“This is a very powerful threat to this regime, and what would happen if that regime collapsed and were replaced by a more peace-oriented authority? It would change the balance of power, weaken Russia, lower oil prices, and all of this would hit the Russian budget. This axis of evil, today defined as China-Russia-Iran-North Korea, would lose one of its elements,” said former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki on TV Republika, speaking about the consequences of a possible coup in Iran.
For more than a dozen days, intense protests against the rule of the ayatollahs have been ongoing in Iran. The protests are gaining momentum, as are reprisals by the regime’s authorities and the security services subordinate to them. According to the independent broadcaster Iran International, at least 2,000 people have been killed in protests in Iran over the past 48 hours, according to cautious estimates.
The broadcaster reports that security forces are firing live ammunition at protesters. Witnesses quoted by the station said that in the city of Kahrizak, in Tehran Province, they saw around 400 bodies. On Friday alone, 44 bodies were brought to one hospital in the city, and 36 to another.
Sources in hospitals told Iran International that similar scenes are also occurring in other cities and hospitals. For example, a doctor from the nearly 700,000-strong city of Rasht in northern Iran said that at least 70 bodies were brought to just one local hospital. Iran International noted that such accounts come from many different locations, indicating that incidents of shooting people are not limited to a small number of large cities.
Earlier, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based non-governmental organization, reported 116 deaths, while stressing that this figure includes only confirmed fatalities of individuals whose identities are known.
Iranian protests became the subject of discussion on Tomasz Sakiewicz’s program Political Coffee
“All night long I was receiving images of people being executed, security services shooting at unarmed civilians, blood literally flowing in the streets; on the other hand, government buildings are burning, security service facilities are burning – it is hard to say what is really happening there. In most of the country there are problems with electricity supplies, the internet is cut off, President Trump is suggesting the possibility of a rapid military intervention, the number of US military forces around Iran is growing. We are seeing extraordinary acceleration – Iran is not a small country, it is one of Russia’s most important allies, an oil power, although recently constrained in supplies,” pointed out the editor-in-chief of TV Republika.
The program’s guest, former prime minister and leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists, Mateusz Morawiecki, emphasized that we are dealing with an “extremely significant potential change.”
“We need to realize that if the Iranian regime were to collapse, possibly in a ‘Venezuelan’ arrangement, where the current ayatollah and the main center of power were replaced by other parts of the power apparatus willing to cooperate with the free world, the Western world, the situation in the Middle East could be completely transformed. This would also have a huge impact on geopolitics. Iran is the last such important ally of Russia in this region, after the fall of Assad in Syria, the change of power in Armenia, and the shift in attitudes toward Russia in the Central Asian republics. Iran is a state that supports Russia but also finances Hamas and Hezbollah, the most powerful terrorist organization in the Middle East, as well as the Houthis,” Morawiecki stressed.
In his view, the fall of the regime in Iran would mean increased security of trade routes, stabilization in the Red Sea, greater chances for peace in the Middle East, and thus a reduction in Russia’s ability to influence the region.
“Even in Venezuela, the situation remains very unclear, and what happened there was not so much a deep change of power as rather a mild transformation of power structures around Maduro, where today the situation is controlled by one of his closest associates. Americans are cautious after experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq about intervening too deeply. My predictions are that there may be further destabilization, air strikes, and intelligence reconnaissance. I do not expect a very large-scale military intervention, because I believe the Americans have learned their lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan,” added Mateusz Morawiecki.
Morawiecki: The US has learned its lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan
In his assessment, Donald Trump is unlikely to decide on a strong military offensive in Iran.
“I suppose that guided by experiences from Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as more recent ones from Venezuela, and also by the bombing of Iranian nuclear weapons production facilities, President Trump and his main advisers will rather avoid a scenario called ‘state-building’ or an ‘intervention with boots on the ground.’ One cannot, however, rule out an intervention like the one that took place several months ago, when nuclear weapons production facilities were largely destroyed and the Islamic regime in Tehran was already shaken,” he said.
He noted that “one never knows what will emerge after the overthrow of a regime.”
“Even in Venezuela, the situation remains very unclear, and what happened there was not so much a deep change of power as rather a mild transformation of power structures around Maduro, where today the situation is controlled by one of his closest associates. Americans are cautious after experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq about intervening too deeply. My predictions are that there may be further destabilization, air strikes, and intelligence reconnaissance. I do not expect a very large-scale military intervention, because I believe the Americans have learned their lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan,” added Mateusz Morawiecki.