Iran’s Encounters with the West Masterdoc
Week 1:
Is Iran on the Verge of Another Revolution? Asef Bayat
- The death of Mahsa Amini on 16 September 2022, while in police custody
for wearing an “improper” hijab, has triggered what has become the most
severe and sustained political upheaval ever faced by the Islamist regime in
Iran
- How do we make sense of this extraordinary political happening? This is
neither a “feminist revolution” per se, nor simply the revolt of Generation Z,
nor merely a protest against the mandatory hijab. This is a movement to
reclaim life, a struggle to liberate free and digni ied existence from an
internal colonization. As the primary objects of this colonization, women
have become the major protagonists of the liberation movement
- the Islamic Republic has been a battle ield between hardline Islamists who
wished to enforce theocracy in the form of clerical rule (velayat-e faqih),
and those who believed in popular will and emphasized the republican
tenets of the constitution.
- The Green revolt and the subsequent nationwide uprisings in 2017 and
2019 against socioeconomic ills and authoritarian rule profoundly
challenged the Islamist regime but failed to alter it. The uprisings caused
not a revolution but the fear of revolution—a fear that was compounded by
the revolutionary uprisings against the allied regimes in Syria, Lebanon, and
Iraq, which Iran helped to quell
- While many women, including my mother, wore the hijab voluntarily, for
others it represented a coercive moralizing that had to be subverted. Those
women began to push back their headscarves, allowing some of their hair to
show in public. Over the years, headscarves gradually inched back further
and further until inally they fell to the shoulders
- This is the story of women’s “non-movement”—the collective and
connective actions of non-collective actors who pursue not a politics of
protest but of redress, through direct actions. Its aim is not a deliberate
de iance of authorities but to establish alternative norms and life-making
practices—practices that are necessary for a desired and digni ied life but
are denied to women.
Reclaiming Life
- Today, the uprising is no longer limited to the mandatory hijab and women’s
rights. It has grown to include wider concerns and constituencies—young
people, students and teachers, middle-class families and workers, residents
, of some rural and poor communities, and those religious and ethnic
minorities (Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, and Baluchis) who, like women, feel like
second-class citizens and seem to identify with “Woman, Life, Freedom
“Woman, Life, Freedom,” then, signi ies a paradigm shift in Iranian
subjectivity—recognition that the liberation of women may also bring the
liberation of all other oppressed, excluded, and dejected people. This makes
“Woman, Life, Freedom” an extraordinary movement.
Movement or Moment
- As such, theirs was not a collective action of a united movement but
connective actions of parallel concerns—a simultaneity of disparate protest
actions that only the new information technologies could facilitate.
- Does all this mean that Iran is on the verge of another revolution? At this
point in time, Iran is far from a “revolutionary situation,” meaning a
condition of “dual power,” where an organized revolutionary force backed
by millions would come to confront a crumbling government and divided
security forces. What we are witnessing today, however, is the rise of a
revolutionary movement—with its own protest repertoires, language, and
identity—that may open Iranian society to a “revolutionary course.”
- A leaked government survey from November 2022 found that 84 percent of
Iranians expressed a positive view of the uprising. 8 If the regime allowed
peaceful public protests, we would likely see more older people on the
streets. But it has not. The extraordinary presence of youth in the street
protests has largely to do with the “youth affordances”—that is, energy,
agility, education, dreams of a better future, and relative freedom from
family responsibilities—which make the young more inclined to street
politics and radical activism. But these extraordinary young people cannot
cause a political breakthrough on their own. The breakthrough comes only
when ordinary people—parents, children, workers, shopkeepers,
professionals, and the like—join in to bring the spectacular protests into the
social mainstream.
- In fact, they surprised the authorities when at least 70 percent of them,
according to a leaked of icial report, went on strike in Tehran and 21
provinces on 15 November 2022 to mark the 2019 uprising. 10 Not
surprisingly, security forces have increasingly been threatening to shut
down their businesses.
The Regime’s Response
- protesters in the Arab Spring fully utilized existing cultural resources, such
as religious rituals and funeral processions, to sustain mass protests
, - Most Iranian Muslims rarely even pray at noon, whether on Fridays or any
day. In Iran, the Friday prayer sermons are the invented ritual of the Islamist
regime and thus the theater of the regime’s power. Consequently, protesters
would have to turn to other cultural and religious spaces such as funerals
and mourning ceremonies or the Shia rituals of Moharram and Ramadan
- Appeasing the population with “salary adjustments” and iscal measures
has gone hand-in-hand with a brutal repression of the protesters. This
includes beating, killing, mass detention, torture, execution, drone
surveillance, and marking the businesses and homes of dissenters. The
regime’s clampdown has reportedly left 525 dead, including 71 minors,
1,100 on trial, and some 30,000 detained. The security forces and Basij
militia have lost 68 members in the unrest. 15 The regime blames
“hooligans” for causing disorder, the internet for misleading the youth, and
the Western governments for plotting to topple the government
A Revolutionary Course
- The regime’s suppression and the protesters’ pause are likely to diminish
the protests. But this does not mean the end of the movement. It means the
end of a cycle of protest before a trigger ignites a new one
- Only radical political reform and meaningful improvement in people’s lives
can disrupt a revolutionary course. For instance, holding a referendum
about the form of government, changing the constitution to be more
inclusive, or implementing serious social programs can dissuade people
from seeking regime change. Otherwise, one should expect either a state of
perpetual crisis and ungovernability or a possible move toward a
revolutionary situation.
- A revolutionary situation is unlikely until the “Woman, Life, Freedom”
movement grows into a credible alternative, a practical substitute, to the
incumbent regime. A credible alternative means no less than a leadership
organization and a strategic vision capable of garnering popular con idence.
It means a collective force, a tangible entity, that is able to embody a
coalition of diverse dissenting groups and constituencies and to articulate
what kind of future it wants.
- Civil society and imprisoned activists who currently enjoy wide recognition
and respect for their extraordinary commitment and political intelligence
may eventually form a kind of moral-intellectual leadership. But that too
needs to be part of a broader national leadership organization.
, Lecture 1:
“The Shah Left !” Iranian revolution
- 1979: Religious revolution and Iranian Revolution.
I.R. Iran – The Seven republics
- 1979-1989
- 1989-1997
- 1997-2005
- 2005-2013
- 2013-2021
- 2021-2024 (President died in an aircrash, this is why a new republic
begins)
- 2024
The First Republic (1979-1989)
- Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-1989)
- Institutionalising the revolution at home
- “Velayat-e-Faghih” guardianship of the Islamic jurist, gives him
custodianship over the people
- Two sides limited guardianship over only religious matters, full
guardianship (Which Khomeini favoured)
- Exporting the revolution abroad
Political Structure
Years of Radicalisation
-Hostage Crisis US created a bad
image of the new regime
-Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988)
- Fatwa against Salman Rushdie heated reaction over Rushdie’s “Satanic
verses”, accused of blasphemy
