On April 3 and 4, 2025, exasperated farmers in Isfahan, deprived of their necessary water rights during the planting season, took to the streets in dense crowds to reclaim their water share and the Zayandeh Rud river, plundered by the regime and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
They chanted slogans such as “Zayandeh Rud’s water is our undeniable right,” “Let Isfahan breathe, give back Zayandeh Rud!” and shouted: “If the river doesn’t flow, Isfahan will face judgment day.” “We will take our water rights, even if we die,” “We have seen no justice, only heard lies.”
In the preceding days, scenes of the regime’s repressive forces trying to quell the farmers’ protests turned into confrontations due to the farmers’ resistance. Images of the regime’s well-equipped special forces fleeing from the onslaught of the protesting farmers circulated widely on social media.
The words of enraged farmers saying, “We will resist until our last drop of blood,” and the continuation and expansion of protests indicate that past repressions, like a compressed spring, have turned into a major leap forward.
Hail to the courageous and deprived farmers of Isfahan, who, with their cries of "Zayanderud water is our inalienable right," continue their protests and sit-ins daily, defying the empty promises of the regime's officials. Today, on Friday, angry farmers from areas like Khurasgan… pic.twitter.com/w8VDTDJpef
— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) April 4, 2025
On Friday, April 4, 2025, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi saluted the honorable and deprived farmers of Isfahan who, ignoring the empty promises of regime officials, continue their sit-in and protest. She stated: “The oppressive, pillaging, and anti-Iranian regime has used every resource of the country to sustain the corrupt and vile system of the mullahs’ rule. One of the main causes of the water crisis is water diversion to military industries and institutions controlled by the Revolutionary Guards.”
The clerical regime and the IRGC, who are the main thieves of the water themselves, try with deceit and trickery to pit the people of neighboring provinces against the farmers of Isfahan to divert this uprising. However, the aware farmers explicitly declare: “We repeat, we have no problem with the drinking water of any province, neither Chaharmahal nor Yazd, we never had, and never will; our problem is the government’s water mafia!”
The uprising of Isfahan farmers against the clerical tyranny reflects the confrontation of the entire Iranian society with the anti-Iranian regime of the mullahs. Regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei, with his counter-revolutionary intuition, predicted this situation years ago and warned in 2016: “We have fault lines inside the country… If these fault lines become active, then an earthquake will occur.”
Now, as the new Persian year has just begun, one of those “fault lines” and “internal seditions” has become active; a fault line that has repeatedly stirred since the 2010s. In past years, Khamenei issued orders to shoot to stop this fault line, and brutal IRGC forces blinded and injured dozens of deprived farmers with pellet guns.
More footage of protest rally by farmers in Isfahan.#Iran #IranProtestspic.twitter.com/2rai0J8c22
— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) April 4, 2025
In Autumn 2021, the situation intensified, and the farmers’ sit-in on the dry bed of the Zayandeh Rud turned into a national movement. People from Isfahan and even other cities joined them, and the wave of tens of thousands terrified Khamenei. This time, he knew bullets and pellets were no longer effective and would backfire. Therefore, he sent his IRGC forces at night disguised as “plainclothes agents” to set fire to the tents of the protesting farmers and people and injure them with clubs and batons. At that time, regime media warned: “Violent confrontation has the opposite effect… For this reason, we are concerned about such confrontations with Isfahan farmers… These confrontations will have dire consequences for the system” (State-run Bahar website – November 2021).
And so it happened. A few months later, a massive, nationwide fault line stirred in Iran, and the 2022 uprising took shape; an uprising that, with slogans like “Death to Khamenei,” “Death to the dictator, be it Shah or Supreme Leader,” and the throwing of Molotov cocktails at IRGC and Basij (paramilitary militia) centers in various cities, shook the entire structure of the regime.