With a week left for what various reports call the imminent military attack by Israel or the US on Iran’s nuclear installations, and as the Islamic republic puts the revolutionary Guards and the Baseej para-military forces on alert, any dissident or protesting activity in Iran is attributed to interference by foreigners and Western intelligence organizations, reports public in Iran indicate that economic and social pressures are the main goals of the terrorist activities and social disturbances in recent weeks.

A young cleric who was sent to the town of Khash for the Ramezan ceremonies was killed by the staffing bullets of automatic weapon while climbing the pulpit of a mosque in the town. A week earlier, another young cleric was shot at in a similar manner in the city of Ahvaz, and survived.

According to the semi-official Fars news agency two men on motorbikes entered the mosque and killed cleric Mehdi Tavakoli who had been sent from the town of Zahedan in south east Iran. The Islamic Republic News Agency immediately attributed the shooting to “agents supported by the White House.” After last week’s assassination too it was officially announced that the bullets that took the life of sheikh Samir Doorakvandi had come from “Israel and the United States and other invaders of Iraq.”

Last year too, after a number of explosions and assassinations shook the city of Ahvaz, intelligence officials arrested a number of suspects on charges of engaging in espionage for foreigners, and executed them.

In the course of these events, what the government normally does not reference at all are the economic pressures and extensive public discontent that exists in Iran. In this latest assassination, the statement that was published on news sites had raised questions such as why must the people of Khuzestan province which has a sea of expensive oil underneath it be not paid as much attention as a single village.

What is noteworthy is that similar comments and questions are raised in many statements published on these issues. For example, a day after the Passdaran Guards of the Islamic Revolution announced that its main focus would be on domestic issues as that is where the threats were concentrated, a man who wanted to personally submit his grievances to the minister of the Interior managed to pass the security guards and get behind the door of the minister’s office. Seeing resistance there, he took of all his clothes in protest to catch the attention of the guards and began yelling outside the office. After his arrest, it became clear that the man did this out of frustration because he had no money left after he had brought his sick wife to Tehran for medical treatment and gas stations would not sell him gas to drive back to his town. The only way he could make his voice heard was to strip naked inside a government building.

Other acts that demonstrate the public discontent occasionally appear on Internet news site, despite the government attempts to suppress them. Just last month a series of kidnappings took place in a school in East of Tehran.

In conclusion, when the Iranian government engages in dissolving 43 dissident student groups and centers, sending some 550 students to university disciplinary committees, and depriving many women of their rightful right to education, while university students too are removed from heir positions, and so long as the cost of the government’s altruistic contributions to Latin American countries is poverty, unemployment and budget deficits for the people of Iran and so long as Iranian officials continue to make irresponsible statements about the Holocaust bringing nothing but deprivation to the inhabitants of this land, dissatisfaction among its people too will continue.