The ongoing protests in the past months have rocked Iran to its core. What began as a wave of street demonstrations and protests has by now turned into a veritable revolution led by courageous and defiant women. What is the broader historical context regarding these current events? How has the oppressive patriarchal regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran paradoxically generated forms of public participation, collective action, and mobilization, which have empowered women? What is the role of the media and of patterns of solidarity emerging in these protests and could these potentially lead to a transformation of the regime, or, in fact, to its end?
Guests featured in this episode:
Azadeh Moaveni, the Iranian-American writer and journalist who has been covering the Middle East for more than two decades. A renowned expert on Iran, the Islamic State, as well as Middle East Politics and Islamic society in general, she has focused her work on how women are impacted by political conflicts, and how their social and political rights are affected by militarism and Islamism.
In 2005, she published the international bestseller Lipstick Jihad, a memoir recounting her experience of the Iranian reform and women’s rights movements. The following year saw the publication of Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, co-authored with the Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi.
GLOSSARY:
What are Iran’s morality police?
(02:33 or p.1 in the transcript)
"Gasht-e-Ershad," which translates as "guidance patrols," and is widely known as the "morality police," is a unit of Iran’s police force established under former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Wearing the hijab became mandatory in Iran in 1983. It was not until 2006 that the unit began patrolling the streets, tasked with enforcing the laws on Islamic dress code in public. According to Iranian law, all women above the age of puberty must wear a head covering and loose clothing in public, although the exact age is not clearly defined. In school, girls typically have to wear the hijab from the age of seven, but that does not mean they need to necessarily wear it in other public places.
A major part of Iran’s social regulations are based on the state's interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, which requires both men and women to dress modestly. However, in practice, the "morality police" have in the past primarily targeted women. There are no clear guidelines or details on what types of clothing qualify as inappropriate, leaving a lot of room for interpretation and sparking accusations that the "morality" enforcers arbitrarily detain women. Morality police squads have in the past been made up of men wearing green uniforms and women in black chadors, garments which cover the head and upper body. Those detained by the "morality police" are given a notice or, in some cases, are taken to a so-called education and advice center or a police station, where they are required to attend a mandatory lecture on the hijab and Islamic values. They then have to call someone to bring them "appropriate clothes" in order to be released. source
What is the Iran nuclear deal?
(20:06 or p.5 in the transcript)
The Iran nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is a landmark accord reached between Iran and several world powers, including the United States, in July 2015.
Under its terms, Iran agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program and open its facilities to more extensive international inspections in exchange for billions of dollars’ worth of sanctions relief. Proponents of the deal said that it would help prevent a revival of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and thereby reduce the prospects for conflict between Iran and its regional rivals, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. However, the deal has been in jeopardy since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from it in 2018. In retaliation for the U.S. departure and for deadly attacks on prominent Iranians in 2020, including one by the United States, Iran has resumed some of its nuclear activities. In 2021, President Joe Biden said the United States would return to the deal if Iran came back into compliance. Renewed diplomacy initially seemed promising, but after stop-and-go talks, it remains unclear if the parties can come to an agreement. source
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SR: Welcome to "Democracy in Question," the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world. I'm Shalini Randeria, Rector and President of Central European University, Vienna, and Senior Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. This is the 10th episode of Season 5 of "Democracy in Question" and the final episode this year. It's my great pleasure to welcome today the Iranian American writer and journalist, Azadeh Moaveni, who’s been covering the Middle East for more than two decades.
She's a renowned expert on Iran, the Islamic State, as well as Middle Eastern politics, and Islamic society in general. Her work addresses how women are impacted by political conflicts and how their social and political rights are affected by militarism and Islamism. She started her career as a journalist in 1999, reporting for the "Cairo Times" and "Al-Ahram Weekly" when she traveled to Tehran to report on the student uprising that year. After three years as the Tehran correspondent of “Time”, she joined the "Los Angeles Times" and covered the war in Iraq and its aftermath.
