On two occasions, the mass protests rocking Iran have even reached its deeply conservative neighborhood. Shahrzad, a 36-year-old instructor who lives with her parents and acts as a caregiver, has so far made good on her promise not to enroll in them, even if she needs to.
She had participated in protests that erupted in 2009 after a disputed presidential election that in many cases was fraudulent. These lasted a year and came to nothing, like the massive economic protests in early 2018 and last in 2019.
But this time, things look different.
“You just can’t compare anger to what it was in 2009. At that time, it was most common for him to protest the average elegance. Now you hardly find anyone who supports the government line or the way things are going,” he said. Shahrzad, who asked that his full call not be used for fear of reprisals.
Even in the conservative Tehran district where she lives, teenage schoolgirls were covering their heads in the street, something unthinkable a few weeks ago, before fury broke out over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, detained in Iran. The morality police, who arrested her for allegedly violating the law requiring the wearing of hijab and modest dress for women.
“It’s going to be very complicated to avoid this,” Shahrzad said.
Two and a half weeks after the nationwide protests that caught the attention of the Iranian government and the world began, protesters show little sign of surrendering. On the contrary, they have stepped it up: in recent days, academics have taken the lead, taking credit for the start of the school year to make explicit their angry protests on college campuses and top schools across the country.
Videos widely shared Monday on social media, despite government attempts to shut down the website, show teenagers in school uniforms booing public officials, their hijabs on the side. Others record prominent university academics involved in tense clashes with security forces. Unions are about to join the unrest and have called for measures that promise to further fuel the most intense series of unrest Iran has experienced in more than a decade.
This is despite a government that is more interested in controlling protesters, through lethal force, if mandatory, than in addressing complaints about the state over people’s lives, the precarious state of the economy strangled by sanctions, and Iran’s continued foreign isolation. But there is a growing sense that the violent playbook the theocratic regime has used to stifle dissent in the afterlife will not work this time.
This is especially true compared to other hyper-connected young people who have never known anything but what a hit song calls “the necessary paradise” of life under the dictates of the Islamic Republic.
“This is not going to end anytime soon. Our generation is too knowledgeable to be fooled by old tactics, and we don’t need our lives to be governed by the ideologies of the elderly,” said Mahbod, a student at Sharif University, one of Tehran’s most sensible higher education establishments, who, like Shahrzad and others interviewed, gave only his first name.
“And it’s a real social revolution. Students have the participation of siblings, parents, uncles, grandparents, all strata of society are involved.
What worries political leaders most is that even if the state were willing to compromise, analysts say it would possibly be too late.
“The exercise is out of the station. No matter what this government gives, it’s probably not enough to quell protesters’ grievances right now,” said Dina Esfandiary, senior advisor for the Middle East and North Africa region at International. Crisis Group of experts.
Iran’s leaders, he said, see the scenario as similar to the complicated scenario faced by the vanquished Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader whose reforms brought greater freedom to Russians but also the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union.
“If they give in now, it will be a Gorbachev moment: the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic. That’s how they see it,” Esfandiary said.
This austere vision portends a confrontation between a government in a position to use ever-increasing force and protesters who have increasingly resorted to slogans such as “Death to the dictator!”to measure how far they are willing to take things. Restoring the country, especially among women, will be more difficult, said Azadeh Akbari, an Iran expert at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.
“If each and every woman makes the decision to take off her hijab, how many police will it take for this?” she said. This is the real revolution. “
A look at Shahrzad’s life shows the intensity of the discontent facing Iran’s leaders. She has never agreed with the hijab law, but sees it more as a nuisance than anything else, especially in the country’s hot summer, when she has to wear her headscarf to paint for 8 hours.
More irritating is life in a country plagued by chronic mismanagement, a series of foreign sanctions over its nuclear program, and the COVID-19 outbreak, all of which have Shahrzad’s world on.
A university graduate with a degree in biochemistry, she doesn’t have much to do other than be an instructor and administrator in schools in southern Tehran. Earn $350 a month, which is not enough to rent a small apartment, just buy one. The fundamental notions of marriage, children, and the cornerstones of a solid, middle-class lifestyle seem implausible.
“Ten years ago, I may have only traveled in and out of the country. I can’t do that anymore,” he said. I can’t buy a reasonable car. I deserve to have had my own small apartment so far, with some undeniable furniture. Instead, I live with my parents. If my computer breaks down, I’ll have to wait a few months before I can buy one.
Even members of the government acknowledge that the scenario is difficult. In a speech this week, parliament speaker Mohammad Qalibaf sang about the police and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a rally, but also acknowledged that others have the right to complain about the sorry situation. Economic conditions.
Those considerations are new, Esfandiary said, but this time other people are angrier.
“They are more competitive and violent, and this is stimulated through the sense of hopelessness that Iranians feel now,” he said.
However, Khamenei and other leaders have retreated to their very old explanation of social conflict, exonerating themselves and outside forces. On Monday, Khamenei broke his silence after 17 days of protests to describe them as “riots and insecurities” planned through Tehran’s same old adversaries. The United States and Israel. La elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, police and pro-government militiamen have used rubber bullets, live ammunition, beatings and arrest campaigns to quell what they insist on the chaos caused abroad.
Shahrzad can see depression and depression in her own family. Even his brother-in-law, a gentle guy who never hit anyone, he said, found himself fighting with a militiaman he saw trying to force a woguy into a car when he returned. house on the fifth day of the protests.
“If someone like him did it, it would definitely be more violent,” he said.
Another explanation for why the patience of the protests has been the deep pit of opposition to the hijab law, which began dictating women’s dress and habit in Iran a few years after the 1979 Islamic revolution brought Islamic clerics to power.
“We have had middle-class uprisings for economic reasons, but this time part of society, from schoolgirls to grandmothers, is tired that enough is enough,” Akbari said.
The existing unrest may not mean the change of government many expect, said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, who founded Bourse.
“Women’s rights are the ultimate visual form of what other people protest. But what they are asking for now is a real renewal in the way the state and society interact,” he said.
Shahrzad is going back and forth to see if the protests are successful. But she is sure of one thing: even if the government manages to prevent the protests, they will inevitably resume.
“There are too many other people who have nothing to lose now,” he said.
“It can’t happen like this. People are fed up. “
Special correspondent Khazani reported from Tehran and Times Hoaxes from Beirut.
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