Iran’s Supreme Leader pardons thousands linked to headscarf protests

…For analysts, the pardon does not equate to a shift in policy for the regime’s crackdown on the protest movement. “The regime’s repressive apparatus is firmly in place,” said Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran. This “propaganda ploy” was designed “to quash the revolutionary sentiment inside the Iranian population [and] trick the West into thinking that reform is possible when it’s not”, he said.