Her international bestseller "Lipstick Jihad" recounts her experiences of the Iranian reform and women's rights movements. Her book after that, "Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope" was co-authored with the Nobel Prize Laureate, Shirin Ebadi. She's a regular contributor to the "London Review of Books," "Guardian," "Financial Times," "Foreign Policy," and also the "New York Times." Azadeh, whose name means freedom, has also directed the Gender and Conflict Project at the International Crisis Group working especially on women in detention camps in Nigeria and Syria.
Azadeh and I will discuss today the ongoing protests that have rocked Iran for the last three months. What began as a wave of street demonstrations and protests has by now turned into a veritable revolution led by courageous and defiant women. On September 13th this year, a young woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, was detained by the guidance patrol in Tehran. Savagely beaten by the morality police, she passed away on September the 16th.
Her crime was her apparent failure to abide by the strict rules prescribing veiling in public, which has been contested by many Iranian women ever since it was introduced in 1983. Political mobilization of women has a long history in Iran, beginning with their role in the constitutional revolution, 1905 to 1911, to their active participation in the 1979 revolution that toppled the American-supported Shah regime. The continuing protests sparked by Mahsa Amini's death seemed to be, however, unprecedented in the scale of spontaneous mobilization of not only women, but also men all over Iran, many of them schoolgirls who are courageously defying the regime. More than 400 people, some of them young children have already lost their lives over the last 3 months due to the brutal attempts by the regime to suppress these protests.
I'll discuss with Azadeh the growing waves of protests, ask her to situate the current events in a broader historical context, and to explain to us how the oppressive patriarchal regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran has paradoxically generated forms of public participation, collective action, and mobilization, which have empowered women. She will also elucidate the role of the media and of patterns of solidarity emerging in these protests and reflect on whether these could potentially lead to a transformation of the regime, or, in fact, to its end. Azadeh, welcome to the podcast, and thank you so much for joining me today. It's wonderful to be able to discuss these issues as they are unfolding in front of our eyes with you.
AM: It's really my pleasure, Shalini. I've been so looking forward to our conversation.
SR: Women in Iran are reclaiming the right for bodily autonomy and self-determination. Their body politics promises to transform the Iranian body politic beyond recognition. Could you begin by situating these protests in a broader historical context of women's engagement in social and political activism, and also explain to us what is different this time? And is the revolution we are witnessing driven by grievances against the regime's ultra-conservative policies, much broader grievances than just the headscarf or veiling or hijab, and the failure of the regime to address any demands for reforms despite so many demonstrations and protests over the years?
AM: Well, to start with you, you asked about situating what we're seeing now, this feminist-infused revolts in a longer arc of Iranian women's activism. And actually, you alluded to one of the earliest phases of that in your introduction, women's role in the constitutional revolution. I don't think that it's sort of largely perceived by the outside world that Iranian women have played a very influential role in politics and in shaping the direction of the country, both domestically and on the world stage.
Since the late 19th century from the late Qajar period, that's the monarchy that governed Iran before the Pahlavi era, women were influential in the court of the King propelling a boycott against tobacco. The king had agreed to a controversial concession, a tobacco concession to the British that were not directly colonizing Iran at the time, but were indirectly, essentially affecting the country's politics and exploiting a lot of its resources through these concessions.
So, they were at the very forefront of this boycott. And I think that inflects one of the strands of Iranian women's activism, which has been a strong and very ardent nationalist position against imperialism. So, always women's activism, it's been multi-stranded. It's been anti-imperialistic, but very much, at the same time, focused on internal domestic reforms, both in the formal sphere.
So, in the 1920s, there was a big push. Women's organizations and women's activism focused a lot around building an education sphere so that women could become literate and expanding that. And, of course, that was a domestic battle because Iran is a highly conservative society, especially at the time. You know, they were up against patriarchal attitudes about women's role in society. They were up against an outraged clergy. We can trace that through the middle of the 20th century when Iran had, of course, a secular monarchy run by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose government enacted top-down secular feminism.
