Woman Life Freedom

Text Masih Alinejad

Only five years ago, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, derided the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, saying he “makes Hitler look good”. In March, in a wildly unexpected development, the Saudis not only re-established diplomatic relations with Tehran but also spoke of the countries “sharing one fate”.

The diplomatic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran after years of facing off in proxy conflicts across the Middle East is being touted as a major coup that will bring relief for the Islamic Republic which is grappling with international isolation and an economy waylaid by years of mismanagement, corruption and graft.

It would be a mistake to read too much into the announcement or view the diplomatic rapprochement as a major positive development that Tehran can use to deal with growing opposition to the clerical rule. The future of Iran will be decided not in Washington or Beijing or even Berlin, but by Iranians.

Six months after the death in police custody of 22-yearold Mahsa Jina Amini, who was arrested for wearing the hijab incorrectly, the protests are still ongoing. The wave of angry and bloody demonstrations and boycotts which spread to more than 100 cities and exhausted the country’s security forces has tailed off. But the reality is that we are now entering a new phase, and the protests are now both more widespread and diffuse in response to the brutal tactics used by the regime.

The initial phase of the revolution was all about action and movement. But all movements need a pause, to catch their breath, to prepare for the next phase which is political organization.

The Iranian government has endured major protests before, notably in 2009, 2017, and 2019, but the demonstrations after the death of Mahsa Amini were and still are different. They embody the anger that Iranian women and young Iranians in general feel toward a regime that seeks to stifle their dearest desires. And unlike past protests, the demonstrators aren’t just calling for reform but rather aim to upend Iran’s establishment.

Thousands of protesters in hundreds of cities risked their lives to say no to the Islamic Republic. It is said that revolutions devour their children, but in Iran the grandchildren are challenging the Islamic regime. And many have paid with their lives. More than 500 have been killed and some 20,000 were arrested.

Iran’s clerics have responded to this existential challenge with brute force, but such tactics will not snuff out the will of a nation so outraged by its government.

At the same time, the regime denies it all. Of course, such denial is part of the Islamic Republic’s tool kit. The regime to this day blames foreign elements for Mahsa’s death and dismisses reports that any protesters have been arrested.

In a recent interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said: “I can tell you this in full confidence that our police and the security forces in Iran have not killed anyone with bullets or any other means in these riots.”

That’s in keeping with the past, where government officials have always denied arresting anyone for their political beliefs. Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denied the Holocaust ever happened, and foreign minister Javad Zarif have both dismissed reports that Iran had any political prisoners.

The reality is that the regime used brutal crackdown and terror tactics to stop the protests. At least 100 of the 500 killed were young women and girls. Some had been beaten to death. Then there are cases of hundreds of women who were blinded after being shot in the eyes by shotgun pellets. Leaked internal documents reveal details of how members of the Revolutionary Guards raped female protesters in prison.

What makes this movement different is the political unity shown by Iranians inside the country and those in the diaspora. In February, a group of prominent Iranian dissident figures, joined together in an alliance against the regime. The group, which calls itself the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom in Iran, which announced its existence at Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security, includes exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi, Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi and Canada-based activist Hamed Esmaeilion, actress and activist Nazanin Boniadi and Secretary General of Komala Iranian Kurdish party Abdullah Mohtadi and myself.

Illustration by Zaha Rahimzadeh

Earlier this month, we released a “Charter of Solidarity and Alliance for Freedom” that sets out the foundations for political representation of the protesters in Iran and gain support for isolating the Islamic Republic.

The charter notes the isolation of the Islamic government internationally is a first and necessary step for a democratic change. The charter calls for international pressure on the Islamic Republic to halt all death sentences and to immediately release all political prisoners without condition. Furthermore, the charter seeks expulsion of the regime’s ambassadors from democratic countries.

The charter also calls for “the formation of a council for the transition of power, and the means by which power is transferred to a secular, democratic government”.

More than anything, the alliance and its charter represent the political maturity of the Iranian opposition joining together after more than four decades of exile. Such unity is needed now more than ever.

Attacks with toxic substances in over 50 schools across Iran have poisoned more than 1,000 schoolgirls. Students experienced nausea, numbness in their limbs, difficulty breathing, and heart palpitations. The world has seen videos of young girls gasping for breath. In this climate of fear, girls are not attending school any longer. Yet Iran’s interior minister blames the symptoms of girls suffering from mass hysteria. And he blamed the foreign media for causing alarm.

Human rights groups suspect that extremist elements of the Islamic Republic of Iran are behind it. These are the groups that have official approval to act as enforcers. Some in the Islamic Republic believe that a woman’s place is at home, invisible and docile. But I suspect that the real motive behind the poisoning is to instill fear and force girls, many of whom participated in the mass protests, to stay at home and not attend school. Many Iranians believe the chemical attacks are punishment for the role young women played in leading the protests against the Islamic Republic.

Is it hysteria? Even supreme leader Ali Khamenei admitted that these attacks were organized and he called for the perpetrators to be punished. But we Iranians know better. A few years ago, there were a series of acid attacks on women in the city of Isfahan. To this day, no one has been arrested or punished.

That’s why the United Nations and the West must act. Removing the Islamic Republic from the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was the right step to take. Yet, before patting ourselves on the back let us think of this move as an initial step and we need more from the UN, the European Union and other democratic countries. Investigators should be dispatched to determine the chemical compounds used. The Islamic Republic’s history of hiding the truth makes an independent third-party investigation into the poisoning attacks absolutely critical.

While the Islamic Republic continues to undermine women’s rights, the resilience of women in Iran will not fade. We will not give up. The revolution is going strong and our voice cannot be silenced.

After the protests in Iran, many Western female politicians cut a piece of their hair in solidarity with Iranian protesters. But we don’t need western leaders to cut off their hair. We need the West to cut off its ties with the regime.

Masih Alinejad is an Iranian-American journalist, author and a women’s rights activist. She has lived in exile in New York since 2009. In January 2023, the US Department of Justice announced the arrest and indictment of three members of an East European organized crime syndicate who had plotted to assassinate Alinejad.