0:07      Kay Summers: From the School of International Service at American University in Washington, this is Big World, where we talk about something in the world that truly matters. Mahsa Amini was 22 years old when she was killed in police custody in Tehran, the capital and largest city in Iran. Mahsa was arrested for not wearing a hijab, which is required of women in Iran. Her death sparked the Women, Life, Freedom movement, demanding the end of compulsory hijab laws and other forms of discrimination and oppression against women in Iran. The movement was met with brutal repression by the Iranian authorities. But over a year after the death of Mahsa Amini, protests and a greater movement for women's rights have continued in Iran.

0:54      KS: We want to understand Iran's long history of protests and the impact that the Women, Life, Freedom movement is having on Iran and the world. So today, we're talking about the movement for women's rights in Iran. I'm Kay Summers and I'm joined by Shadi Mokhtari. Shadi is a professor here at the School of International Service where she teaches classes on rights and political change in the Middle East and post-revolutionary Iran. Shadi is currently researching the human rights dynamics of protest movements and transitions in the Middle East, particularly in Iran, Egypt, and Tunisia. Shadi, thanks for joining Big World.

1:32      Shadi Mokhtari: Yep. Thank you for having me again.

1:35      KS: Wonderful. Shadi, I want to start with a timeline question. Will you give a general overview of the trajectory of post-revolutionary Iran that brought Iranians to the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests?

1:51      SM: To put it very, I guess, simply here, many Iranians who participated in the 1979 revolution had key aspirations centered around freedom, social justice, and self-determination. So basically, having a society that's free of the monarch's repression, the Shah at the time, economic inequality, and also free from American political and cultural imperialism. And so, for them at the time, the means for achieving those aspirations, not for everyone, but for a lot of different kinds of factions and ideological groups who participated in the revolution, the means for attaining these aspirations was a return to our authentic selves through Islam. And once Khomeini and his camp consolidated power and became the revolution themselves, Islam turned into the ends instead of the means towards achieving these aspirations. And so you could say that Iranians ever since have been trying to maneuver through reform or upend what they ended up with, with the 1979 revolution. Essentially a project of top-down Islamization.

3:29      SM: And so, you went through several stages. One of the watershed moments, of course, or periods, was the reform movement in the late '90s, early 2000s, where you had the sons of the revolution. These were committed Islamists revolutionaries who wanted to reform this Islamization project, this Islamic state, and turn it into something that was more aligned with rights and freedom and these principles of tolerance and multiple interpretations of Islam and so on and so forth. And that project was, in a nutshell, shut down after a few years. And then we had the 2009 Green Movement, which was in response to another Islamist or post-Islamist. So, an Islamic reformer, at least at that time, who ran for president, and by most accounts probably won, but was not allowed to win in the end. So the election fraud that brought people to the streets. And you had several months of protests, but faced with repression, heightened levels of repression compared to the years that had preceded it. All sorts of activists jailed, protestors killed with sniper fire, reports of torture, the whole gamut of the means of repression.

5:24      SM: And then we've had over the last 10 years, other attempts to bring in reformers through elections and the rise of protest movements relating to a host of grievances: increased poverty, gas prices, environmental degradation, water shortages, repression. And then also in the mid-2010s, you get a rise in, not large scale, but intermittent protests around women's rights and particularly the hijab issue. In forms of just ordinary individuals contesting the hijab on the street in their day-to-day interactions. So, all of this brings us to 2022. And I might add also, the sense that we have tried to reform the Islamic Republic from within, not once, not twice, many, many times. And the regime has been resistant to that, coupled with just the clearest sign. I mean, the regime basically not even wanting to play that game by allowing reformists to run anymore. So, even if people wanted to play faith in this idea of reform from within, the regime was now cutting off that avenue. So really, the sense of there are no avenues left to affect political change. And then faced with the story that's revealed by two female journalists, who are incredibly brave, who bring Mahsa Amini's story to the rest of the world, and who were just released from jail less than a month ago, after over a year in detention. But they bring this story that's really, I mean, I think familiar to people and it's not surprising to people. And it's so emblematic of the random and unaccountable violence that people are subjected to along with this regime of not only just standard, plain-old vanilla authoritarian regime repression but also the controlling of women's bodies, the controlling of everyone's day-to-day, most personal decisions. And so, it just all comes in front of them and is encapsulated in the story and the images of this young Kurdish woman who's come to Tehran on a visit with her family and ends up dead several days later.