So, this was sort of state feminism intended to modernize Iran through liberal social moray. So, his father banned the wearing of the veil in 1936. The Shah's government enacted a sweeping family code that gave women, really, for that time, strikingly equal rights in marriage, in divorce, in child custody. And so leading up to the 1979 revolution, they were part of the leftist opposition, the guerilla movements, the Marxist opposition. They were part of the Islamist opposition. So, really, it's a very long story that precedes what we're seeing today.
But what I find striking about the movement now is that it is collapsing the distinction between formal and informal activism. You don't have women, asking for the repeal of the hijab laws through legislation, and you don't see them cautiously organizing in a grassroots way to sort of persuade and pull society along. They're just angry, and they have imposed a new legal reality, essentially, a new status quo. They're walking around the streets of the whole country. You can see the footage on YouTube. It's extraordinary. They've canceled this law, and they've imposed it also on their country people who don't like this, many of them. You know, 30% of Iran is still quite religious and still very much loyal to the system.
In the early 2000s, often if my head scarf slipped or if I was wearing something wrong, it wasn't simply the morality police, ordinary people would glare at you or would say something. You know, there was a patriarchal element of Iranian society, and these laws did not come out of nowhere. The Islamic Republic might feel very alien to the majority of Iranians today, but it did come out of Iranian society. So, that's what I think is quite incredible about this moment, that it’s sort of women who have taken on an unfair and unjust set of laws, but they've also imposed their way of wishing to live on their societal fathers, brothers, disapproving neighbors. Everyone just has to accept it now.
SR: So, to come back to this whole question of some of the paradoxes in the way in which women's rights have come to play a role in Iran, interestingly, it was partly due to the strict imposition of veiling that many Iranian women from more traditional backgrounds were able to gain access at all to the public sphere. So, women were then able to carve out spaces for subtler forms of resistance and participation, as you point out. But among the most remarkable unintended consequences of the Islamic Republic is the increase in women's literacy from 36% to around 98% while the share of women's students in higher education has risen from 15% to 60%.
In fact, so much so that the conservatives in the 8th Majlis, the Parliament, 10 years ago introduced affirmative action policies for male students. This is …It's really amazing. But as you have pointed out in a recent article, women have disproportionately also borne the brunt of the economic woes that the country has faced with unemployment rates, which are much higher than those of men. So, the question here for me is a twofold one. Do you think that the movement is likely to be much more successful this time because women play such a prominent role? Because as we know from sociological studies of social movements all around the world, movements led by women are usually much more non-violent in the kinds of strategies and tactics that they use.
And so, a violent response from those in power can easily backfire and reveals more about the weaknesses of the regime than its strengths, actually showing its desperation in the face of the courage shown by these, sometimes very young schoolgirls too. And what do you make of some of the concessions which were announced just this week such as the revision of the veiling requirement and one sort of, not a proper announcement, but a hint at the dismantling of even the morality police?
AM: On the side of the perhaps increased potential of this movement, the possibility that it could be more successful than other episodes of protests that Iran has experienced in the last 25 years, because it is centered around or was sparked by feminist demands, and because it so broadly includes women, I certainly think that this moment is fundamentally different than anything that has preceded it. As a protest, it has marked a turning point, and whether that's through the collapsing of ordinary people's fear of the government's social controls as they're sort of enacted on the streets through morality policing. So, I do think that this is going to be the most significant phase of civil challenge that the Islamic Republic has ever faced in its history. And I do think that it does have a chance of being more successful because of the role of women simply because it's harnessing half of society.
