Protests that could spell the end of the MULLAHS' TYRANNY
A new Iranian revolution is led by those women the Islamic regime has oppressed most
The Iran of my mother, Leila, exists only in photographs. I remember first seeing them as a small boy in the 1980s, tucked away in drawers in the sitting room of our London home.
They thrilled me: snapshots of a lost world of glamour. here was my mother in a black cocktail dress, laughing at a highsociety event, surrounded by friends in Chanel dresses and Savile Row suits.
There she stood with her fellow debutantes, some sporting fashionable beehive hairstyles; or picnicking with a male friend, unmarried and ‘unaccompanied’.
Above all, in almost every photo, I could see her long hair, cascading freely round her shoulders.
My mother lived with her sister Tamara and their parents in Shemiran, a verdant suburb of Tehran that was, and is, home to Iran’s ruling class.
This was when Iran’s Shah — or King — was at the peak of his power. While Iran was officially a Muslim state, in Shemiran, near the Shah’s palace, Iran’s elites gathered to dance, drink alcohol and talk business, like Parisians of the Orient. It was a life of chauffeurs, nannies and staff by the dozen, of cocktail parties and ski trips and endless shopping sprees.
But if Iran was an eden for many, it’s no surprise that a serpent lurked there, too.
My grandfather, Naim, knew the cleric or ‘mullah’ Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was on a mission to inflict fundamentalist Islam on to his country, and end what he deemed the Shah’s ‘Western decadence’.
For years, exiled in Iraq and Paris, Khomeini preached against these elites. his sermons were smuggled into Iran on cassette tapes. They stoked fanaticism — as well as legitimate grievance at the Shah’s increasingly autocratic and unequal society.
In 1979, Khomeini’s revolutionaries toppled the Shah, purging the army and police and murdering with impunity.
In came strict religious laws — especially for women, who were ordered to cover their hair with the hijab. Make no mistake: the ‘Islamic Republic’ that replaced the Shah was born in violence and oppression and blood.
My grandfather decided our family should leave for Britain. he made the right choice. One of the first places Khomeini’s followers went to was Shemiran.
Like all revolutionaries, they hankered after the good life. Our home, with its large grounds and many rooms, was occupied by the new regime’s security forces.
Family legend has it that just before she left, my grandmother, Marcelle, had to negotiate with these thugs so she could take our family’s possessions to their new life thousands of miles away in North London. Some years later, my mother met my father, Takis, who was studying in Britain having fled his native Greece after its own military coup.
I grew up to become a political author and war reporter. Perhaps, given my family’s history, that was always going to be my destiny.
More than 40 years later, death stalks Tehran’s streets once again. At least 76 protesters have been murdered across the country by the regime’s goons, trying — and failing — to suppress frustration and rage.
The protests have been led by young people, many of them women, and have raged for more than two weeks.
They began after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, was arrested in Tehran on September 16 by officers from Iran’s notorious ‘Morality Police’ – state officials who ensure absurd religious rules are followed.
They spend their time controlling the way women act and dress. Mahsa’s crime? Showing too much hair under her hijab. For this, she was dragged off to jail. The Iran my mother knew in its 1960s heyday feels tragically distant now.
Mahsa was pronounced dead three days after she was taken into custody — where she was supposedly being ‘re-educated’.
The police claimed she collapsed and died of heart failure — but, obviously, no one believes that.
Witnesses say she was beaten as the police bundled her into their van. According to some, she suffered such a blow to the head that she was probably medically dead by the time she reached hospital.
Protests began the day after Mahsa’s funeral. Tens of thousands of people have poured on to the streets in more than 100 towns and cities, enraged by her death and four decades of oppression.
They know what they want. ‘Justice, liberty, no to mandatory hijab!’ they cry. ‘Death to the dictator!’ they roar.
They tear down images of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini in 1989. The regime has responded in the only way it knows: with extreme violence. The regime’s brownshirts beat and torture and shoot.
