After Rouhani Comment, the Guards Send in Tanks

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Just two days after President Hassan Rouhani laughed off a question about access to satellite television in Iran during a press conference in New York, the Revolutionary Guards' Fajr Brigade sent a tank into Shiraz to crush 800 pieces of satellite equipment.

"The Iranian government's objective is to provide free access to information for the people," Rouhani said during his Asia Society press conference. "Presently even Iranian villages have access to satellite [television]; all you have to do is to look at their rooftops."

While period sweeps on satellite dishes and more recently satellite dish workshops are a feature of life in the Islamic Republic, a costly cat and mouse game between the authorities and citizens who seek free access to global culture and information, the Revolutionary Guards' tank pageant is unprecedented in its violent show of force.

See photos here: Tanks Mow Down Satellite Dishes in Shiraz

The timing raises questions as to whether powerful regime forces like the Revolutionary Guards will seek to obstruct his reforms and tar the image of moderation he seeks to present to the world.

The destruction took place at Seyed Alaeddin Hossein Shrine in Shiraz, and the Shirazeh website, close to the provincial command of the Revolutionary Guards, reported that it was carried out as part of “the Campaign to Combat Satellite [Television] Networks, and concurrent with the last day of the Sacred Defense Week,” which commemorates the Iran-Iraq War.

The website refers to the Fars Province Fajr Brigade as "the innovator of the Campaign for Collection of Satellite Dishes" in Shiraz. "The campaign for voluntary collection of satellite [equipment] and delivery of digital receiver equipment began in Shiraz about four months ago. The Fars Province Fajr Brigade, through different neighborhood Basij bases and centers began implementing this campaign," said Shirazeh website.

The website furthers claims that during the operation citizens of Shiraz turned out to voluntarily over their satellite equipment, with “tearful parents [speaking] of the losses and damages they and their children had suffered.” Many of the individuals turning over their dishes allegedly “spoke of how their spouses' had lost their sense of shame about forbidden acts as a result of using satellite [television programming]."

Mehr News Agency also published photographs of "the elimination ceremony,” noting that authorities had the equipment crushed in the presence of local and city officials, by use of both a tank and a steamroller. Mehr also noted that the Fars Province Fajr Brigade described this ceremony "in keeping with the voluntary delivery of satellite equipment by the people of Shiraz."