So, I do, I think that it is tremendously unifying, and it pulls along society united around a movement that may not have a vision yet, but that everyone has a stake in. And I don't think that's ever happened before. Not everyone had a stake in protests about just workers' rights. Not everyone had a stake in protests about the closure of a newspaper and around freedom of speech or about elections, but everyone has a stake in this, and we can see that in the sort of incredible sweep and turnout of the protests. So, I think the role of women is fundamentally what makes this the momentous movement that it is with the potential.
On the concessions, I don't think there're concessions at all. The hijab and Islamic, sort of tenants around morality are at the very core of the system, and it's not something that certainly under this supreme leader and that, in this moment, the system will give up on at all. And it also has a constituency that for 40 years, it's cultivated around this ideology, and that constituency is the very, very last vestige of the system's strength. And so, it has to deliver to them, it has to pander to them, it has to uphold their expectations. So, it's a narrow base, but it's the only base the system has. And that base would be bewildered, flummoxed, would not be able to tolerate a change in the hijab law.
So, I think what we're hearing, the attorney general having said that the morality police is suspended, is very ambiguous, sort of trial balloons around what they can do to kind of potentially muddy the waters a little bit, make morality policing much more diffuse. Maybe they use surveillance cameras and facial recognition technology. They've floated using facial recognition to then freeze the bank accounts of women who are captured outside not having worn their hijab. So, essentially turning it into a much more technology-fueled, subtle, but still highly controlling approach to the same thing so that it won't lead to these clashes we see, but that the element of control and fear is still very much maintained.
SR: So, what was surprising for an observer of Iran from the outside like myself is the fact that we saw so many older women, but especially also religiously observant women, as well as young men come out on the streets in support. So, do you think there's a chance that there will be much, much larger popular support across the business communities, the bazaaris, the people who have been also involved earlier in solidarity strikes, labor movements, etc.? But the question that I had was, I mean, given the fact that there is so much economic misery in Iran, thanks to partly the sanctions and partly thanks to the domestic policies of this regime, do you think it'll be the economic issues which could lead to a much larger mobilization than the women's issues?
AM: I think that what Iranians realize now is that they're all interconnected. That the failures of governance or the unwillingness of the government or the state to accept the will of the people in issues of dress and mandatory dress codes, in disallowing essentially any kind of genuine participation in the electoral process anymore, these are all linked together, that the state of the economy is a result of these same broken politics. So, that people's various grievances, I think they now see them as all part and parcel of the fundamental political failing of the system. So, whereas before, I think there was a way to sort of differentiate and have baskets of problems like these are economic problems, these are cultural and social problems, these are problems of political freedom, and that there are all different constituencies that hold different priorities around these things. And like, here, we'll pacify some, and then there we'll give a little bit there, and that's how we'll manage it all, I think what's broken through in people's sort of attitude towards the system is that they're all interconnected.
The reason there are sanctions is because the government has an ideological vision of regional security, that does not provide welfare to its citizens. There's a constellation now in the minds of people around the mode of governance, which does not reflect the popular will and that everything is now connected, which is why I think that the protests have become so radical. So while I think the backdrop of the absolutely immiserated economy and people's stratospheric drop in quality of life – I mean, there's no middle class in Iran anymore – I think it's sort of hard to even sort of capture the fall in people's living standards, the sort of soaring inflation. That is definitely an accelerant.
And I think we have to be sort of very aware and acknowledge that, you know, it is in an impoverished country that is out on the streets right now, and that is part of it. I think people now see their impoverishment as a symptom of broken politics. So, they won't be pacified anymore by some public subsidies or little extra spending here and there. It is now, I think, apparent to everyone that the reason the economy is broken is because of domestic politics.
SR: But, Azadeh, to pick up one point which you've just made, which is the fact that there is an interlinkage between the economic, political, cultural questions, and I think you're right on that, but the point you just made was about the effects of the sanctions. There’s little that we can say probably that's good about this regime, but we should say it did go out of its comfort zone to strike a deal with the U.S. government under Obama. It did try to reach out and much against its ideological views, it entered into a treaty on the nuclear deal. And don't you think that the discontent is also a result of, under Trump, the U.S. government backing out from a deal which could have been a path forward, not only for nuclear security in the region, but also for economic prosperity back in Iran?
