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| Mahsa Amini |
Mahsa Amini was an Iranian Kurdish woman who was visiting Tehran with her brother for the first time. Either she wasn't wearing a hijab in Tehran or her hijab revealed some of her hair. Whatever the case, Amini was stopped by Iran's hated "morality police" and arrested for transgressing Iran's female dress code. On the way to prison, she was tortured. Three days later she was dead. Apparently beaten around the head by the police, she died while in custody or at the hospital to which she was later taken.
Amini's death has caused outrage throughout Iran. Quickly, demonstration began in Saqqez, Amini's home town in Iran's northwest region. The region is home to Iran's Kurds who number 10 million and constitute 10% of the population. However, protests then spread to all Iran's cities and all Iran's 31 provinces. While women were among the first protestors, men from all age groups began to join them Iran Protests Feature Smaller Gatherings, Rooftop Chanting as Crackdown Intensifies
The ongoing protests in Iran are notable for several region. First, the Kurds have been neglected by the central government for decades and Kurds have been viewed as second-class citizens. Little investment has been directed towards the northwest where roads are in poor condition and schools and hospitals receive little aid. That the death of a Kurdish citizen has stirred demonstrations through Iran indicates that eth nic lines have been crossed with Amini;s death.
Second, the demonstrations reflects generational anger. Young people have no personal ties to the revolution of 1978-1979. Those who did participate are now in their 70s. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is 83 and has been ruling Iran since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died in 1989. Among the 80% of Iran's population under the age of 40, there is little hope in the future. This demographic doesn't identity with sclerotic clerical leadership in Tehran.
Third, the rejection of the current regime is especially acute among women. Khamenei and his repressive elite have done all they can to prevent women from entering the public sphere. Despite these impediments, many women in Iran are highly educated and have university degrees. As amy have pointed out, the protests against the regime for Mahsa Amini's death are in fact an uprising led by Iranian women.
Thus, the protests are in effect a women's revolution. Women have not been attributed much agency among analysts of Middle East politics. That they would assume such a central role in what seems to be one of the greatest challenges faced by the Tehran regime since it consolidate power after 1979 behooves us all to take women more seriously as agents of change.
Some of the most effective aspects of women's protests have been the creation of bonfires in which women throw their hijabs, expressing their rejection of not only the regime oppressive dress code and enforcers, the "morality police," but a repression of the core patriarchal nature of Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij militia.
The rejection of patriarchy is also evident in the many women who have cut their hair and called on their sisters in other countries to do the same. Through this tactic, Iranian women have internationalized the protests. The more women in countries around the world who cut their hair, the greater the degree to which the Iranian women's uprising calls attention to the oppression they face.
The recently elected president, Ebrahim Raisi, is a hardliner who has littl or no understanding of the generational divide which Iran is facing. Rather than use Iran's oil wealth to invest in education, health care, job training, Raisi and his clique which controls the IRGC persist in their efforts to prop up the spent al-Asad regime in Syria and support. the Hizballah militia in Lebanon and its counterpart in Iraq, the Popular Mobilization (al-Hashad al-Sha'bi).
Regime resources continue to be devoted to its nuclear energy program, which could ultimately allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, and to establishing a ballistic missile force which could deliver such weapons. Raisi seems not to realize that the younger generation rejects his repressive policies at home and the regime's reckless foreign policy.
At the same time, Raisi seeks to force women to forgo wearing brightly colored hijabs and clothing. This attempt to force Iran to return to the even more repressive years of Ayatollah Khomeini reminds Iranians that Raisi gained his reputation as the hanging judge when he presided over sham trials in which thousands of dissidents were sent to the gallows. A Brief History of the 'Butcher of Tehran'.
State security forces can only kill so many demonstrators. And we should remember what happened when the Shah ordered his forces to shoot demonstrators. Once the Shah reduced spending on urban construction to reduce inflation, unemployment rose as the economy weakened. Many workers began demonstrations which their sympathizers in the security forces refused to suppress. Instead of shooting the protestors, they laid down their guns and refused orders to kill the protestors.
Is Iran at such a moment now? Will women be shot and killed for removing their hijabs and cutting their hair? Such repression will further undermine sympathy for the regime which is already facing the imminent demise of the aging and ill Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and the succession struggle which will follow.
The hijab and Iran's dress code for women has attained the status of a symbol of oppression. The current demonstrations by young Iranian women and their millions of supporters from all sectors of society show that the genie is out of the bottle. They may bring down the regime but Raisi and his clerical elite will have a hard time forcing it back in the bottle. A lengthy period of instability is in the offing in Iran
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