An IRGC intelligence official has warned Iranian society is “in a state of explosion” and social discontent “has risen by 300 percent in a year”, according to a classified document published this week by the hacker group Edaalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice).
This document in question is reported to be seven pages of minutes from the November 21, 2021 meeting of the Revolutionary Guards’ Sarollah Headquarters, chaired by the IRGC’s depty commander-in-chief, Brigadier General Hossein Nejat.
The meeting was also attended by representatives of the Tehran Prosecutor's Office, the NAJA Intelligence Department, the Basij, and the IRGC Intelligence Organization. The remarks about societal unrest came from an IRGC intelligence operative referred to only as “Mohammadi”, who said he was referring to the results of a recently-conducted survey.
He is also quoted as saying that also said that “several shocks” in recent months, including stock market chaos and food and car price hikes, had “shaken public trust” in the government under Ebrahim Raisi. “Currently,” he said, “53 percent of society is sceptical about the claims of the establishment.”
The IRGC's Sarollah Headquarters is the most important security base in Tehran. It oversees the security of government institutions in the capital and is in charge of neutralizing any perceived threat, from protests by ordinary citizens to high-profile attempts at sabotage.
The document shared by Edalaat-e Ali also quotes a person named as “Colonel Kaviani” as saying that the number of popular protests in the last Iranian calendar year increased by 50 percent, and the number of participants had doubled.
On Tuesday this week Edaalat-e Ali was behind a dramatic hack of the Iranian state-owned streaming network Telewebion, which saw the service disrupted for more than 20 hours. During that time audiences using Telewebion could hear a voice saying "Khamenei is afraid, the system is unstable at its core” and saw anti-regime slogans including "Death to the dictator” flash up on their screens. A masked man also appeared on video telling viewers: “We expose the palaces of the oppressors and hold them accountable to the nation. The regime has tasted our power — and will now see more of it."
Last year the group also claimed responsibility for a major hack of Evin Prison’s CCTV system, exposing the guards’ brutal treatment of detainees, the confinement of LGBT+ prisoners in a basement and wanton medical neglect.
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