AM: Yes, Shalini, you raised such an important point. And it really is, for me, a very depressing one because this was a deal that was intended to have so many regional global benefits flow from it security-wise. It would've halted a nuclear armament race in the Middle East. It was a disarmament deal but was intended to bring Iran out of economic isolation. And eventually ideally out of political isolation, it was meant to build confidence and reset politics between Iran and the West. And it was certainly a shock to me, and I think to many, that the Islamic Republic signed this deal. They poured concrete into their nuclear reactors. They installed cameras, you know, they turned on all the cameras. They accepted the most invasive inspection regime ever in history of their civilian nuclear program.
And in exchange, they were meant to be able to come out from under multilateral economic sanctions and rejoin the world's economy. And this was a painfully negotiated and crafted deal by the Americans, the Europeans, the Iranians, and the Trump administration did pull out of it. And, I mean, it sealed Iran's fate, I think essentially, because the Trump administration regionally was driven by Israeli Emirati, Saudi interests very much seeking to isolate the Islamic Republic to ensure that Iran was never normalized. You know, I think that's the sort of the crux of it, that Iran should never be normalized in the world because the normalization of Iran would upend the regional political status quo. You know, you have a Middle East full of authoritarian regimes that are arms export markets for the United States, and that are partners to Israel. Normalized Iran with a highly skilled, educated population trading with the world, it would be too upsetting to the interests of these other powers.
And so, the sort of path to isolating Iran, perhaps leading to war with Iran, was the path taken by the Trump administration. And it cemented the idea in the minds of the Islamic Republic that the United States could never be trusted, that it was a mistake that Iran's lonely path, this isolated path where it has to look to the East, that it has to rely on China and Russia for its kind of political backing, this was a path that didn't have to be. It was essentially imposed on Iran by the Trump administration and is a large part of the reason why we are where we are today. And it's a really fatal and tragic blot on the record of the Biden administration, that they didn't immediately jump to get back into this deal and to reverse the damage caused by Trump's withdrawal.
Because essentially, as you said, you know, there was a different path, a path that everyone took after years of enmity that could have led to a slow and gradual change in Iran without violence, without the threat of external military intervention. And the people that we see on the streets today, these children who were dying and who were being killed by security forces, maybe they could have pursued the same aims through means that didn't require their death. And we did not take that. We were not allowed to take that path because of, unfortunately, the Trump administration's catastrophic decision.
SR: So, if I come back to the protest movements that we're seeing, one remarkable aspect of it is the reliance on popular media culture from viral videos of young women knocking off the turbans of clerics quite playfully, but also all the symbolic gestures of solidarity that we've seen by famous actors, actresses, football, soccer, celebrities, recently also in the Qatar World Cup. And the regime has reacted by instituting internet curfews and censorship of most social media. So, could you say something about how reliable information is being accessed by people across the country on the one hand, and, on the other hand, can one trust so many of these diaspora media sources, which you've also noted in a recent article of yours, are often hijacked by shady players of various factions and interest groups.
AM: This is such a crucial point that you raise. I think the lack of credible, verifiable information is a real crisis. It's a crisis inside Iran, and it's a crisis for us covering Iran and trying to understand what's going on in Iran from the outside. Of course, Iranians inside the country, because the domestic media landscape has been suffocated by censorship for so many years, must rely on outside sources for news about the country. And the diaspora media market in the Persian language is saturated by opposition networks or news networks that are funded by opponents of Iran.
So, Saudi Arabia funds the main television network called "Iran International," which broadcasts out of London. And this is a channel, this is a network that often runs just straight-out fake news. It runs disinformation, it very happily platforms and gives airtime to terrorist groups who have enacted attacks on Iranian soil. It is a bad actor in this space. I think we ought to say much of it is the fault of the Iranian system. It's shut down the independent press. It has categorically made the media landscape in Iran unreadable. Like young people in their 20s, like 97% of them look to outside sources for their news about what's going on inside the country.
