The turbulent history of mass protests in Iran
Since mid-September, crowds have taken to the streets of Tehran in response to violence against women allegedly perpetrated by security forces of the Islamic Republic. SIAVUSH RANDJBAR-DAEMI traces the roots of unrest in Iran from the Second World War onwards
On 13 September 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, was arrested in Tehran for allegedly violating strict government rules that require women to wear a hijab, or head covering. Three days later, she died in hospital. Eyewitnesses said that Mahsa – her official Iranian name, although her family and friends use her Kurdish name, Zhina – was beaten over the head in a police van after her arrest. Iranian police claimed that she suffered a heart attack. The case sparked protests against the Islamic Republic authorities, reigniting unrest that has flared up on several occasions since 2009. But those protests also have deeper roots in a longer history of popular unrest in Iran, dating back to the 1940s when new forms of politics entered the country as a consequence of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of 1941 and the Allies’ installation of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The rise to power of prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1951, and his polarising championing of the nationalisation of the oil industry, was accompanied by frequent street gatherings by the banned but popular communist Tudeh Party and its (western-supported) rightwing opponents. In July 1952, three days of confrontation between citizens enraged by the Shah’s dismissal of Mosaddegh and the royal army resulted in the first and only instance of a prime minister being reinstated by the monarch through a popular uprising. On 19 August 1953, a crowd organised by the CIA and MI6 overthrew Mosaddegh and gained the upper hand over his supporters, who had filled the streets after the first attempt to unseat the prime minister failed. The Shah, whose influence over Iranian politics had weakened during Mosaddegh’s premiership, regained power – with an accompanying increase in state repression. The Shah’s autocratic rule kept a lid on the recurrence of opposition and protests until 1963, when a new, prominent religious and political figure, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, emerged. His harsh sermon against the Shah and subsequent arrest prompted crowds to take to the streets that June, in protests that were initially deemed “reactionary” by the communist Tudeh party in exile. This uprising has since featured as a foundational myth of the Islamic Republic.
Revolutionary rage
The revolution of 1978–79 was the next and, arguably, most important event sparked by crowd action. Spurred on by the failure of the Shah to engage with internal dissidents demanding reform, the onset of nationwide anger – following the publication of three scurrilous articles against Khomeini in the state-controlled press in early 1978 – marked the start of a long cycle of anti-regime protests. These culminated in the Ashura and Tasua protests of December 1978, named for the two consecutive important days in the Shia calendar on which they took place. The initial phases of the 1978 protest movement share some similarities with the current uprisings: the protesters’ main demands soon went beyond incremental changes to the status quo and focused instead on the ejection from power of the ruling establishment and in particular, the Shah himself.
Ayatollah Khomeini’s arrest prompted crowds to take to the streets in an uprising that became a foundational myth of the Islamic Republic
The helm of the protests of 1978 was eventually taken by Khomeini, who stepped into a key leadership role to become the undisputed head of the Iranian Revolution by the time of the Shah’s departure from the country in January 1979 and the collapse of the monarchy the following month. But he never articulated what his preferred alternative state structure would look like, beyond broad and vague assurances on a just Islamic system.
Repression and rebellion
The new Islamic Republic, ushered in through a referendum in March 1979, did not achieve a monopoly over power until the autumn of 1981. Over its first two and a half years, it evolved from an initially peaceful broad revolutionary coalition to the steadily monocratic rule of Khomeini and his closest disciples and allies. As early as 8 March 1979, a large group of women took to Tehran’s streets to voice concern about the impending restrictions on their civil rights and their fears regarding the likely imposition of veiling.
The banning of the daily newspaper Ayandegan – a beacon for protest groups – that August contributed to the first instance since the revolution of serious political violence in Tehran, when a demonstration was thoroughly repressed by pro-Khomeini forces. The impeachment of the Islamic Republic’s first elected president, Abolhassan BaniSadr, in June 1981 was opposed by the last major anti-regime demonstration in Tehran for nearly two decades, as tens – and possibly hundreds – of thousands of sympathisers of radical leftist groups opposed to his dismissal took to the streets. In the following months, thousands were imprisoned and executed.
More recent years have witnessed the emergence of street protests by generations of Iranians with no memory of those earlier events. In 1999, central Tehran was rocked for the first time since 1981 by four days of commotion following the banning of a reformist newspaper popular with students at the University of Tehran. In 2009, supporters of the two defeated presidential candidates, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, went on the march as the establishment shut off all avenues for a compromise. Following the massive rally on 15 June 2009, the Green Movement – demanding competitive elections featuring their leaders – continued its street presence until early 2011, when Mousavi and Karroubi were placed under house arrest, where they remain.
The protests of 2017 and 2018 took a different direction, generated by economic and welfare concerns and calling for the downfall of the Islamic Republic. This latter aim has emerged once again amid the determined rejection of compulsory veiling by women and men of all ages across the country.
Street protests since 1979 share similarities. They were often spurred by instances of strong disenchantment and even rage against the existing state leadership. The suppression of the Green Movement in 2009 and civil society since the millennium have meant that the most recent waves of protests have often emerged through an unpredictable spark. In the absence of an organised overall domestic leadership, they have often progressed without a clear or focused outcome or aim. Instead, more atomised forms of resistance, often coalescing on slogans devised on the fly and spread via social media, have replaced protests created and led by prominent figures or political organisations.
Next-generation protests
Recent months have seen the resurgence of a level of anti-regime sentiment comparable to the early stages of the revolution of 1978–79. The current “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest has now become the longest continuous antistate protest in Iran since the revolution. In much the same way as the 40th-day mourning ceremony for the deceased – a key Shia ritual – acted as a catalyst for the progression of the protests in 1978, the 40th day since Amini’s death marked a resurgence of unrest in more than 30 cities. The epicentre has been in the Kurdish city of Saqqez, where Amini is buried. The 40th-day commemoration of the death of another protester, 16-year-old Nika Shakarami, continued this trend. Scattered strikes, notably in Kurdistan province and in parts of the oil industry, are also on the rise.
The targeting of the sartorial code imposed by the state, and of gender inequality, also creates a highly symbolic link between the current protests and those enacted by feminists and civil society activists in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Shah. This underscores the resilience of societal opposition to the state impositions across generations. It remains to be seen whether the present rage will be channelled towards the formulation of an alternative to the Islamic Republic, which remains elusive despite the aspirations of many Iranian people for a different future.
Recent months have seen the resurgence of anti-regime sentiment comparable to the early stages of the revolution
Siavush Randjbar-Daemi is lecturer in modern Middle Eastern history, University of St Andrews, and author of The Quest for Authority in Iran (IB Tauris, 2017)