September 16th 2024 marked the two-year anniversary since Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died in the custody of Iran’s so-called “morality police”. Detained on charges of “improper” clothing in accordance with the state-enforced mandatory hijab law, Amini became a symbol of the regime’s increasing brutality against women. In 2022, following Amini’s death, the country erupted in mass waves of civil protest, uniting under the Women, Life, Liberty movement. Between September and December of 2022, the “Women Life Liberty” slogan was chanted nationwide. Today, the soar of uprisings has since been stifled by a series of crackdowns and the movement has seemingly fallen off the global radar.
New Crackdowns in 2024
Amid regional tensions in the Middle East, this year has offered a strategic opportunity for the regime to divert international attention from new measures of domestic repression. On April 13th, the Iranian judiciary announced a crackdown dubbed the “Noor” (Light) plan just as Iran launched its drone and missile attack on Israel. The plan involves deploying large numbers of police forces to enforce the mandatory veiling of women.
On September 16th, Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s newly elected president stated that the morality police would no longer “bother” women. Despite Pezeshkian’s claim and reformist profile, the onslaught of police violence that has continued since his appointment in July and underlines the limited potential for reform within the government.
On April 15th, Iranian student and journalist Dina Ghalibaf was arrested at a metro station in Tehran. In a post – from her now banned account on X – she reported being beaten, hit with electric shock and sexually assaulted. Since the Noor hijab enforcement campaign, videos and testimonies have continuously surfaced online of girls as young as fourteen being forcefully pushed into vans and violently taken into custody. On July 22nd, Arezoo Badri, a mother of two, was left paralyzed after being shot at by police attempting to confiscate her car for improper hijab wear.
Continued Suppressions of Democratic Reform
These incidents are part of a continuum of human rights violations by state authorities since the Islamic Republic of Iran’s formation in 1979. Established in the aftermath of revolution with the expulsion of the country’s monarch, Iran’s political order has been increasingly shaped by regime hard-liners dedicated to precepts of Islamic Law. Iran’s constitution is interpreted by the Council of Guardians, a body of jurists in charge of ensuring that laws passed by Parliament align with Sharia (Islamic Law). With half of its members appointed by the Supreme Leader, the council oversees parliamentary activity and determines which candidates qualify for public office elections. Despite reformist candidates winning three-quarters of parliamentary seats in 2000, the council has repeatedly struck down laws the parliament has attempted to pass, undermining Iran’s democratic potential. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei currently holds the position of Supreme Leader, succeeding Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leading figure of the 1979 revolution.
Consolidation of Power and Growing Violence
The Supreme Leader controls the country’s armed forces and security operations, with the power to appoint or dismiss leaders of the judiciary, state radio, television networks, and supreme commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also known as the morality police.Whether Perzeshkian genuinely intended to crackdown on the morality police or not, the president’s power falls short under the umbrella of Khamenei’s Islamist agenda.
The Ayatollah appoints the head of judiciary, who in turn appoints the supreme court head and the chief public prosecutor. According to HRANA, Iran’s human rights news agency, the 2022 riots saw at least 530 protesters killed and an estimated 18 242 detained. Authorities have reportedly doubled down on use of the death penalty, with 2023 seeing the highest number of executions in eight years. Amnesty International reported ten executions in relation to the 2022/2023 protests, with the most recent execution taking place in August this year.
The Future of Iran
The influence of Khameini and his clerics has enabled a system of state impunity for crimes committed against women and citizens. Despite the regime’s dwindling legitimacy and low level of public support, state actors remain able to invoke tactical fear through coercion, surveillance, and censorship without being held accountable. The lack of free political discourse and civil society movements has made the question of foreseeable change rest on the hope of the regime’s collapse. Yet, with Kahmeini in charge of the armed forces-gatekeepers of regime change- the Supreme Leader has put a potential Iranian revolution in a chokehold.
As civil defiance persists in Iran, whispers of Women Life Liberty linger and so too does the hope for a revolution. Activists and dissidents are calling upon the international stage to inscribe the IRGC into a terrorist list and bring Iran to the International Court of Justice. Still, the question of what a new Iranian future would look like remains unclear.
Edited by Andrea Pupovac
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and they do not reflect the position of the McGill Journal of Political Science or the Political Science Students’ Association.
Featured image by Amnesty International
