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  Iranian women protest government repression

US women protest Roe reversal  

Although the protests include swaths of male supporters, repression often lands hardest on those who are often subject to conditions and regulations that are much less impactful on those in power, whether these restrictions impact those at the bottom of the economic ladder… or with greater frequency, women. The world is currently spotlighting the mega-repressive theocracy in Iran, where women are subject to a litany of deeply personal restrictions enforced by an often-violent Shiite “morality police.”

Restrictions are not imposed on men; limits on women’s clothing in fact are set to save men from being distracted by female attractiveness. Woman are blamed! Substantial coverings, including for female beachgoers, and at a minimum – to keep men from being lured by attractive long hair – the ubiquitous hijab (a substantial headscarf), are mandated. Even provocative make-up can incur the wrath of government-appointed morality police.

For Americans with little understanding of the Persian culture, they lump Iran into their perceived description of the assemblage of oil-rich “ragheads and camel jockeys,” epithets which are ignorantly applied to Muslims the world over. So much of urban social structures and modernity were born in ancient Persia, a tradition that has continued well into the present. While there is a greater schism between rural and urban Shiite Muslim (and related) values, the fact remains that education levels in Iran are globally competitive, STEM professions are admired and supported, and under women’s black robes and chadors are often the latest high fashion blouses and dresses… stilettos are usually reserved for private parties and travel.

Since the 1979 revolution, which deposed the Shah and installed a religious hierarchy to rule, Iran has gone through periods of mild liberalism to severe conservative Shiite repression. Her nuclear program, jump-started with nuclear technology from fellow Islamic nation, Pakistan, is on the verge of nuclear weapons capability. The pause in her weapons-grade nuclear enrichment program generated by a six-party, U.N.-sponsored nuclear limitation accord, accelerated when, in 2018, President Trump pulled the United States out of that treaty and the accord collapsed.

While there are elections in Iran, not only is the political system subservient to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but only approved candidate can run for political office. As a result, in 2021 hard-liner and uncontested Ebrahim Raisi was elected president. Raisi promptly rolled back many of the reforms from the last two decades and boosted the morality police.

While there have been significant protests in the recent past, notably in 2019 over economic woes, this fall Iran recently exploded into massive and often violent protests in 80 cities across the country. Thousands were arrested, injured or killed (including several police officers). Some alleged police/military fired rifles into the massive crowds. There had been simmering unrest due to the reluctance of the religious leadership to embrace meaningful negotiations with the West to exchange a reduction in sophisticated Iranian nuclear technology for release of those sanctions. But the recent escalation of personal repression, under a growing rebellion by women, tired of the “blame-driven” dress code and the morality police, needed a single spark to explode.

That spark came when Mahsa “Amini, a Kurdish woman from the northwestern city of Saqez, was visiting Tehran on Sept. 13 when she was detained by the so-called morality police (the Gasht-e Ershad, or guidance patrols), who said she was wearing tight trousers and didn’t have her headscarf on properly, in violation of a law that mandates women wear a hijab and loose-fitting clothes so as to disguise their figures in public.

“Activists said she was beaten with a baton on her head and suffered other injuries that were serious enough to put her in a coma. Three days later she was dead. Authorities deny beating Amini and insisted in a statement that the cause of death was sudden heart failure, possibly from preexisting conditions… ‘They are lying,’ Amjad Amini, the young woman’s father, told BBC Persian on Thursday [9/22]. ‘She has not been to any hospital at all in the past 22 years, other than for a few cold-related sicknesses.’… He added that his son had witnessed his sister being beaten in the van and police station and was himself roughed up by officers.” Los Angeles Times, September 24th. The government responded to the widespread protests, much of it directed at Khamenei himself, resulting in the bloodiest crackdown since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, with hundreds of people — some reports say as many as 1,500 — dead.

The plight of women the world over has been exacerbated by right-wing extremism, displacement generated from wars and climate change; as the principal guardians of the family, it is women who have been slammed the hardest. That a right-wing dominated US Supreme Court and elderly male state legislators have fomented a brutal repression against women’s rights to control their own bodies seems to be consistent with this abysmal global trend. Our policies, often dictated by male-dominated leadership, sometimes miss the point. Iran, lumbering under horrible conditions, much caused by US policies, as we refuse to address the plaintiff cry of women seeking civil rights, effectively supporting the hardliners who have dug in their heels.

Indeed, Iranian-American journalist (who chooses to wear a hijab), writing for the LA Times (9/24), opines: “Since the 1979 Revolution, U.S. actions have provided fear-mongering opportunities for hardliners to exploit and build power. President Ebrahim Raisi’s election itself can be seen in part as a product of Trump’s military interventions and ‘maximum pressure sanctions.’ As the economy has been squeezed and ordinary people suffer, the Revolutionary Guards have seized an even bigger share of the national economy, literally concentrating wealth in their hands.

“And yet, despite hardliners and sanctions, these past few days I’ve never been prouder to watch Iranian women standing on cars lighting headscarves on fire, workers and students pouring into the streets, and seeing signs and slogans demanding freedom and liberation for all people.

“Women’s rights are under attack globally, and Iranian women are on the front lines of this battle. We can learn from their courage in standing up in the face of state violence and police brutality. To support their cause, we need to demand an immediate lifting of sanctions (the U.S. lifted some internet technology-related sanctions on Friday) so that they can continue to rise up on their terms against oppression in all forms.”

One side benefit of lifting sanctions, aside from improving the lot of ordinary Iranians, would be a flood in the global supply of oil… which would have an important impact on the price as the pump. The sanctions have not worked, the hardliners got harder, and the world is definitely not a better place as a result. Iran’s leadership has only pushed back; they do not care about their own people.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the notion that governments and religious leaders can force their “subjects” to tow their repressive and extreme doctrinaire views of human behavior has been the source of profound levels of misery for most of history.