LONDON: Forty days in and the protests that have rocked Iran since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the regime’s notorious morality police show no sign of abating, yet experts remain divided over whether the movement can achieve real change.
Multiple waves of anti-government protest have rocked Iran over the past two decades, from the 1999 Salam newspaper disorders, in which seven students died, to the 2009 Green Movement, which ended after 72 protesters were killed by security forces.
Later came the 2019 fuel and gas crisis, which brought 200,000 people to the streets and left at least 143 dead, according to human rights monitor Amnesty International.
However, the current demonstrations, which followed Amini’s death in police custody over an alleged infringement of the country’s strict hijab rules, represent something of a sea change, with the usual heavy-handed regime response failing to blunt their momentum.
“In 2009, the majority of the protesters were from the middle classes. In 2022, protesters are from the working classes and lower sections of the middle classes,” Yassamine Mather, editor of the UK academic journal Critique and expert in Iranian politics, told Arab News.
“This means we are seeing in total larger numbers involved in the protests and the demonstrators are younger and braver than 2009. They don’t seem deterred by attacks from the security forces.
“This can only be compared with protests in 1979. All this coincides with unprecedented workers’ strikes and general unrest. It looks like repression, curtailing the Internet, arrests and killing of protesters has failed.”
Indeed, at the time of writing, what is being termed the “Mahsa Amini Revolution” by anti-government groups has become the largest, deepest and bloodiest movement the regime has faced since taking power in the revolution of 1979.
Protests have taken place in more than 80 cities across the country, involving both men and women, and people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds. The unrest has left more than 200 people dead, including school children.
The initial focus of the movement was on Iran’s strict clothing requirements for women, before swelling to include calls for greater civic freedoms, finally leading to a concerted demand for the outright removal of the clerical regime.
Sanam Vakil, deputy director of Chatham House and senior research fellow for the institute’s Middle East and North Africa program, told Arab News the latest protests are the “most significant” the regime has faced.
“Despite government repression, the persistence of the protests and myriad groups coming out to express grievances — women, students, labor entities, ethnic groups, youth groups — reveals the breadth of dissatisfaction within Iran,” Vakil said.
“We have also yet to see these groups coalesce simultaneously, this decentralized approach is also a distinguishing quality.”
Both Vakil and Mather see the decentralized approach as a “blessing and a curse,” and have concerns that the absence of a central authority figure will prove even more problematic as the unrest continues.
“Lack of coordination and organization can become a serious problem as protests escalate and repression increases,” said Mather. “The absence of an alternative (to the government) is an issue (and) I don’t believe in the idea that progressive leadership spontaneously emerges from within the ranks of demonstrators. This hasn’t happened so far.”
The benefit of having a figurehead at the helm of a movement is that they can provide a clear articulation of its aims on behalf of the wider…
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