--:-- Sean Rameswaram: About a month ago, a young woman named Masa Amini died in a hospital in Tehran. The police reportedly arrested her for failing to sufficiently cover her hair.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In the days that followed, Iranians protested. Young women burnt their hijabs. They cut their hair. This time, I cut it with anger. I needed to do something to take part in what my beautiful, brave people are doing.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The government cracked down. Dozens of protesters are now reportedly dead. But the protests in Iran continue to grow. A month later, these protests now represent a host of grievances with one through line. The end of the Islamic Republic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On Today Explained, we're going to figure out whether that's a real possibility here.
--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Adio says it also allows you to create those email sequences, those real-time reports, those powerful automations, which they claim can help you build what matters most, your company. You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place?
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--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This all started with Masa Amini. And she, in fact, had been wearing a hijab. Her crime was that it was too loose, exposing some of her hair.
--:-- Fatima Shams: I'm Fatima Shams, a UPenn professor who has been living in exile from Iran since 2009 and following these protests closely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So as Mahsa was being bundled into a police van with other female detainees to be transferred to the notorious moral security headquarter known as Vozara Building, she and her brother repeatedly told the police forces that they were strangers or the Qareebs in Persian and far from home without knowing their way around the city.
--:-- Fatima Shams: But they desperately was completely ignored. And they were told that she would be released after undergoing what they called re-education.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's important to note here that Iran essentially has an entire police force set up to patrol how men, but much more so women, dress. They're commonly called the morality police. This is the police force that arrested Massa Amini.
--:-- Fatima Shams: In the police van, they threw insults at Mahsa and she resisted their insults and their aggression. And as two women detainees told Mahsa's father later, she was pushed out of her seat and her head was slammed against the van several times.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At the police station, as she was trying to convince the police that she was observing hijab, she suddenly held her head with her hands and collapsed. And she couldn't see properly, and later on, blood trickled from her ears.
--:-- Fatima Shams: It took about 30 minutes for the ambulance to arrive and another 90 minutes to get to hospital. And by the time she reached the ICU, she was already in a coma. And the hospital announced later on in an Instagram post that since deleted that she was brain dead on arrival.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Three days later, she was dead. The police said that she died due to a heart attack. Later on, a neurosurgeon on the state TV said that she had a brain tumor since childhood, and that was the reason for a stroke.
--:-- Fatima Shams: But her family confirmed that she was perfectly healthy and she had no pre-existing health condition. Later on, leaked medical scans confirmed the cause, which was a school fracture and trauma as a result of several blows on the head.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mahsa died on September 16th and a disturbing picture of her tied to ICU equipment soon went viral and shook the world.
--:-- Fatima Shams: And for those Iranians in the United States who saw the video of George Floyd's crushing neck under the police's knee in Minneapolis back in 2020, Mahsa's death sort of resonated and resembled that moment. and later on became Iran's George Floyd moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does this become a George Floyd moment in Iran when there is no smoking gun, like in the case of George Floyd, where you had this video that showed you exactly what happened? That's not the case here, right?
--:-- Fatima Shams: There wasn't an exact video, you're right. but there were other contributing factors that made this moment similar to the George Floyd moment in the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One was the disturbing picture of Mahsa that went viral very very quickly She lying on hospital bed and she tied into ICU equipments
--:-- Fatima Shams: And then also there was a heavily edited CCTV camera footage that was released by the government and raised a lot of questions, especially following the sort of the false claims that was made on the state TV that she's having a stroke or she's having a heart attack.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the more the government tried to cover up her death, I think the more furious people became.
--:-- Fatima Shams: When Mahsa's body was transferred to her small hometown of Saqqez, which is a marginal border city in Kurdish province of Iran, you know, protests sparked right in her funeral.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And her humble background also contributed, I think, to this moment. She wasn't coming from a privileged, luxurious background and, you know, she wasn't wearing luxurious clothing.
--:-- Fatima Shams: You know, she just found a job in her hometown and she was very much entering her womanhood and had a full life in front of her that was abruptly and brutally cut short.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In Tehran, spontaneous outbursts of defiance, young girls on the streets waving their headscarves, chanting death to the dictator, and the now familiar women live freedom slogan of the protests, with cars honking their horns in support.
--:-- Fatima Shams: You see, you witness the change and the radical shift in the aspirations and imaginations of a population that live under a particular regime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is the gut-wrenching grief of a sister burying her brother, shot and killed at a protest. Fatima cuts off her hair and tosses it over his grave.
