Iran’s foreign ministry Summoned ambassadors from the UK and Norway On Sunday for what the ministry considered to be “interference” Iran has recently been rocked by violent protests of the killing of an Iranian while in custody or Iran’s Morality police, a police force that enforces discriminatory dress code against the women of Iran. Britain’s ambassador was summoned by the Iranian government to discuss Farsi-language news outlets being hosted by british media. The Norwegian ambassador was summoned because of comments made in the Norwegians parliament by its president, Masud Gharahkhani in which he expressed support for the counter government protests.
Due to the fact that Iran has had a history of revolutions in the past I think that Iran’s government is desperate to bring an end to the protests, by any means necessary, to insure that they are not overthrown or ousted from power as they have been in the past. Because of this I believe that Iran’s government finds it pivotal to silence any international support of the protests, with worry that this support will embolden the protesters and make them less willing to compromise. It’s no secret that the government and police force has been using extreme tactics to extinguish these protests, with them having shut off internet access and firing on crowds of protesting civilians, all of which being obviously extreme and unethical reactions to protest. Summoning forien ambassadors is just the next step in the Iranian government’s extreme measures to insure they aren’t ousted from power.
In class we discussed how you should always look at a conflict from four lenses, international, interstate, internal, and personal. On the international level, the world in the past two decades has been trending in the direction of women’s rights, with many massive steps in women’s rights and freedoms being made in recent years, a trend Iran completely missed. On a internal level Iran has had many revolutions in its history, some of which relatively recently, which may be causing the iranian government to be panicking at the sight of widespread outrage.