The bravery of the young demonstrators in Iran is extraordinary. This is the third major wave of demonstrations to wrack the country in the past 13 years, and each one has been ferociously suppressed. The demonstrators have risked being beaten and shot. Their leaders risk being hunted down via social media and imprisoned - or in some cases, executed. At no point has there been a change of stance (or even a small gesture of compromise) from the country’s leaders.

Given the imbalance of forces within Iran, there is no tipping point where victory can be achieved. The legitimacy of the regime in the eyes of most middle class Iranians has long gone. The mullahs are widely seen to be a corrupt theocracy that uses paramilitary proxies to punish all forms of dissent as blasphemy. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Guards – an organisation set up in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution to safeguard the revolution from subversion - have expanded their socio-economic clout to the point where the Guards now have a stranglehold on every single aspect of the Iranian economy.

As a result, the sanctions imposed by US President Donald Trump have barely touched the religious and military elites, who have done very well out of the sanctions via, say, their control of the smuggling routes in and out of the country. The sanctions imposed by the US – and to which New Zealand has timidly acquiesced - have punished the people of Iran by vastly reducing their standard of living.

The protesters in Iran may be boiling in rage at the incompetence and brutality of the regime, but they could hardly be more isolated. Inside Iran, they face the unbridled violence of the religious paramilitaries. Externally, Iran faces the active hostility of the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel. As a result, the mullahs can deploy a combination of siege mentality and persecution complex as their last remaining card to validate and strengthen their rule.

Even paranoids, in other words, can have real enemies. To put it mildly, Iran’s array of enemies would be unlikely to regard the independence of Iran as being a top priority in any “liberation” efforts they cared to mount. The country would be stripped of any autonomy. Much as they may hate the mullahs, Iranians are too proud to ever tolerate being colonised.

Mahsa Amini

The current protests in Iran were ignited by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman. She appears to have been batoned on the head by a member of the basiji, a zealous paramilitary force often used by the mullahs to crush political dissent and to police any signs of religious ‘deviance’.

The symbolism of Mahsa Amini’s death is not new. In 2009, millions of Iranians had taken to the streets to protest the rigging of the election results against the two relatively liberal candidates ( Mie Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi) in favour of the incumbent hardliner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The protests became known as the Green Movement, after the colour used by Mousavi in his election campaign.

On 20 June 2009, Neda Agha-Soltan, a young philosophy student was standing beside her car and preparing to walk to a protest when she was shot by a member of the basiji. The video of her dying on the pavement became an iconic symbol (within Iran and around the world) of the brutality of the regime.

Then as now, the country’s youth and talent are being laid waste in the name of a perverted version of Islam. Reportedly, Mahsa Amini was arrested for not having her hair covered entirely. Probably, middle class young people in Iran could hardly feel more alienated right now from religion… But it is maybe still worth mentioning that the Middle East expert Professor Juan Cole has recently pointed out that the Qur’an, while generally supportive of modesty in appearance, ( see Sura of Light 24:31) does not endorse strict dress codes for women, and certainly not with respect to hair or head coverings:

The custom of veiling in the sense of wearing a head covering or a diaphanous veil over the face was common among Byzantine upper class women and among the same class in Sasanian Iran. Those Muslims who adopted this custom borrowed it from these other civilizations (both of which Muslim armies ultimately overwhelmed). It isn’t in the Qur’an.

Disunity amid dissent

Luckily for the regime…. The three recent waves of protests (ie. the Green Movement protests in 2009, the cost of living protests of 2017/18, and the current “hijab” protests set off by the death of Mahsa Amini) have not managed to bring all sectors of Iranian society together in revolt, at the same time. As this article by the Atlantic Council points out, the Green Movement was led by the middle class urban elites of Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz etc but -in 2009 – it failed to draw in the lower and lower-middle class Iranians from the smaller cities and provinces.

Ten years later, almost the reverse happened. The protests of 2017/18 began in the country’s second most populous city Mashhad as an angry reaction to the mullahs’ failing economic policies, but they did not spread beyond the smaller cities and countryside, and they didn’t link up with the urban elites:

….Iranians in small provincial towns and cities took to the streets demanding change during the December 2017 – January 2018 protests, but by and large failed to draw in Green Movement supporters in big cities.

