It’s about much more than headscarves: the women’s protests are expanding into a nationwide, political demonstration of anger against the mullahs’ regime.
I contact my old friend Mehdi via Instagram. Other social media channels have long been monitored in Iran. I know he is very active in the current protests. “Hello, how are you?” I ask. After about half an hour he replies: “I can’t speak to you, everything is checked here.” Then silence.
He just sends an emoji with an unhappy face. Mehdi is a teacher in Bushehr in southern Iran and was also at the forefront of last year’s demonstrations. Could he have been arrested just for texting me?
I have lived in Berlin for a number of years – the police could therefore accuse him of spying for the German government. Iran must be hell right now if even a brave man like Mehdi is acting so cautiously. The Islamic Republic regime has developed a repertoire of reactions when people take to the streets to protest. Unfortunately, this means that the Internet is switched off immediately. The persecution of the demonstrators begins immediately afterwards. That has worked in recent years, and Iran has become more and more closed.
The journalist Maryam Mardani, 39, comes from Shiraz. She escaped persecution in Iran with a student visa and has been living in Germany for nine years.
But now? The current protests were triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini. She was arrested by the vice squad on September 13 and died three days later. But that was only the last spark that ignited the fire. The anger of the masses seems much greater this time, and it is the result of years of ongoing and ever-increasing repression.
The system does not tolerate any opposition. The regime sees protesting students, self-confident women and representatives of ethnic, religious or sexual minorities such as the LGBTQ community or the Kurds as a serious threat. When I was in Iran a year ago, I noticed that people had become so indifferent. Everything had become very expensive, many were unemployed. They said to me, “It’s all useless.” And I asked myself, “Can these tired, deadened people ever get up again?”
But I also observed silent disobedience. The Islamic Republic has been promoting more children for years and has always advocated male polygamy. The mullahs advocate the marriage of underage girls at every opportunity. But I don’t know anyone who would be impressed by it. Today, most younger couples have one child or two at most.
The average age at marriage has also risen. And when Masih Alinjad, an Iranian journalist living in the USA, launched the “My Stealthy Freedom” page on Facebook a few years ago, a number of Iranian women documented their small private resistance on it: They filmed themselves doing it how they took off the headscarf and posted the videos.
But now it’s not just about headscarves anymore. At the beginning of the protests, the women burned the hated veils and publicly cut their hair. Men are now also taking part in the demonstrations and shouting: “Enough is enough.” Now the future of the country is at stake. For freedom. About the end of the regime of the aged men. My phone buzzes, I get a message from Shadi. She is 27 years old and a student in Tehran. “Please pass on the information about the massacres at Sharif University,” she writes. “It’s terrible what’s happening there.” I know that students at the elite university didn’t just commemorate the late Mahsa Amini.
They attacked the mullahs with their slogans. In the late evening of October 2, the police cordoned off the campus and apparently beat up a number of students and professors. Eyewitnesses report of tear gas and live ammunition, of people being abducted, injured and dead. This is followed by another message from Shadi: “Please unsubscribe from these accounts on Twitter. They are from students who were arrested today. The police must not be allowed to see their messages.” After 43 years of existence, the Iranian regime knows only one reaction to opposition or criticism: physical elimination. The students – not only at Sharif University – face imprisonment, torture and death.
I myself came to Germany on a student visa, which at the time gave me the chance to escape the lack of freedom and oppression by the backward-looking regime. For years, the brain drain from Iran has been the result of young people not being heard – even though the government likes to call them the country’s treasure and future. I will contact Twitter immediately and have the accounts deleted.
Last night I tried to call a close relative in Isfahan, central Iran. She had just returned with her family from a short trip to Tehran. The internet was too weak to be able to speak, so she texted me: “We are ok. But actually nobody is doing well these days. In Tehran there were police everywhere, even at our hotel. In the evening, when the protests started, it was hardly possible to leave the hotel.” Nevertheless, they managed to go to a demonstration and then escape from the police. Before her eyes, security forces brutally beat a girl.
Protests have flared up again and again for years. The Iranians no longer put up with elections being rigged. They get angry when prices go up by 40 percent and unemployment goes up at the same time. Some are even comparing the force of the current protests to the 1979 revolution, when street outrage forced the Shah to flee.
It is not easy to predict how the current movement will develop. At the moment it seems inconceivable that the spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, would make any concessions. Or that President Ebrahim Raisi is offering political reforms. The regime has many means to stifle the protests – as so often before. And yet something is different this time: people don’t seem to be afraid anymore.
The videos from Iran currently show mainly younger people on the streets. But other generations, business people, teachers, police officers could join them. And then there is the exile community, to which I belong. In 2009, during the protests against then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I was almost arrested. A new, modern opposition movement is currently being formed, the peculiarity of which is that it brings together people from both outside and inside Iran. Not as a party, but united by one goal: to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
They include the Iranian-Canadian author Hamed Esmaeilion, who lost his wife and daughter in 2020 when a Ukrainian passenger plane was shot down by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. He is now suing the regime. Among the best-known pioneers within Iran are the lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and the activist Narges Mohammadi.
I have spent three decades of my life in Iran and see the women as a kind of breaking point in the Islamic Republic. The current protests are being dubbed the “women’s revolution,” although Iranian women began civil disobedience many years ago. But now, thanks in part to social media, the world is listening to them. More importantly, it seems to me that many men have stood by their wives, daughters and mothers. I’m currently watching a lot of videos from Iran. I notice that there are no more religious calls like “Allahu akbar”.
What’s more, the demonstrators have targeted the very foundations of the Islamic Republic of Iran. They are not satisfied with expressing their displeasure with the government. They want to overthrow the regime. This is what I see as the crucial difference to all previous movements, including the “Green Movement” of 2009. Alongside the now ubiquitous slogan “Women, Life, Freedom”, which summarizes the most important demands of the demonstrators, the cry “Down with the dictator, be it a king or a leader” one of the most beautiful I hear these days and which I shout out loud myself. I am convinced that the time of the dictatorial and totalitarian regime in Iran is over. Young people want a government that respects the basic rights of all people. The only question is when that will happen. The international attention has so far been with the protesters.
But there is another group that could become important. I know a soldier who lives in Rascht, a town in the north. He is 20 years old and doing the last months of his military service. Already in the first days of the protests I sent him a message and asked him not to attack the participants under any circumstances. After three days he replied with a voice message. His voice sounded tired. “My comrades and I are to be posted in the streets and in the parks. But rest assured I will not go against the people,” he said. “If necessary, I will desert, but I will not hurt or shoot anyone.”
I hope that many think like him. Soldiers are often sent onto the streets against their convictions and used against critics – they are said to shoot at their friends, former classmates or family members. This is how the Iranian regime turns people against each other. If they refuse, their only option is escape or imprisonment. I recently read an article on Iran’s Tavaana platform entitled “Disobeying Orders, Dissent and Chaos Within the Military and Police Forces”.
It was about the problems of the security forces who faced the demonstrators. My heart felt warm. It was good news. Apparently, not all Iranian police officers are prepared to stand up to their own countrymen. The demonstrators have challenged the mullahs’ regime, perhaps for the first time it is feeling serious fear of not getting the riots under control. However, one can only speak of victory when all social groups join the boys and women on the street.
