Activists and global coverage pose a double threat to the Iranian regime

The current uprising is just one of many that have erupted since late 2017. While the first focused primarily on economic demands, it also coincided almost exactly with a historic women's rights campaign known as Girls of Revolution Street. In this campaign, women across the Islamic Republic bravely removed their mandatory headscarves in public and waved them in the air as banners of resistance, risking assault and several years in prison. 

Anti-hijab demonstrations and economic protests quickly converged into broader demonstrations that, with provocative slogans such as "Death to the dictator", sparked a popular demand for regime change. In doing so, they made it clear that the nation's various social problems have a common origin, namely the structure of the Iranian government. 

Many of the same slogans have reappeared in all subsequent uprisings, including the current one. In the protests of the last ten days, the tactics of Girls of Revolution Street have also been repeated and intensified. Women now collectively remove their headscarves en masse and, in many cases, set them on fire or cut their hair in much more forceful gestures of defiance. Meanwhile, even among those not directly involved in the protests, there is a growing trend for unveiled women to take to the streets openly. 

International coverage of the situation in the Islamic Republic increasingly recognises that the latest uprising represents a sea change in Iranian society. Even if the clerical regime survives the current upheaval, it will find it very difficult to put things back the way they were. The more women publicly assert their freedom, the more this regime will be weakened. In time, this will surely pave the way for the long-awaited transition in accordance with Maryam Rajavi's ten-point plan [1] for a truly democratic Iranian republic based on the principles of secularism, universal human rights and equal rights before the law for women and ethnic and religious minorities. 

Unfortunately, a crucial question that arises in contemplating this outcome is how many more Iranian women and men will have to pay with their lives to achieve this vision. As many as 300 protesters have already been killed by security forces in a fortnight of demonstrations. Meanwhile, the regime has made a concerted effort to shut down all internet access and generally isolate the Islamic Republic from the world, giving the authorities cover for an even harsher crackdown. 

When internet blackouts swept the country during an earlier uprising in November 2019, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) quickly opened fire on crowds of protesters across the country, killing some 1,500 people. All this happened within days, demonstrating not only the barbarity of the mullahs' regime, but also its raw desperation. The IRGC's actions at the time suggested that the mullahs believed that their stay in power depended on the successful suppression of the 2019 uprising. One can imagine how much more firmly they hold this same view in the current uprising. 

But the current uprising may prove more difficult to suppress, in large part due to increased domestic and international awareness of the presence of women in the uprising, the very people the regime claims to protect with its compulsory veiling laws, gender apartheid and strict enforcement of religious restrictions in general. Tehran tried in vain to deny any responsibility for the death of Mahsa Amini, who was induced into a coma by the "morality police" after being accused of wearing a loose hijab. The regime could not hope to maintain these denials, as it had openly killed many other women amid the scandal surrounding her death. 

Adding to the mystery is the fact that many Iranian women, especially those who have long been in the "resistance units" affiliated with the main opposition group, the People's Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI/MEK), are willing to give their lives for the cause of freedom and democracy. This is clearly expressed in some of the recently popularised slogans of the current uprising, and its importance can hardly be overestimated. 

But awareness of this importance must be accompanied by a sense of alarm. The international community must recognise that the Iranian regime is desperate to crush the current uprising by any means, but also to do so under cover of darkness. In this spirit, Western governments, non-governmental organisations and multinationals should devise strategies to ensure that information continues to flow both to and from the Islamic Republic, forcing Tehran to choose between slaughtering its people in plain sight or backing down to allow its rise to positions of power in what was once the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Hamid Enayat is a political scientist specialising in Iran.