8:44      KS: Right and thank you, that is a lot. That does get us from the late '70s up until 2022, and it got us to this point. So briefly, what happened to these protests?

8:59      SM: There's many different layers of the protests. The protests inside the country give rise to these protests outside of the country in the diaspora and all sorts of mobilizations in the diaspora as well. And so, there's many layers of the stories to be told. If you don't mind, I wanted to talk a little bit about one aspect of the grievances that give rise to the protests. And not necessarily give rise to the protests, but give context to it. And this is part of the research that I'm working on now, but I think it's a big piece of the puzzle that is not talked about. So obviously, the grievances against the state are many, but there is this element that really frustrates Iranians. And what it is, is,

10:00      SM: And again, it takes us back to the revolution, right? Because the revolution was, in many ways, challenging Western imperialism. And what happens is that the regime has a brand that has really, really endured and stuck with it. And I'm labeling this in my research now as a form of anti-imperialist victim branding. So obviously Iran's not alone in this. But I think it's one of the most successful cases, where the regime creates its identity on the international plane around this idea of its resistance to Western hegemony in the Middle East and a host of policies impacting both Iran and extending to Palestinians in other parts of the region.

11:04      SM: And that is the primary lens through which Iran’s state and population tied up into one, is viewed. And you might say that, no, of course, there's always been discussions about what the regime does when it comes to women's rights and human rights, and that's true, but the problem there is that essentially the people who have been most eager to talk about Iran's human rights and women's rights violations have been people who have these orientalist savage, victim savior type worldviews, and who often use Iran's women's rights and human rights violations instrumentally to justify aggressive western policies from sanctions, to even championing military intervention in Iran.

12:14      SM: And so that has allowed the regime to label any criticisms of its human rights as imperialist. So that's the political dimension of it. There's also the cultural dimension. We have our distinct Islamic identity, and we are implementing it in our society. So it's a DEI-type argument. That branding is problematic because a lot of people who are very well intentioned and have very progressive outlooks have seen how George W. Bush used women's rights and human rights when it came to Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, have developed an allergic reaction to these human rights discourses.

13:17      SM: And so they buy into the idea that anytime someone wants to talk about human rights in Iran or women's rights in Iran, they're aligning with or they're an extension of American imperialism. And so that has made it very difficult for Iranians, both inside and outside of the country, to really shed light and bring about moral clarity to the horrible things the regime does to Iranians. Because as soon as you start talking about that, the discussion somehow gets shifted to American imperialism or hegemony or whatever. And so this has, again, been a huge source of frustration for Iranians. I wanted to put that out there because I think it provides a lot of context for the question of what happened to the protests.

14:19      SM: So inside the country, the protests at the beginning start out. They're extraordinary. Even though they're building on these waves of protests in Iran and normative change within society and all of that, they're extraordinary because they're led by women and even school girls demonstrating extraordinary bravery. And you see these videos of girls... There's one in particular, school girls chasing an official from the Ministry of Education out of the courtyard and throwing their veils at him. Or schoolgirls standing in front of a picture of Khomeini with their hair uncovered, hijabs removed and middle fingers pointing at Khomeini.

15:17      SM: So there's, at the same time, this extraordinary ethos of the protests where people are singing songs and performances and digital art and videos that both convey the men's injustices that Iranian women and all Iranians endure, but also put forth a vision for a starkly different future of living with equality and freedom. Some people might be familiar with “Baraye,” the song that won a Grammy that has interesting discussion there too, but it's very powerful. And I should say that the protests, you can't really just say they were hijab protests. They are really much broader than that. And many of the slogans speak to the fact that the protests are about, we do not want this regime anymore.

