Iran

Iranian protesters have opened a new front as their demonstrations over the death of Mahsa Amini enter a fourth month, taking to windows and rooftops to show their anger at the government as they push for more freedoms.

Instead of taking to the streets, people have been chanting anti-government slogans from their apartment buildings in several neighborhoods of Tehran, according to posts on social media. At the same time, street protests and slogans continued in some neighborhoods of the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad and the western city of Kermanshah.

Iran was ousted from the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women on Wednesday after the world body’s 54-member Economic and Social Council adopted a U.S.-initiated resolution to take that step.

The move comes in response to Tehran’s crackdown on nationwide protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the regime’s morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab “correctly.” Since her death on Sept. 16, the Islamic Republic has been rocked by widespread unrest.

Well I’ll be damned.

Global solidarity against Iran’s bloody crackdown on a women-led protest movement will be tested on Wednesday, as world powers vote on whether to oust the country from a UN body tasked with empowering women.

Activists and rights groups say Tehran’s role in the 45-member commission on the status of women is a farce, considering the regime’s forces have beaten and killed women peacefully calling for gender equality.

The UN economic and social council (Ecosoc), which oversees the commission, will gather in New York to consider a US-drafted resolution to remove Iran “with immediate effect”.

I’ll believe this when I see it. 

Protesters demand greater freedoms while the leadership’s conservative vision of Islam falters

For decades, Iran’s clerical leaders have striven to make sure their country stays on a conservative, Islamic path. They have expanded religious education. The faithful have been urged to have more children. Those deemed to be exhibiting what the government regards as anti-Islamic behavior risk the full force of the law.

Months long protests in Iran against the core values underpinning the Islamic system suggest the country might be heading the other way.

Teenage girls now share videos of each other stomping on pictures of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, and his successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Young Iranians have been filmed knocking turbans off clerics’ heads, with the footage posted online. Thousands of women now walk around the streets of Tehran without the mandatory hijab, or headscarf, in what would have been a rare act of defiance just a few months ago.

#MajidrezaRahnavard was charged with "war against god", hanged in front of a basiji crowd from a crane, and buried without his family even knowing. This happens daily in Iran under the barbaric mullahs and their minions.

Don't be offended by the footage – be outraged at the IR. pic.twitter.com/b1izUAl80I

— Nioh Berg ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) December 12, 2022

The protests in Iran now in their third month are a historic battle pitting two powerful and irreconcilable forces: a predominantly young and modern population, proud of their 2,500-year-old civilization and desperate for change, versus an aging and isolated theocratic regime, committed to preserving its power and steeped in 43 years of brutality.

Iran says it has publicly hanged a 23-year-old in what is the second execution linked to the recent anti-government protests.

Majidreza Rahnavard, 23, was hanged early on Monday in the city of Mashhad, the judiciary said.

A court convicted him of “enmity against God” after finding he had stabbed to death two members of the paramilitary Basij Resistance Force.

Almost three months after the current popular uprising against the Islamic Republic started in Iran, three things are clear.

The first is that even if the uprising hits an interlude to recuperate, as is often the case with such movements, it is unlikely to simply fade away. It has mobilized energies that cannot be tamed with time, and raised such hopes and expectations that even the most hard-boiled cynics in power won’t be able to disregard.

Next, most of those who have mobilized those energies, that is to say the thousands of young men and women who risked all to openly challenge one of the most brutal regimes in contemporary history, while knowing what they want, don’t know how to translate their desiderata into the cold political reality of securing and using power.

A poignant video of the 450+ protestors killed thus far in Iran. It’s not a coincidence that many of them are remembered singing and dancing; they died protesting a regime that has criminalized both activities. pic.twitter.com/mReLyPQmlD

— Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) December 7, 2022

During a press conference in Tehran on 3 December, Iran’s Attorney General, Mohammad Javad Montazeri was asked by a journalist what had happened to the country’s morality police, which have been strangely absent from Iran’s streets. Clearly irritated by the question, Montazeri snapped that the morality police had nothing to do with the judiciary and they had been ‘abolished’ by the same body that had installed them. The word he used could also be translated as ‘suspended’ but the implication that the force had been in some way removed was seized upon by international journalists that something was beginning to give in the Islamic Republic. But as is often the case with the Islamic Republic, it is always worth pausing and reading the small print before rushing to judgement.