--:-- Fatima Shams: For some in Iran, cutting off hair is an age-old mourning right. But it's also become a poignant form of protest for those rising up for their rights.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Prior to this movement, we could see all sorts of grievances, all sorts of protests. But in neither of these protests, we see women coming out, burning what has represented 44 years of oppression and bodily control.
--:-- Fatima Shams: We always have women at the forefront of the social protests in the past four decades. But in neither of these movements, we see them coming and putting themselves and their bodies at the center stage of the movement, at the center stage of the protests.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What is the political symbolism of hijabs in Iran?
--:-- Fatima Shams: What happened after the revolution, I think, makes hijab the political symbol. Since the rise of the nation state in Iran, we see that the notion of modernity and the notion of modernization and advancement in the society is obsessively tied to the imagination and control of the woman's body.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So in 1930s, Reza Shah, he's the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty. He decides to implement this quite aggressive, top-down modernization project. and as part of that project, he comes up with compulsory unveiling campaign where women who are veiled are being attacked in the streets and are being forced to take off their veil.
--:-- Fatima Shams: And then four decades later, you know, after the revolution, we have a compulsory re-veiling campaign. So Chador, or the conservative dress code that was introduced after the revolution as the official ideal dress code for women, you know, was promoted during that period.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we have even some of the most progressive and liberal-minded revolutionaries who also remained indifferent when women took to the streets and said that we don't want to be veiled. They kind of turned their back on them and said, you know, a piece of cloth on your head is not that important.
--:-- Fatima Shams: So why don't we focus on more important revolutionary aspirations at this point? And I think that was a moment where hijab basically became the political emblem of the Islamic Republic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What we see today is not only, you know, this kind of nationwide rage is no longer only demanding the abolishing of the morality police. I think whoever claims that this movement is limited to that at this point is a little bit delusional and basically trying to be an apologist of the regime or trying to deny the real demands of the Iranian people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Fatima Shams is a professor of Persian literature at the University of Pennsylvania.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When we're back, we're going to ask if these protests could be a revolution.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio?
--:-- Sanam Vakil: Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up, and within seconds you will have your email and calendars synced.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You'll see all your relationships in a fully-fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: And they say you can build AI-powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile Replicate Modal and so much more You can go to addio slash todayexplained to get 15 off your first year That A dot com slash todayexplained
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained, Sean Rameswaram firm. We've been watching these protests in Iran for a month, wondering one thing. Is this a revolution? The truth is, no one knows. But it's Sanam Vakil's job to ponder this question at her think tank.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: I'm the deputy head of Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa program.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And she says these protests are at the very least different from anything that's come before.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: Iran has seen regular waves of protests over the last 20 years. In 1999, there were student protests. A protest movement which began as a result of both the close down of an important newspaper, a restrictive press law that parliament is about to pass, and then an attack on a small student demonstration at Tehran University dormitories.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In 2009, there were very damaging protests against Iran's presidential election where people poured out on the streets spontaneously, believing the results of the election were fraudulent.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: Rioting has erupted in Iran tonight after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of the hotly contested presidential race by a landslide.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In 2017 and 2019, we saw protests against the economy and inflation and more working class frustration.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: We are seeing calls for the overthrow of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And these protests that we've seen over the past couple weeks in Iran are bringing together various groups throughout the country, from young people, women, the middle class, ethnic groups, to protest a whole series of issues.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: What makes these protests distinct is that they're unifying more groups in more parts of the country than any protest since the Iranian revolution in 1979.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And to understand the aim of these protests, you have to go back to that revolution. The Islamic Republic came to fruition after the 1979 Iranian revolution, where, again, Iranians of all different classes, political orientations, mobilized against the Pahlavi monarchy that had been ruling Iran for a number of decades.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: The Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ruled Iran from September 1941 to February 1979. And Iranians were deeply fed up by a political class that was distant and not reflective of popular will or demands.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And through the revolution, they successfully overthrew the monarchy. But the revolution was successful because it brought together a myriad of factional groups.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: And one of the stronger leaders in the revolutionary process was a cleric by the name of Ayatollah Khomeini.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For Khomeini, the flight from Paris to Tehran marked the end of 15 years in exile. For the people of Iran, the arrival of his jetliner signaled the beginning of even more radical social and political changes than have already taken place.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: Inside the airport terminal, Khomeini was greeted by scores of Muslim religious leaders and political allies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And revolutions, to quote a famous academic by the name of Crane Britton, are born out of hope, but generally don't end very well for all of the factions involved.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: And those hoping for a democratic or secular Iran lost out to the clergy and more authoritarian elements that supported the revolution.