So, this becomes part of the story because these media outlets, they do have an agenda, many of them. Unlike in the U.S. under the Trump administration, their presence pulls the more objective responsible media. The "BBC Persian Network", for example, gets pulled to the right to be able to compete with the more right-wing Saudi-funded networks. So, we do have a sort of political ecosystem of information that is very much shaped by the opponents of the Islamic Republic, and they see that as a clear threat. They've raised it with the Saudis at meetings, but it has polluted the information landscape.
And then in terms of the content that we see coming out of Iran from the protests as well, much of that is just unverified. So, it's very difficult to have a good sense on any given week how many protests there were, whether the footage that we've seen is actually from that week, is it not from two months ago. It's very unscientific, our knowledge of what is unfolding and the sort of verification that should be done. It's very expensive, it's very time-consuming, but that should be done by the "New York Times," by the main outlets that cover Iran isn't being done. So, I think it's important to at least raise a flag that what we think we know about what is happening in Iran is very partial, and perhaps, not entirely accurate, and that it's highly politicized.
SR: So, I think this is a very important point which you have made also in a recent article where you say that, and I quote you, "The grand theater of the geopolitical contest between the Islamic Republic and its opponents in the region, including the West, make it very difficult to get any reliable information at all." As an Iranian-American familiar with both sides, the question I would have for you is what do you think are the dilemmas facing the international community and the civil society in Europe and in the U.S. about support for democracy and women's empowerment in Iran? Because the problem here would be, on the one hand, supporting these current protestors may de-legitimize them in the eyes, not only of the regime, but also maybe of some fellow Iranian citizens. Not supporting them in any way, however, leaves them entirely to the mercy of a really, really brutal repressive regime.
AM: It is a real dilemma. I think for international civil society and the quite extraordinary level of global attention that's been given to the protests, there are a few uncontroversial ways to support and to engage. And I think that basically amounts to ensuring that the internet is kept on in Iran through different means. So, whether that's providing access to VPN so that people can bypass the blocks on many sites or through other ways. Connectivity is an, I would say, uncontroversial way to try and support and engage from the outside. I think there are two key questions about diaspora and global civil society engagement and dealing with what's going on inside Iran.
One is who is considered to be speaking on behalf of the Iranian people. And so there are activists in the diaspora who have been seeking regime change for many years who have been advocating military intervention that are hoping a Libya scenario can be unfolded inside Iran. I think ensuring that western civil society doesn't anoint these outside activists as speaking on behalf of the Iranian people, because there are major cleavages between the diaspora and inside Iran.
So, I think being very scrupulous about who is seen as speaking on behalf of Iranians inside the country is sort of one keyway of taking care and not participating in politics that can alienate or damage the cause of the protestors inside. I think the second point is this question of whether Iran should continue to be sanctioned. You know you do see people calling for shutting down Iranian embassies or their embassies in Iran pulling out, like cutting all diplomatic relations, ending any negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program. You know, do Iranians inside want this? I think that's an open question. I think sanctions, as we were discussing earlier, directly harm and hurt the quality of life of those inside.
So, these questions are also very difficult ones. I think there's a very vocal and angry chokehold in the diaspora on these questions. You can see in Germany, and in France, in the UK, in the U.S., that essentially the Iranian diaspora has turned these questions into an issue of domestic politics in these different countries. And it may be pushing governments to take positions that are not in line with what the majority of Iranians would want. So, I think being scrupulous around or thinking critically around who speaks for Iranians and what kind of policies would best aid their movement is a really critical conversation to have.