16:18      KS: That's a question I would like to ask, because Mahsa Amini's death was undoubtedly the catalyst, but what were the key grievances of the Woman Life Freedom protests, as you said, they were not just about hijabs. So what were the key points?

16:33      SM: It was closing off avenues for impacting political change, gender-based discrimination that I think interestingly, there's been this huge normative change in Iran when it comes to gender-based norms. And when you see men standing behind women and chanting these slogans for women's rights, sometimes it's just like I pinched myself when I saw some of these scenes. It was extraordinary. But I think the whole society has really just woken up to the men's subjugation of women that has gone on for 45 years. Obviously patriarchy predates that, but institutionalized discrimination. So it's like the two are entwined. It's not a depoliticized kind of discussion of women's rights that you just root in backwards culture and religion. It's highly politicized because it has to do with the state, and you're essentially saying, "We do not want the state anymore, or this regime."

17:49      KS: So the Iranian diaspora all around the world mobilized in unprecedented ways for Woman Life Freedom. So for people who are, again, not as familiar with it, can you just briefly describe these mobilizations and then talk about their effects. What effect did this have?

18:04      SM: So I think you could describe the Iranian diaspora broadly as Iranians, who really harbored many ill feelings and disdain for this regime, but found political activism a futile endeavor. And so they just quietly carried their disdain from the regime with them as they went along with their day-to-day immigrant lives. And all of a sudden, when they watch these images of women taking to the streets and removing their veils and burning their veils, and just the empowerment there and bravery and courage that's on display, it really politicizes them and mobilizes them and inspires them. So they start taking to the streets in wherever they are.

19:11      SM: You have huge protests in Berlin and Toronto and London and Washington, and in a lot of places throughout the world that you would not expect to see protests. It's quite a phenomenon. The initial protests really maintained the same spirit of hope and the possibility of real change of the protests inside Iran. There are a lot of moving artistic productions and calls for international solidarity that come out. A lot of activists try to make the case for why we are not dealing with an issue of culture, that cultural anti-imperialist branding of the state is not what's at stake here. A lot of people in Iran do not want to wear the hijab,

20:00      SM: I do not want this regime. And so they are able to get all sorts of various forms of solidarity from just ordinary citizens. I mean French school kids singing the “Baraye” song that I mentioned earlier and Farsi all the way to members of various parliaments becoming sponsors of people who are later kind of given the death penalty for participating in some of the protests. I mean, there's some really interesting kind forms of mobilization that diaspora Iranians take on. And they actually do get Iran removed from the commission on the status of women at the UN, which is incredible. I mean, the UN doesn't operate that way generally. They believe in engaging everyone. Right. And so it was extraordinary and they created a special fact-finding mission on the crackdown at the Human Rights Council. So they did these very interesting and important kind of activities and forms of mobilization they undertook.

21:14      SM: But then there was this other side to the mobilization and you start seeing it early on, but then it just really comes to dominate unfortunately. There's this discourse pre-existing before Mahsa Amini's killing that's called the regime lobby discourse, essentially where certain people or organizations are labeled as being on the payroll and doing the political deeds of the Islamic regime. And these are people who are Iranian, hyphenated Iranians, Iranians in the diaspora. And so most prominently, it starts out with the National Iranian American Council, goes by NIAC. It's kind of a organization for Iranian Americans and supporting Iranian American issues. But they have always taken a very strong foreign policy role. And they have been champions of removing sanctions and trying to stave off any kind of military intervention in Iran and promote negotiations on the nuclear issue and peace.

22:35      SM: And it also includes a slew of academics, journalists, and people who at various points may have talked about how we have reformers and we have hardliners in the regime and kind of in a sense humanized certain elements of the regime and said, we should be sitting down and talking to these people, or said that issues around the hijab are more complex than they are sometimes presented. And women wear the hijab for different reasons.

