The Gen Z-led new wave of protests in Iran is raging against the heart of the cleric-led country’s identity – the compulsory veil – and is unlikely to fade away.
The anti-regime protests that have convulsed Iran for over a month now mark one of the biggest challenges to the country’s clerical rulers since they seized power in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement following the Sept 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, who was detained by the ‘morality police’ in Tehran for allegedly wearing her headscarf too loosely, is showing no signs of tapering off.
The protests first erupted at Amini’s funeral in her hometown Saqqez, in the Kurdish region. Crowds of young women soon swamped the streets twirling their hijabs in the air and cutting their hair, chanting ‘Death to the Dictator’ targeting Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Over 300 protesters have been killed and thousands arrested, including numerous journalists and children, since the unrest began, say human rights groups. The protests have spread to over 133 Iranian cities and 129 universities as well as several secondary schools.
World over, in Berlin, 80,000 people joined the march waving Iranian flags and holding banners ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ on October 22. Iranians travelled from the United States, Canada and all over the European Union to participate. The Berlin march was the largest-ever demonstration against the Islamic Republic by Iranians abroad. Similar scenes were witnessed on the streets of Washington, Australia and Japan, among others.
Defying Dictator
Zahedan, the capital of the poverty-stricken Sistan-Baluchistan province on the Pakistan border, has become a flashpoint for the protests. There were at least 66 deaths on September 30 in Zahedan, now called ‘Bloody Friday,’ according to Amnesty International, when security forces cracked down on protesters, worshippers and bystanders after Friday prayers outside the city’s main mosque.
Young people, including university students in Tehran, Isfahan and other major cities, have defied warnings by security forces to participate in demonstrations. They are even fighting back the Basij – Organisation for the Mobilization of the Oppressed – established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution to Islamise Iranian society and combat enemies within.
Restrictions on the internet, including Instagram, LinkedIn and WhatsApp, have been imposed to prevent protesters from organising and sharing videos with the outside world. Only short clips find their way out, including those of security forces firing at protesters and women defiantly cutting off their hair and burning their hijabs.
Iran’s Chief of the Staff of the Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Bagheri acknowledged that the traditional methods of the past and carrying out repeated and ineffective actions were not the answer. “In fact, we are facing hybrid threats today. Military, security and cultural threats are emerging and sometimes unknown threats appear against us simultaneously and with a well-thought-out combination by the enemies. We must prepare ourselves for such a battle and confrontation.”
Unlike past protests, which were mostly economic and political, this new wave is showing fury against something at the heart of the identity of Iran’s cleric-led state: the compulsory veil. It does not have a leader and is led by Gen Z, who are drawing support from even ethnic minorities and workers in Iran’s crucial oil industry.
Under Cover
On March 7, 1979, Khomeini announced that all women must wear hijab, overturning the January 8, 1936, decree ‘kashf-e hejab’ of military officer-turned-king Reza Shah Pahlavi that outlawed traditional Islamic veils and scarves. The very next day — International Women’s Day — tens of thousands of unveiled women marched in protest. Wearing hijab became obligatory for all Iranian women from April 1983. Legal measures and social restrictions were enforced, and criminal punishment for those violating the law was introduced in the 1990s. It ranged from imprisonment to fines.
Many, especially in major cities and younger generation, have defied the dress code. “While the current uprising may seem new, it follows decades of women’s resistance. Feminist activism in Iran goes back to women participating in the Constitutional Revolution in 1906. Women played a critical role and engaged in political actions by establishing women’s associations, joining protests and supporting strikes. One month after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iranian women launched massive demonstrations after hearing whispers about a hijab mandate. Although those protests were able to postpone the mandate, it was eventually instated in 1983,” states Niloofar Hooman, a PhD candidate, Communication Studies and Media Arts, McMaster University, in The Conversation.
In 2018, the regime went a little soft. A new decree did not fine or imprison women in Tehran for not following the dress code. Rather, they had to attend Islam educational classes. The ‘morality police,’ or the Gasht-e-Ershad, which is a unit of Iran’s police force, is tasked with enforcing the laws on Islamic dress code in public. They usually escort women to a police van and then to a class. This new order only applies in the capital Tehran but even there, women who break the dress code repeatedly could still be subject to legal action.