Thousands have been arrested; more brave young people will die. The Ministry of Intelligence has texted every mobile user in Iran, warning anyone taking to the streets will be punished under strict Sharia Law. But still the people protest.
Mark my words: this is the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic. For now, the security forces remain loyal: the regime takes good care of them. Iran’s security chiefs know that if the mullahs fall, they fall with them.
But the regime has lost its legitimacy — and will never recover it. These protests are merely the latest in a series that began in 2019, when more than 1,500 protesters were reportedly killed.
In truth, Covid-19 gave the regime a stay of execution, forcing people off the streets. But the defiance has remained.
It is difficult to speak to ordinary Iranians. The regime has shut off the internet in many areas. Anyone caught speaking to the media
‘Police claim she died of heart failure – no one believes that’
‘I am sick of having no freedom’
— especially Western outlets — is likely to be imprisoned or killed.
But I have contacts in Iran: I know some of those resisting. Using ‘VPNs’ — technology that hides an internet user’s location — they can circumvent blocked social media sites, organise and mobilise.
And soon they may get help from halfway across the world. Tesla tycoon elon Musk has said he will allow Iranians to use his Starlink satellites to access the internet.
This could be a game changer, as it has proved — and as I have seen for myself — for the Ukrainians fighting Vladimir Putin.
At the heart of these protests are Iran’s women. It is they who have bravely ripped off their oppressive hijabs. It is they who are publicly cutting their hair, in what has become an act of defiance against the regime.
On Thursday, I spoke to Shirin, 25, who has been risking her life to protest in recent days. ‘For as long as I can remember I have had to worry about how I dress, how I walk, how much make up I wear, in case it upsets an old man in
[clerical] robes,’ she told me. ‘I am sick of having no freedom to wear what I want, no freedom to travel. I am sick of the endless economic crisis. I want a future.’
Her family are terrified. Her father begs her not to go onto the streets lest she becomes another Mahsa.
But she won’t listen. ‘I have nothing left to lose,’ she says.
Arash, 21, is a student at Tehran University. He burns with passion.
‘This regime belongs in the Middle Ages,’ he says. ‘It does not respect the most basic human liberties, women’s rights or the rules of freedom of speech.’
Arash has seen his peers beaten and arrested every day.
‘I know people who’ve lost their eyes, with broken arms, with massive injuries to their backs.
‘I’ve seen people murdered with brute force. I’ve seen hand-to-hand fighting. Blood is the price — and we are paying it in the streets.’
He points not just to the regime’s violence, however, but also to its dizzying corruption.
Despite the revenues from its vast oil and gas resources, more than 25million Iranians — almost one in three – were living in poverty last year.
of course, Western sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme and human rights record have played their part.
But billions of oil money dollars have gone to corrupt officials. The Iranian Rial has plummeted from 32,000 to the dollar in 2015 to 315,000 in 2022. In August, inflation hit 52.2 per cent.
There is only so long you can oppress a population. These protests are not about vote-rigging or corruption, but the very essence of the regime.
In Iran, which uses a different calendar to the West, the youthful protestors are known as the ‘1380s’ generation.
Teenage Iranians and those in their early 20s lead these protests — and they despise the revolutionary class that
‘Misogynistic regime will be brought down by the bravery of women’
seized power before they were born. This generation has known social media all their lives and, as my mother could tell you, Iranians have always looked West.
The 1380s’ can see what they’re being denied: they hold it in the palm of their hands.
‘We want a new revolution,’ says Arash. ‘We want democracy. That is the only way we can achieve freedom.’
This week, I took out those old photos of my mother in Tehran.
once more, I saw what her country used to be. But this time, for the first time, hope mingled with grief.
Iran will rise again — is rising again. It will one day have true democracy. The mullahs are vulnerable. And the most beautiful irony of all? That one of the world’s most misogynistic regimes will one day — and before long — be brought down by the bravery of women.