23:12      SM: And so they live very active lives in Iran, regardless of the discrimination or of the hijab. And so these people come to be labeled as either lobbyists or apologists for the regime, and then they become subject to a witch hunt right around the time. I mean, it's been there, it's kind of been lurking on social media, but then with the Mahsa Amini protests, all of a sudden it just explodes. And I mean, I must say that I think that there is something to be discussed in that underlying critique of too much kind of contextualizing and moral complexity around a regime that has done horrible things, that there should be more moral clarity on, stances of moral clarity.

24:10      SM: So I think there's something to discuss here in terms of grievances against these groups. But of course, they are not Iran law. I mean, this whole discourse just takes on a life of its own. And so people who are targeted and they really are targeted. I mean, someone called it an online lynch mob. If they have speaking events at universities, there are campaigns directed where the universities have to cancel events. Some of them face death threats. A lot of them are actually being subjected to online character assassinations and threats of sexual violence, sexual profanities that really fly in the face of the anti-misogynist spirit of Woman, Life, Freedom. I mean, it's really extraordinary how people do that in the name of Woman, Life, Freedom. Pictures of these people designated as part of the Iran lobby or regime lobby appear at protests with blood dripping. I mean, it's just really out of control. And actually, as these things go, a lot of people who are kind of the biggest enthusiasts of this discourse and the witch hunt end up themselves being accused of at various points of being kind of regime apologists or normalizing the regime or somehow being canceled.

25:57      SM: And so that really online is the start of really, really problematic discourse in politics, which shifts the attention away from the regime. Now we're just targeting more and more people and really it's ugly and goes against the ethos of hope and reconstructing Iran, re-imagining Iran that you had in those initial protests in Iran and the other side of the initial diaspora mobilizations. And it's almost as if Woman, Life, Freedom kind of gets then captured by these conservative forces within the Iranian diaspora who have long kind of been on board with discourses around terrorism. They are lobbying for Western governments to designate the Revolution Guard as a terrorist organization. They are not against sanctions and generally want more sanctions. And so in any case, the discourses of the diaspora start really diverging from what's going on on the streets in Iran and kind of have their own trajectory, even though they start off fairly close together in ways that are very unprecedented.

27:52      KS: Shadi Mokhtari, it's time to take five. This is when you, our guests get to daydream out loud and reorder the world as you'd like it to be by single-handedly instituting five policies or practices that would change the world for the better. What are five things you think would have to change before we see meaningful political change in Iran?

28:14      SM: Any political change for Iran will have to begin with an organized opposition, which we do not currently have. Those inside and particularly outside of the country who have to devote their energies first and foremost, to building organizational structures and leadership. Second, opposition forces need to stay focused on the regime and not anyone else. The witch hunts and divisions are obviously the regime's biggest asset. So at best, there are conversations to be had about various divisions and the critiques that different groups have of each other. All they can do is try to persuade each other and call in.

29:05      SM: Third, I'd say in order to do this, there needs to be a huge shift in online political culture. Perhaps, I mean, I've been thinking about maybe a good start would be for, we have this explosion of political activists, human rights activists, women's rights activists, particularly the political activists could begin by finding some kind of a public commitment to engaging in constructive civil discourse online. The fourth, there has got to be the inclusion of Islamic reformers and post-Islamists, and you need a big tent to bring down this very powerful regime. So very few people should be excluded and

30:00      SM: ... for very good reason, and that has not been the case so far. And fifth, the organizing and coalition building that must take shape should be rooted in the ethos of hope and rebuilding Iran from the ashes of the Islamic Republic of the initial Woman, Life, Freedom protests. There is no other way.

30:22      KS: Thank you. Is there any way in which, because you mentioned the diaspora before the protests had been kind of living their lives and maybe keeping their own counsel about how they felt about the Iranian regime, is there any way in which these protests helped to reunite or build a bridge between people in Iran who want change and the diaspora? Or was that always there, it just wasn't very visible?

30:57      SM: Initially I was very hopeful that it would, and it did seem like people inside Iran and in the diaspora were unified in a way that was really unprecedented. There are attempts by some activists, political activists to really work with people on the ground in Iran. The regime makes that very hard, but something else that makes it very hard is the people in the diaspora. Certain groups do not want to work with anyone who has ever been a part of this regime, okay?

