From Mahsa Amini to Armita Geravand: A Year of Tragedy and Hope in the Iranian “Women, Life, Freedom” Movement
On September 16th, 2022 Mahsa Amini, also known as Jina, died in police custody following an assault by the Iranian morality policy. She had violated Iran's strict hijab laws, was subsequently taken into custody, and assaulted, leading to her death a few days later. This event triggered the largest protest movement in the Islamic Republic’s history. Beginning with chants and demands centered around women’s rights and the oppression inflicted by the morality policy, the movement eventually called for the abolition of the Islamic Republic and “death to dictator” (Supreme Leader Khamenei). It became known as the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, named after the primary demands of the protestors as well as their most popular chant.
Almost thirteen months later to date, a 16-year old Armita Geravand, was assaulted on Tehran underground by the morality police due to not following hijab laws. She died a few weeks later after falling into a coma. Mahsa Amini was apprehended as she was leaving Tehran underground as well. Thus, the murders of two young women at similar venues, spaced thirteen months apart and committed simply because they showed their hair, might create the appearance that little has changed. While politically this is true, as the regime still holds onto power and all its instruments, the impact has been mostly socio-cultural. Therefore, it is worth delving into the background, successes, and failures of the movement, as well as the reasons behind it.
After September 16th, 2022 the protests steadily grew in size and scope. Initially, they occurred in Amini’s hometown Saqez and Tehran but later engulfed the whole country, from big cities to small villages. The demands also expanded; initially focused on compulsory hijab laws, their violent enforcement, and the general disregard for women’s rights, they later explicitly called for the end of the regime, death to Khamenei, and included chants labeling the regime’s paramilitary, Basij, “our Daesh” (a mocking term for the Islamic State). Such an open and explicit opposition and antagonism to the regime was unprecedented on such a scale.
In comparison the 2009-2010 Green Movement, then also the biggest since 1979, was smaller and more limited in political demands. Therefore, in response to this unprecedented opposition and demonstrations, the government reacted with equally unprecedented repression. It killed over 500 demonstrators, arrested more than 22,000, and then executed 7 more in the Spring of 2023, all while routinely using live ammunition on its citizens in the streets. The regime’s ruthlessness, however, was not the only factor that made a political change impossible.
The other factor was the nature, history and structure of the regime itself. As the regime came to power through the 1978-1979 Revolution and the post-revolutionary politicking of 1979, it witnessed the Shah’s all-powerful military backstabbing him in January 1979 by standing down and effectively forcing him to leave the country. It realized that relying on one instrument for survival was unsustainable, leading to the creation of a parallel military structure – the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the “ideological custodian of Iran’s 1979 revolution”. This structure aimed to protect not only the state but the Revolutionary Regime itself. The regime also established the paramilitary Basij, commanded by the IRGC and the morality police, or the Guidance Patrol, tasked with enforcing Sharia law, especially the imposed dress code.
The formative experience of the Islamic Republic, witnessing the army standing down, led to the understanding that it couldn't rely on one instrument for survival. This resulted in the creation of diverse institutions like the IRGC or Basij to ensure loyalty to the Revolutionary Government rather than the state. As the protests grew in violence and scale in October 2022, the possible “betrayal” of a single entity, like the army or the police, would not be relevant as other state organs would uphold the regime’s grip on power. It meant that, regardless of the brutality and scale of repressions, the government always had loyal entities disabling any significant political change. The regime's experience in coming into being through a revolution allowed it to make itself immune to a similar social movement, ensuring the diversification of repressive forces and the creation of separate institutions loyal to the regime, effectively quelling the protests.
Another reason for the lack of tangible political success was the absence of a unified and popular leadership within the opposition. While it became quite clear in early 1978 that Khomeini was "the'' opposition leader, with his speeches smuggled into Iran in thousands of cassette tapes and an article slandering him inspiring the pivotal 1978 Qum Protests, the 2022-2023 movement did not have such a central, unifying figure. While there were individuals with some support, such as Maryam Rajavi the president of the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI) or the Shah’s eldest son, Reza Pahlavi, neither had enough support or political capital. The former is the leader of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK; the dominant party in the NCRI), an organization which sided with Iraq in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, unsurprisingly making it extremely unpopular in Iran. The latter was never a viable option as the cruelty of his father’s regime still lives on in Iranians’ collective memory. While there are a plethora of admirable activists, such as the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laurate Narges Mohammadi, or Masih Alinejad, they are not political figures with enough clout and ability to unify and lead such a movement. Moreover, many, like Mohammadi, are already imprisoned. The lack of a unified leadership in the opposition, a clear and viable political alternative, coupled with the ruthlessness of the repression forces, designed specifically to quell such movements, were the main reasons a political progress has not been achieved.
Nevertheless, some things have changed. The boldness of the protests impacted and transformed society by further delegitimizing the regime and entrenching daily acts of resistance. Many women refuse to obey repressive hijab laws. Armita Geravand’s lack of a veil was not a coincidence but one of millions of such daily resistance acts by Iranian women. The regime, by killing its citizens by the hundreds, has now lost any remnants of support and is surviving only thanks to its complex, yet effective, repression apparatus. Solidarity with, and the history of, Iranian women has reached the entire globe, with huge demonstrations in New York, London, or Berlin, as well as cities with small Iranian populations in Central and Eastern Europe. Bills named after Amini have passed in the U.S. House and a plethora of additional sanctions have been implemented. Most importantly, certain socio-cultural barriers have been broken. The populace has for the first time openly called for the death of its “Supreme Leader”, an act whose importance is hard to overestimate. Little girls attacked ulema members in the streets by knocking off their turbans and millions of women continue their resistance by ignoring the hijab laws and risking that they share the fate of Amini, Geravand, Shakarami, or hundreds of others. The challenge to the regime’s power has never been so open, explicit, and strong. Thus, while daily acts of resistance continue, as well as smaller demonstrations and strikes, the fact that the movement receded in comparison to what it once was may create the illusion of failure. However, it has created irreversible cultural and social rifts that will remain both present and unaddressed, and ones which are more than likely to resurface at some point in the future.