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And one of the figures who emerged from that revolution is still in power today. And schoolgirls in the street are tearing up pictures of him.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: Tell us about Iran's current supreme leader. Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, and he's been supreme leader since 1989, when Ayatollah Khomeini, who was the founding father of this Islamic system, died.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Khamenei was a revolutionary. He was not at the forefront of the revolution, but sort of a disciple of many of the clerical leaders, including Khomeini.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: And he was selected to be supreme leader by a body in Iran known as the Assembly of Experts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And people today aren't just calling for him to leave office. They're calling for his death.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: Did Iran go from zero to 100 real quick? Or has he always been relatively unpopular?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think through these protests that I mentioned earlier, 1999, 2009, 2017, 2019, there has been mounting anger against Iran's political establishment with Khamenei being at the top of the system.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: And in each of these protests, through the crackdown and repression, people have become more emboldened and have begun to cross what we thought were red lines and begun to directly attack and criticize the leadership.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what used to be just quiet criticism of Khamenei has become very direct.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: And calling for the downfall or death of Khamenei sort of is taking a play on the same sort of rhetoric and language that the Islamic Republic has used in order to generate support for their policies against the West and for many years in protests in Iran during the revolution and even in recent years you would hear chants that would say, Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to the Soviet Union, for example.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this is sort of a play on that sort of rhetoric.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: And how has Khamenei responded thus far?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, Khamenei as a leader tries to be above the institutions and the individuals that are appointed or elected to the different branches of government in Iran.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: He tries to run the system in a consensus-based sort of chairman-like leadership position.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he came out a few days ago and made a statement, gave a speech about the protests, trying to blame the protests and the public frustrations on the West, and particularly the United States.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: I openly state that the recent riots and unrest in Iran are schemes designed by the U.S. the usurping fake Zionist regime, their mercenaries, and for some treasonous Iranians abroad who helped them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These riots have been planned. If the death of this young girl didn't happen, they would have found another pretext to create chaos in the country and harm the country's security.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: That's really part of the government playbook. In every crackdown after protests, the government sees the not-so-hidden hand of the international community and very rarely takes responsibility for policy failures or their own action or inaction.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we haven't mentioned yet that Khamenei is in failing health as well.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: Does that affect the calculus of how he might respond to these protests?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Khamenei has been in failing health for a long time. And this isn't new, but it speaks to the broader uncertainty about the coming political transition once he passes.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: Khamenei is about 83 years old. And while there is a constitutionally mandated process of how we expect succession in Iran to unfold, because he's been in power for over three decades.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And because he has such a monopoly of power in the country, there's anxiety and uncertainty that is definitely seeping into the political system and perhaps leading to very stagnant government response to these protests, but also more broadly to the economic challenges that people are facing.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: We're just not seeing bold or accommodationist policy or leadership coming from the political class in Iran.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does this feel like a perfect storm to you? you know, the failing health of the Ayatollah plus Iranians calling for death to the dictator and the death of Masa Amini, not to mention the deaths of protesters that have followed.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: Does this feel like a moment that has great potential for change in Iran?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hearing you describe and lay out everything and all the challenges, yes, it does sound like a perfect storm.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: There is a detached aging leadership. There is a deeply angry population in Iran.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there are a few elements that I think we should also consider.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: The Islamic Republic has never failed to use brute force to repress Iranians. and sometimes that enforcement is immediate and brutal and sometimes it's more progressive as I think it's playing out now but that brutality is very much underway and retaining the monopoly of force for a state as strong as the Islamic Republic has been an important tool in its playbook and its power box, if you will.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At the same time, the government, through all of these years and protests and crackdowns, has been quite effective at weeding out the opposition, weeding out any leadership, trying to repress that leadership through detentions and arrests.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: Many activists and potential leaders are in jail or in the diaspora. They have tried to fragment and break bonds between different social, economic, and political groups in Iran.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that leaves this movement leaderless and I think without direct organization.
--:-- Sanam Vakil: Those are two key and necessary features for these protests to translate into something more revolutionary.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was Sanam Vakil. She's with Chatham House.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our show today was produced by Halima Shah with help from Jillian Weinberger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from Amanda Llewellyn, edited by Matthew Collette, and engineered by Afim Shapiro.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. Thank you.