31:36      SM: So that means the Islamic reformers, the post-Islamists, they have much more support inside the country, but outside the country just because of the people who end up being in the diaspora and leave Iran tend to be from the middle and upper classes, and just not the most religious segments of society. So, they are very quick to just say, "We will not talk to anyone who's ever been a part of this regime," even if at this point they are advocating for a secular future for Iran and a secular kind of political order.

32:18      KS: Yeah, I would imagine that kind of a litmus test is something that cuts off a lot of people who have expertise or access, and who have maybe been part of a regime or swept along as part of something that they never really supported. Now that they have the courage or the wherewithal to say, I'd like something different, to have people in the diaspora who say, "Well, you were once associated with this, so never ever can we deal with you." It cuts off your nose spite your face in a way, because it doesn't allow in people. Is that-

32:55      SM: Absolutely. It's not even people who never wanted to be a part of it. I mean, it was a lot of people who did, but then changed their views on the regime, and whether it's reformable or whether this whole Islamization project is possible, I mean, there's a lot of those people as well.

33:15      KS: Right, okay. So Shadi, we are more than a year removed from the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, and so I want to know from you, do you think there is a future for Woman, Life, Freedom, or will this ultimately be another chapter of the life of Iran's Islamist Republic that is now closed?

33:38      SM: Yes, in the sense of ... yes and mostly no, let me say that. So, in many ways it seems that so much that the protests gained has slipped away and been captured, or either been controlled by the state or captured by these other opportunistic actors, a lot of them abroad. Then you had the one-year anniversary of Mahsa Amini in September, last September. It was so disheartening, right?

34:14      SM: So you had over a month prior to the anniversary, the regime began arresting activists and particularly university professors, which was interesting. Just in the lead up to the anniversary, city spaces were occupied by security forces, security forces blocked off the path to where Mahsa Amini's grave site is, which these are places where people would be gathering for protests. Mahsa's parents who have been extraordinarily brave throughout this time and challenged the state's accounts of what happened to her were placed under house arrest for that day, were not allowed to leave, and I think had to actually go in to some security forces or an office.

35:13      SM: So, all of that was going on. At the same time that week, the regime literally and figuratively borrowed a page from Saudi Arabia's sports-washing playbook. So, by bringing in Ronaldo and his team to play game in Tehran and making that a big spectacle that had all sorts of news coverage and diverted attention from the anniversary. As if that was not enough, there was also that week a deal that had been in the works for quite a while, but I don't know how it got worked out so it would happen on that day, but Iranian American hostages held in Iran were released as a result of a deal with the Biden administration. That also took up further new cycles and attention, and with all of that, the regime was able to just allow that anniversary to pass.

36:25      SM: On the other hand though, Iranians really continue to yearn for a different reality. As long as that's the case, I think political contention that is promised on the demands that we're at the heart of Woman, Life, Freedom will continue. We see that in just an elderly man in the north of Iran singing songs while young people gather around him as a way of resisting the regime's rules around singing and dancing and public displays like that, to the anniversary of the Revolution was just this week, February 11th, and you had basically people back to their balconies shouting death to Khomeini and death to the dictator. So the grievances and the aspirations for change in a different reality are not going away, it's just a matter of whether people will learn from the lessons that the last year and a half have provided them.

37:50      KS: Shadi Mokhtari, thank you for joining Big World to discuss the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran. It's been an honor to speak with you, I learned a lot. Thank you so much.

38:02      SM: Thank you so much, Kay. I appreciate it.

38:05      KS: March 8th is International Women's Day, as it is every year. This podcast will be coming out in March, and it's just a reminder to all of us that the life of one woman matters, the life of all women matter and women living under repression of any kind, it really matters, and maybe we could all think about that on March 8th and every day.

38:25      KS: Big World is a production of the School of International Service at American University. Our podcast is available on our website, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you listen to podcasts. If you leave us a good rating or review, it'll be like bonus episodes of your favorite podcast. Our theme music is, It Was Just Cold by Andrew Codeman. Until next time.