Today, Explained - #MahsaAmini was just the beginning

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

The 22-year-old Iranian died in police custody after being arrested for wearing her hijab improperly. Her death has sparked a protest movement calling for the end of a regime that has for decades ruled Iran with an iron fist. This episode was produced by Haleema Shah and Jillian Weinberger, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Amanda Lewellyn and Laura Bullard, engineered by Efim Shapiro, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. 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. 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. On Today Explained, we're going to figure out whether that's a real possibility here. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. This all started with Massa 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 is a UPenn professor who has been living in exile from Iran since 2009 and following these protests closely. 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 Wazara building, she and her brother repeatedly told the police forces that they were strangers or the Qaribs in Persian and far from home without knowing their way around the city. But their desperate plea was completely ignored and they were told that she would be released after undergoing what they called re-education. 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 Mahsa Amini. In the police van, they threw insults at Mahsa and she resisted their insults and their aggression. And as two women detainees told Masa's father later, she was pushed out of her seat and her head was slammed against the van several times. 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. 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.

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. 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 skull fracture and trauma as a result of several blows on the head.

Mahsa died on September 16th, and a disturbing picture of her tied to ICU equipment soon went viral and shook the world. 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. 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? 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. One was the disturbing picture of Mahsa that went viral very, very quickly. She's lying on hospital bed and she's tied into ICU equipment. 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.

So the more the government tried to cover up her death, I think the more furious people became. 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. 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. 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. 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. You see, you witness the change and the radical shift in the aspirations and imaginations of a population that live under a particular regime. 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. For some in Iran, cutting off hair is an age-old mourning rite.

But it's also become a poignant form of protest for those rising up for their rights. 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 and burning what has represented 44 years of oppression and bodily control. 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. What is the political symbolism of hijabs in Iran? 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. 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. And then four decades later, you know, after the revolution, we have a compulsory rewailing 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. 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.

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. 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. Fatima Shams is a professor of Persian literature at the University of Pennsylvania. When we're back, we're going to ask if these protests could be a revolution. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a

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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. I'm the deputy head of Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa program. And she says these protests are at the very least different from anything that's come before. Iran has seen regular waves of protests over the last 20 years. In 1999, there were student protests. Protest movement, which began as a result both of 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. 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. Rioting has erupted in Iran tonight after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of the hotly contested presidential race by a landslide.

In 2017 and 2019, we saw protests against the economy and inflation and more working class frustration. We are seeing calls for the overthrow of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 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. 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. 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. 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. And through the revolution, they successfully overthrew the monarchy, but the revolution was successful because it brought together a myriad of factional groups. And one of the stronger leaders in the revolutionary process was a cleric by the name of Ayatollah Khomeini. 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. Inside the airport terminal, Khomeini was greeted by scores of Muslim religious leaders and political allies. 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. And those hoping for a democratic or secular Iran lost out to the clergy and more authoritarian elements that supported the revolution. 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. 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. 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. And he was selected to be supreme leader by a body in Iran known as the Assembly of Experts. And people today aren't just calling for him to leave office. They're calling for his death. Did Iran go from zero to 100 real quick? Or has he always been relatively unpopular? earlier, 1999, 2009, 2017, 2019, there has been mounting anger against Iran's political establishment with Khamenei being at the top of the system. 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. So what used to be just quiet criticism of Khamenei has become very direct. 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. So this is sort of a play on that sort of rhetoric.

And how has Khamenei responded thus far? 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. He tries to run the system in a consensus-based sort of chairman-like leadership position. 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. 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.

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. 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. And we haven't mentioned yet that Khamenei is in failing health as well. Does that affect the calculus of how he might

respond to these protests? 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. 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, 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 a very stagnant government response to these protests, but also more broadly to the economic challenges that people are facing. We're just not seeing bold or accommodationist policy or leadership

coming from the political class in Iran. 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 Massa Amini, not to mention the deaths of protesters that have followed. Does this feel like a moment that has great potential for change in Iran? Hearing you describe and lay out everything and all the challenges, yes, it does sound like a perfect elements that I think we should also consider. 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 weeding out the opposition, weeding out any leadership, trying to repress that leadership through detentions and arrests. 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. And that leaves this movement leaderless, and I think without direct organization. Those are two key and necessary features for these protests to translate into something more revolutionary. That was Sanam Vakil.

She's with Chatham House. Our show today was produced by Halima Shah with help from Jillian Weinberger. It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from Amanda Llewellyn, edited by Matthew Collette and engineered by Efim Shapiro. It's Today Explained. you