The current protests in Iran seem once again to be mainly – although not entirely – a big city phenomenon among university students and the professional members of the squeezed middle class. Despite the bravery being shown by the demonstrators, the immediate outcome is not in doubt.

As for the medium /long term future… While the regime in Tehran is now widely discredited at home, its foreign enemies – the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia – seem intent on promoting forms of change unlikely to benefit most of Iran’s people. In that respect, the recent suggestion that New Zealand should align itself with Saudi Arabia and the US in naming the Revolutionary Guards – who comprise the nation’s armed forces and are its dominant business empire – as a terrorist organisation seems like a futile (and short-sighted) exercise in virtue signalling.

Meaning: Iran’s regional enemies are not our friends, not in this context. Regime change without an invasion may be unlikely, but regime change via an invasion is not a course of action where we want to be taking sides either. With Iran, there are no good options at present beyond denouncing the oppression, and granting asylum to those Iranians fleeing from it.

But that’s the current paradox/hypocrisy of our current policy to Iran, and the Iranian diaspora. We are good at expressions of sympathy and outrage. Yet when it comes to granting residency to Iran’s skilled graduates, the anecdotal evidence is that Immigration NZ blacklists them, and treats them as pariahs.

Footnote: As a sign of how the mullahs are becoming ever more paranoid…. Here’s how the state’s media mouthpiece, the Teheran Times conveyed the findings of the so-called “Iran High Council of Human Rights” report into the death of Mahsa Amini:

Citing a coroner’s report on the death of Mahsa Amini, the report said that the death was not caused by blows to the head or any vital organs and parts of the body.

Right. Mahsa Amini just up and died, almost immediately after being taken into custody. Dying in custody, or dying from contact with the forces of law and order, seems to be a fairly common occurrence. In a master class piece of Orwellian double talk, the High Council went to great lengths in its report to portray the oppressors as the victims:

“Certain human rights mechanisms and countries have described the riotous gatherings that disrupt security and public order as peaceful and supported the rioters. Of course, their political objectives are no mystery to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Now that more dimensions of the riots and the hands at play have been unravelled – especially following the statement of the Ministry of Intelligence – they are seriously expected to change their positions.”

The report continued with mire of the same:

“The peaceful gatherings that took place in different parts of the country following the death of the foregoing person have unfortunately morphed into riots and vandalism. In the meantime, certain European countries and the United States started to intervene and support the rioters by openly interfering in Iran’s internal affairs in a completely unconventional manner and contrary to international standards.

Oh, and things have only escalated from there:

….During the riots, certain individuals, led by anti-establishment and terrorist movements, resorted to the worst kind of violence against the people and the police, brandishing combat rifles, armes blanches and incendiaries, while diverting people’s requests and demands. The rioters used social media networks to organize the riots and carry out acts of destruction, thereby inciting and provoking everyone to confront the police. During the disruptive riots, many public and private properties were set ablaze or looted; some law enforcement officers and ordinary people were also killed or injured by armes blanches and firearms brandished by the rioters. Defenceless administrative centres and public services such as banks, ATMs, ambulances, public transportation, police vehicles, fire engines and religious places were widely attacked, many of which were destroyed and burned.” And in case you missed the key point:

“The riots have nothing to do with the death of Mahsa Amini, hijab and women’s rights. The enemies of Iran used this pretext and sparked chaos and riots with their continuous plans…”

Footnote Two: The leading Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani has always opposed the fusion of politics and moral leadership within Iran’s Islamic Revolution. The inevitable outcome of clerics wielding political power, Sistani warned, would be to discredit religion in the eyes of the people.

Incidentally, Sistani’s website contains his teachings on matters great and small, in helping believers to live a morally consistent life. There’s guidance on everything from should you get a tattoo (answer: it's OK) to playing chess or backgammon (forbidden, with or without betting) and more besides, all the way up to the ideal structure of the state.

Music of Protest

Here is the song that has become very closely associated with the Mahsa Amini protests. No surprise to hear that the singer Shervin Hajipour, has since been taken into custody by the authorities.

And as a welcome reminder of the cultural richness of Iran, here’s a terrific NPR Tiny Desk concert featuring the late, much revered Iranian singer Mohamad Reza-Shajarian:

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