Anger against the system has been increasing in Iran for years. If the government does not find remedies to the issues, the demonstrations will flare up again and again.
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| [Anti-hijab protests in Iranian capital Tehran, 2022] |
It has been quite some time since massive demonstrations in Iran until October of 2017. The nuclear accord was of great concern to the international world, and a system change seemed unlikely when the Green movement collapsed in 2009 and the moderate President Rouhani was elected in 2013. However, there was a group of students who were furious because Iran is everything but a peaceful nation, and I wanted to discuss political processes with them. Instead, it's instability is rooted in societal, political, and ethnic divides. Just two months later, in December of that year, the largest demonstrations since 2009 erupted, drawing people from the lowest parts of society, who had long been the regime's support base.
Iran has scarcely been at peace since then. Even after the first demonstrations were put down in the spring of 2018, the year continued to see strikes by Kurds in the west and by the bazaars in the major cities. In addition, farmers were upset about the lack of water, instructors wanted more pay, and women were upset about having to wear the hijab. The interior minister of Iran said in August 2019 that the country's protest rate had risen by 38%. Despite sanctions and persecution, the demonstrations might continue at a high level, according to official government sources. The harsh crackdown on the demonstrations in November 2019 and the subsequent corona epidemic only succeeded in temporarily halting the protests. Protests for social and environmental justice were widespread by the year 2021.
This bitterness has been building for quite some time, and it is a key ingredient in the current uprisings. which the government doesn't always have a political solution for. The Iranian government has failed to embrace the opportunity presented by the Covid-19 limitations to address the underlying causes of these tensions. To the contrary, it charted a course that was even more restrictive by marginalizing moderate forces in the 2020 and 2021 elections, which added fuel to the fire, especially with the hijab rules. After all, it was the conservative forces that expanded the powers of the vice squad and the hated controls in the interpreted everyday life.
The political elite has depended on solidarity against public pressure for a long time now. She learned during the 2009 Green Movement, when some members of the elite participated in the demonstrations, that it was never a good idea to risk division within the inner circle. This inflexibility is costly when dealing with demonstrators; after all, who can protesters trust to represent a genuine shift un strategy? For instance, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei's claims that now was the moment for negotiations were met with minimal receptivity from the public.
After all, he's always been thought of as a hardliner who advocates an especially harsh stance against the opposition. Three days after declaring an openness to criticism, he advocated for harsh punishments for incarcerated demonstrators instead. The administration is in a bind because any sign of compromise from hardliners is seen as a sign of weakness, while any sign of compromise from moderates demonstrates the lack of clout of the moderates.
It's also retribution on the part of the political establishment, which has for years stymied any effort at mass organization. After 2009, several leaders, both actual and imagined, were taken into custody, put under house arrest, or made to abandon the country. It didn't take long for the authorities to crack down on political groups with national structures. That, however, did not prevent the formation of a resistance movement. This was solely locally organized, behind the government's radar. When the number of protesters reached a tipping point, like in 2017 and 2019 and as is occurring again, these disparate organizations joined together to oppose the dictatorship.
Efforts to quell such dispersed mobilizations have mostly failed. However, there is no clear leadership for the dictatorship to deal with, nor are there any straightforward requests that it might accept in order to appease the demonstrators. There are many reasons for people's frustration with the system, and it would be almost difficult for the administration to address them all at once and quell the demonstrations. Since the protestors had such a hard time deciding on when to begin widespread demonstrations, it is likely that they will have an even harder time deciding when to cease them. This leaves the administration with very few alternatives other than to wait, resort to violence, or attempt to divide the protestors.
The future of the demonstrations remains uncertain. Reports of weary and unmotivated security troops are on the rise, and criticism from the inner circle is also beginning to trickle out. Though the people has grown critically destitute in recent years as a consequence of the sanctions, the state's capacity for violence remains tremendous. Many people lack the financial wherewithal to participate in a widespread strike movement, for example, which the government could barely sit out. Given this, it's not out of the question that some protestors may have to return to normal life due to financial constraints at some point in the future.
However, history also demonstrates that such times of calm, which are often brought about by a combination of poverty and violence, do not persist. The demonstrations, even if put down, will continue until the fundamental political issues are addressed. The government has had the desire to do so for a long time, but because to its depleted political capital and ongoing financial difficulties, it has lacked the resources it needs in recent years as well. However, if the many issues aren't addressed politically, the demonstrations will resurface. They have done this often in recent years, and each time they have done it in a shorter amount of time, they have done so with more radicalism, scale, and power. After all, they haven't been deterred by violence alone for quite some time.
The author Dr. Tareq Sydiq is a researcher at the Center for Conflict Research in Marburg, where he researches protest movements in authoritarianism.