according to the semiofficial Mehr news agency, and an Iranian state television anchorwoman read a statement attributed to the president of Sharif university apologizing for “inappropriate” events on campus.

On Wednesday, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi, the cleric who heads Iran’s judiciary, said judicial authorities would get involved in persecuting “crimes” on campuses if educational authorities were unable to control them, according to comments carried in state media. Ejehi has become the face of Iran’s recent crackdown, calling for the fast-tracking of punishments for protesters.

Universities across Iran have barred some students from campus and held disciplinary hearings, Taghipour said. Such hearings in the past have resulted in expulsions and even some students being forbidden from further university studies.

Iran’s college students have frequently propelled anti-government protests.

In 1999, university students in Tehran sparked some of the first demonstrations against the Islamic Republic. Campus unrest also played a key role in protests supporting Iran’s reformist leaders in 2008-2009, as well as sustaining openly anti-government demonstrations in 2022 that turned toward calling for the overthrow of Iran’s theocracy.

The refusal of Iran’s hard-liners to make any policy changes, and the gutting of the country's middle class under decades of Western sanctions and economic mismanagement, has led many college-age students to the conclusion the Islamic Republic cannot be reformed, a doctoral student at the University of Tehran said.

That void has opened the way for Reza Pahlavi — the son of the shah ousted in 1979 — to become “a serious political cause for some people in Iran,” the student said. Memories of the shah's autocratic rule remain mixed in the country, although nostalgia for the period's economic prosperity has grown.

Years of repression have foiled the ability of any organized opposition within the country. The repression has also shrunk the space on campuses for any kind of political debate and organizing, said a social sciences student at Tehran university. “After 2022, around 70% of student associations were closed,” he said, including a progressive student association he had led.

The student added that he did not have any clear hopes about where student protests today could lead in the face of foreign military threats and the government's willingness to repress dissent with deadly violence.

"On the one hand, we are facing a government that isn’t afraid of killing anyone, and on the other hand, we are facing outside powers that support people being killed."

A student at a university in the northern city of Babol said fear is rising on campus about what a war could mean for the country.

The student said his personal hope was for a “democratic secular republic” in Iran, although he worries armed conflict could lead to further suffering and “increase the risks of the country’s disintegration.” Iran is already struggling to maintain a full supply of basic services such as electricity and water in some parts of the country.

The university in Babol has kept courses remote since early January, the student there said, preventing people from gathering on campus. He said many students have skipped remote courses as a form of protest.

At the University of Tehran, the social sciences student said he disagreed with students who support Pahlavi, partly because the exiled opposition figure has called for a U.S. strike on Iran.

“I’ll never understand a person who sits in London yelling for America to bomb Iran. How will they accept responsibility for what happens tomorrow?”