SR: So, let me ask you another question about the dilemma facing us, looking at the movement from outside. Do you think there is a risk of unwittingly corroborating conspiracy theories of the regime, especially of negating even the autonomous agency of Iranian women and men if we want to somehow misread the collective public rituals of removing the hijab as just a kind of sign of Westernization? So, would we be sort of overlooking the rich history and the local traditions of what one may call, I coming from India, you with Iranian roots, we would call non-aligned feminism, feminism, which is not necessarily an embrace of so-called Western values either?
AM: That's a brilliant point, and its one that I wish could be picked up on more fruitfully. I was in a gathering of Middle Eastern women policy analysts a few weeks ago, and I was sitting with Saudi women, Emirati women, Kuwaiti women, and there were Iranians there. And we sort of returned to them and said, "You know, why have women in the Gulf been so quiet about these protests? Why are they not supporting them? Because you face many of these similar issues." And they said, "Basically, our societies are conservative, and we cannot get behind a movement that is about taking off head scarves that appears to be anti-Islamic."
And I thought, wow, it's really a reflection of how little dialogue there is between feminist movements or feminist activism in these different countries that what Iranian women are doing is so sort of read through or understood through this Western construct of a clash of civilizations rather than seeing it as an organic Iranian-driven movement for choice. I said to them, “Look, it is not anti-hijab. Many of these women, their mothers wear hijab. It is just about the choice to wear a hijab or not. It just happens to be demonstrated through taking it off by, you know, in response to being forced to put it on.”
So, it is a pro-choice movement and not an anti-hijab movement. And I think that's really the heart of it that does get lost because, you know, the history of Iranian women's activism that we were talking about at the beginning of our conversation, as I said, does have a twinned heritage in anti-imperialism and domestic feminism. So, it is not a sort of embrace of this laïcité Western liberality that is often, I think, portrayed as being about, especially in countries like France that have their own sort of domestic bugaboos, about these issues.
So, this is what is getting drowned out in the polluted media atmosphere that we were talking about, that there is a real movement towards, or a demand for a secular model of government that is organically Iranian. And by secular, it doesn't need to be Western. It doesn't need to be aligned with an imperialist orbit. But I would say, I suppose that the one thing that strikes me, and I wish I could have some good conversations with Iranian feminists about this, in the Middle East, in particular, do you think there is space anymore, Shalini, for a non-aligned women's movement?
The ordering of the region along the lines of the Saudi-Israeli-Emirati axis, I think it means that eventually, Iran will have to make peace with Israel, and these questions of domestic politics and what kind of brand of feminism women are espousing might just have to be subordinate to that. So, I don't have a good answer to this very rich and complicated question, but I do despair at how this is being characterized as a sort of, laic kind of rejection of Islam movement and that the non-aligned roots of, or spirit of what is happening, or it's heritage, at least, is just forgotten.
SR: I think this is a really, really important question for feminist movements all over the world. But let me ask you my last question, Azadeh, and that is, do you think the regime could drum up support at the last moment by drumming up fears of Iran turning into another Syria or Afghanistan, so the breakup of the country is something that can be only prevented by this regime remaining in power? And do you think that a regime change is a real possibility now or what do you see are the most likely scenarios for the future of your country?
AM: Certainly, the state does try to push this deep fear and anxiety that this unrest, these rioters as it portrays the protests are part of a plot to collapse Iran as a country to make it a failed state like Libya and Syria. You see increasingly, in the regime's messaging about what it is protecting by trying to put down the protests. They invoke the flag of Iran; they invoke the territorial integrity of Iran. So, that's really the key card that they're playing, is that maybe as a system we have almost nothing left to offer you, but we can offer you security. And to the point where people so reject that and are so suspicious of it, that when there was what seems absolutely clear was a genuine ISIS attack in Iran last month, overwhelmingly, Iranians thought that it was the government doing it to sort of spark exactly those security fears.
