The Veil Revolution
The media are in the habit of giving events attractive names to catch people's attention. Some people compare it to the names of hurricanes or police operations. Each circumstance has its own requirements and reasons. In the case of the "Veil Revolution" in Iran, thousands of people, mostly women, are protesting against the death of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, after she was arrested by the religious police for wearing her veil incorrectly.
The repression by the Ayatollahs' regime has claimed the lives of more than 70 people in different cities in the Persian country and has provoked a situation that in some quarters has been considered a political crisis of the first order. The question that has been raised is whether this crisis can shake the archaic and repressive regime of the ayatollahs. The blow to Iran's power is considerable but its institutional structures allow it to cope with the crisis.
Women are demanding freedom in their daily lives and in the way they dress and act, but from an apolitical point of view. They demand that the regime allow them to have their own image and identity, but without entering into further political considerations. They ask the regime to moderate its treatment of them, the repression and show that they are part of a Zoom generation raised with the internet in a globalised world, within restrictions.
What is evident is the erosion of the Iranian religious and political elite, who live in their own sphere of interests and corruption without adequately assessing the popular discontent that is growing due to the precariousness of living conditions. Well-educated, university-educated women with a firm decision not to accept the harsh repression they are suffering are joining a large part of the population who are suffering from power cuts at home, rationed petrol during many periods of the year, shortages of food and medicine, and a growing unease because the Iranian government's spending is focused more on armaments than on improving the living conditions of its citizens.
In neighbouring countries, the instability in Iran may be welcome in their struggle for hegemony in the region, but it also causes some concern that the demands of Iranian women may spill over onto their streets. The so-called Veil Revolution coined in the international media is a very serious wake-up call for a regime that is currently engaged in negotiating the nuclear agreement with the United States and Europe that will allow it to lift sanctions and the succession of the country's top leader, Ali Khamenei. All in the midst of precarious living conditions.