Professor Kazem Kazerounian
December 13, 2025
On December 12, 2025, the streets of Mashhad, the spiritual capital of the Islamic Republic, witnessed a spectacle that was as theatrical as it was treacherous. Ostensibly, the gathering was a seventh-day memorial service for Khosrow Alikordi, the courageous human rights solicitor whose death in custody was widely understood to be a state-sanctioned assassination. Yet what transpired was not a spontaneous outpouring of grief, but a calculated intelligence operation. The regime, paralyzed by the mounting pressure from the Kanoon-e Shorushi (Mojahedin-E-Khalgh, MEK Resistance Units) and the radicalized street, orchestrated a diversionary play. They allowed the memorial not out of leniency, but because they needed a stage to enact their favorite survival strategy: forcing the public into a false choice between their own brutal rule and the corruption and ineptitude of a failed monarchy. According to eyewitness accounts from the scene, the regime forces in plain clothes initiated pro-monarchy chants, violently assaulted a protestor voicing radical anti-regime sentiments, and handed him directly to the IRGC, exposing themselves not as opposition, but as auxiliary enforcers of the state.
The Paradox of Permission
The first question any astute observer must ask is: Why? Why would a regime, paranoid about security and ruthless in its suppression of dissent, permit a memorial service for a lawyer they effectively murdered? They knew well that Alikordi’s name had become a rallying cry. They knew the attendance would be massive. And crucially, why would they allow influencers and known names, individuals they knew would attract a massive audience, to freely speak?
The answer lies in the specific nature of the threat the mullahs currently face. They are no longer merely contending with spontaneous civil unrest; they are being squeezed by the organized, tactical pressure of thousands of Kanoon-e Shorushi. These units have successfully targeted the regime’s centers of command, shattered the wall of fear, and popularized slogans that strike directly at the head of the snake: “Death to Khamenei.”
To counter this existential threat, the regime could not simply ban the memorial, which might have triggered an uncontrollable explosion. Instead, they chose to hijack it. By allowing the crowd to gather, and even encouraging high-profile figures to draw in the masses, they created a controlled environment where their agents provocateurs could inject a specific virus into the bloodstream of the protest: the slogan of “Javid Shah” (Long Live the King).
The Illusion of a Binary Choice
This manufactured nostalgia serves a deeply cynical purpose. The regime is intent on convincing the Iranian people that their only alternative to the current theocratic tyranny is the restoration of a monarchy defined by historical corruption and present-day incompetence. By elevating a “less than capable heir” to the throne, a figure whose forty-year career in exile is marked by inaction and whose entourage mirrors the very authoritarianism of the mullahs, the regime constructs a self-serving illusion.
They want the populace to believe the choice is binary: either the Sheikh or the Shah. By presenting a weak, inept, and compromised opposition figure as the sole rival, the regime subtly markets itself as the “necessary evil” or the only force capable of maintaining order. They are effectively saying: “Look, if you remove us, you do not get freedom; you get him, and all the corruption that comes with him.” This strategy is designed to demoralize the public and obscure the third, viable option: a secular, democratic republic built by the sacrifices of the Kanoon-e Shorushi (MEK Resistance Units/Kannon Shorehy).
The “White SIM” Brigade in Action
The evidence of this orchestration is irrefutable. As we have seen from the recent “White Internet” leaks, the regime has mobilized the Ammar Cyber Headquarters to create a “monarchist” troll army equipped with unfiltered access to the web. In Mashhad, this digital strategy manifested physically.
Witnesses report that just as the crowd’s chants began to swell with radical anti-regime slogans, calls for the death of the dictator that align with the strategy of the Resistance Units, a coordinated bloc within the crowd suddenly pivoted the narrative. They began chanting “Reza Shah, Bless Your Soul” and explicitly attacked other opposition forces with the slogan: “Death to the three corrupt forces: the Mullah, the Leftist, and the Mujahid.”
This precise triangulation is the regime’s fingerprint. By attacking the “Mujahid” (MEK) and the Leftists alongside the Mullahs, the agents sought to isolate the most effective component of the opposition. They replaced a call for forward-looking revolution with a backward-looking nostalgia.
Conclusion: The “Pas-kari” of Sheikh and Shah
The events in Mashhad were a textbook example of Pas-kari, the passing of the ball between the Sheikh and the Shah. The regime, terrified by the effectiveness of the Kanoon-e Shorushi (MEK Resistance Units), summoned the ghost of the monarchy to save itself.
They allowed the memorial, and permitted influencers to speak, because they were confident they could control the narrative. They gambled that by flooding the zone with “Javid Shah,” they could neutralize the lethal potency of “Death to the Dictator.” It was a desperate maneuver by a dying regime, using the illusion of a corrupt and inept monarchy to fight a living revolution. But as the leaks and the street’s resilience show, the people are beginning to see through the masquerade. The “White SIMs” may post the tweets, and the Basij may chant the slogans, but the desire for a free, republican Iran remains the unbreakable will of the nation.