So, this sort of paranoid mindset that has set into Iranians around the government using security as a fear tactic against them is really, really deep. I think that that fear of we can become Syria, it's not compelling anymore to people. I was watching some video footage yesterday of Iranian students this week on campuses. There was an event at Sharif University and there was an activist addressing a member of parliament and another government official. And I was really struck by the sharpness of the students' comments like standing on a stage speaking to this official saying, "Religious democracy, religious government is over. We want a secular government, we want a secular system." They're asking for no less than regime change. They're asking for no less than a total overhaul in the system of government that they have.
And I think that's really evident that that's what people want in the streets. So, what you ask is really the golden question, is how do you get there, and what would come next? So, we know what people don't want, which is a theocracy, but what do they want, and how will they get there? And there's no positive vision for that articulated in the streets. So protestors don't have a leader and they don't have a vision for that. And I think that is what has resulted in this sort of silent majority who sits at home not joining them out on the streets. So, if there's a point at which they're able to sort of come up with a vision, an idea for what comes forward, either the whole sort of silent majority sitting at home with the harness to their movement, and we have a whole new proper revolution, or that's when the polarizations emerge again, that's when, perhaps, people splinter because maybe the vision that comes forward as a leading one does not have enough popular support.
So, I won't make any predictions about what could come next, only that it won't go away. These protests won't go away, that we're in a fundamentally new phase in the life of the Islamic Republic, that people, categorically the majority feel that the government does not represent them and that they want a whole new mode of governance for them, and for their future. And how that will play out, I think we just have to wait and see.
SR: Thank you so much for this really fascinating interview with so many insights, historical, political, and also contemporary into the revolution led by women, which we are witnessing in Iran today. Thanks very much for being with me.
AM: Thank you so much for having me.
SR: The current revolt in Iran sparked by feminist demands and led by women has a long history. Iranian women have played an influential role in the country's political life for over a century. A mix of strong and ardent positions, which have been anti-imperialist together with demands for internal domestic reform, leading up to the 1979 revolution against the regime of the Shah when women's rights were well established, though this was a rather top-down reform from the Shah regime that gave urban middle-class women their rights.
Today, women have succeeded in imposing a new legal order in the Iranian public sphere. They have overturned by their demonstrations and their practice the unjust set of laws through sheer defiance. Women are asking for choice, choice to dress as they please, to move as they like in public. But these women's issues are now entangled in people's minds to the dismal state of the economy coupled with fundamental political failures of the system. A fallen living standard, the galloping inflation, and the impoverishment that Iranian citizens have experienced are seen by them as symptoms of broken politics, which they're no longer willing to accept.
The sanctions imposed by the U.S. government and by the international community have harmed and have hurt the Iranian people. Under Trump, backing out of the nuclear deal was a major mistake as it pushed Iran further into isolation and also perpetuated the radicalism of the regime. Reliable news on the country is hard to come by because the political ecosystem of information is highly politicized and has polluted the information and media landscape. There is a dilemma for international civil society about how it should best engage with the protests from the outside. Their most important contribution could be to ensure that the internet is kept running because connectivity is crucial.
There are interesting questions also on representation, who can speak on behalf of the Iranian people, given that there are major cleavages, not only within the diaspora, but also between the diaspora sections of the diaspora and protestors within the country. Young people are asking for a regime change. Many would prefer a secular, not necessarily a Western secular, but secular model of government that is Iranian. The way forward seems unclear because what is lacking is a new positive vision of Iran's future and a clear path of how to get there. What is clear is Iran has changed as a result of the last three months of courageous protests by its citizens.
This was the 10th episode of season five. Thank you very much for listening. Join us again on the 18th of January in the next year after the holidays when we'll start season six of "Democracy in Question" with a discussion about democratic backsliding in America and differences between right-wing populism in Europe and the U.S. with Tom Caruthers from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Please go back and listen to any episode you might have missed. And, of course, let your friends know about the podcast if you're enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the work of the Central European University at www.ceu.edu and with the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch/democracy.