Iranian society has struggled with allowing women the right to choose their own dress and veiling since the mid-19th century when the poet and religious scholar Tahereh dramatically appeared unveiled before a congregation of men in 1848, says Farzaneh Milani, an Iranian scholar and professor at the University of Virginia’s gender studies department. A few years after her unveiling, public authorities executed Tahereh. “History and recent events in Iran leave us in no doubt. Women’s desire to be free to choose could not be strangled or silenced,” stresses Milani.
Political reforms initiated in 1997 by Mohammad Khatami, then president, were met with resistance from hardliners. Later, centrist president Hassan Rouhani promised a more functioning economy under a nuclear deal that his government signed with world powers in 2015. The deal, intended to curtail Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, collapsed in 2018. The election of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi as president last year marked a new low.
International Pressure, Falling Economy
The Biden administration has imposed sanctions against Iranian officials for the deadly crackdown and for supplying drones and technical assistance to Russia for its war against Ukraine. The US had also ordered military strikes in August against Iranian-backed militias in Syria in response to attacks on US forces in the region.
Canada too has announced fresh sanctions, targeting Iranian police and judicial officials while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the European Union was considering renewed sanctions against Iran for he was shocked that “people who are peacefully demonstrating at protests in Iran are dying.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blames external players, including the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, for the unrest. The enmity toward the US began with the American-backed 1953 coup that cemented the Shah’s reign. For Washington, the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis stoked hostility toward Iran. The mutual distrust continues today.
There is also public frustration as inflation has touched 42.1% and youth unemployment rate is 23%. According to a Financial Times report, the last national census six years ago showed those aged between 10 and 24 years old make up about 22% of the population of 80 million. An increasingly educated population, including women who occupy about 60% of university places, fast-paced urban development and wider access to the internet and smartphones, has raised public expectations.
The value of the currency has plummeted, from 32,000 rials for a dollar in 2015 to 3,15,000 rials for a dollar in 2022. Iranian youth increasingly try to find new livelihoods abroad at whatever cost. Those left behind struggle to make ends meet.
Leadership Tussle
At home, a battle over leadership could turn Iran’s focus further inward. There is no designated successor for the 83-year-old Khamenei, though some analysts suggest his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, might be considered. The Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to the supreme leader, has grown increasingly powerful.
The hardliners also see a risk to Iran’s territorial integrity which includes ethnicities such as Arabs, Kurds, Baluchis, Turks and Sunni Muslims. Both the theocracy and the Guard have a financial and political incentive to continue the status quo.
But cracks seem to be appearing with senior officials calling for showing leniency. Ali Larijani, a former speaker of the Iranian parliament, warned: “The hijab has a cultural solution, it does not need decrees and referendums. …Do not doubt that when a cultural phenomenon becomes widespread, rigid response to it is not the cure. The people and young people who come to the street are our own children. In a family, if a child commits a crime, they try to guide him to the right path, the society needs more tolerance,” he emphasised.
Maybe these protests too may fizzle out like the previous ones. But for now, and with no other outlets, mass protests are continuing. History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot.
Past Protests
1979 Islamic Revolution
• Killed: Estimates range from 2,000 to over 3,000
• Detained: Thousands
• Flashpoint: Social injustice, political repression, corruption, and religious motives
• Location and Scope: Protests spread to nearly all major cities and millions participated
The 1979 Islamic Revolution began with broad-based mass protests that eventually forced the Western-backed monarchy out of power. But in the resulting chaos, hardline followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini quickly moved to sideline left-wing and moderate opposition groups, forcing many Iranians into prison or exile and establishing a firm foundation for a clerical rule.
2009 Green Movement
• Killed: At least 100
• Detained: At least 4,000
• Flashpoint: Election fraud and corruption
• Location and Scope: Millions joined protests in at least 10 major cities
The largest and most sustained protests since the Islamic Revolution erupted in the summer of 2009, after the reformist opposition disputed the re-election of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Green Movement took its name from a green sash given to Mir Hossein Mousavi, Iran’s last Prime Minister, by Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s two-term president and the reform movement’s first standard-bearer. Neda Agha Soltan, a 27-year-old woman, became an icon of the protest movement after she was shot and bled to death in a video seen by millions on social media.
2019 Price Hike
• Killed: At least 304
• Detained: At least 7,000
• Flashpoint: Fuel prices
• Location and Scope: Protests spread to at least 100 cities and towns with more than 2 lakh participants
In a surprise overnight announcement on November 15, 2019, Iran hiked gas prices—by up to 300% —and introduced a new rationing system. The government’s goal was to raise funds to help the poor, but it backfired.
Source: iranprimer.usip.org
(With inputs from Agencies)