I have long been interested in Iran. More particularly, I have long hoped for the liberation of its people from the monstrous, cruel, tiny-minded regime that rules over them. So the ongoing protests are heartening. Whether they will finally destroy the Islamic Republic regime, nobody can know. But we can hope and offer our solidarity—and, much more, our help.
The probable murder by the authorities of a young woman for falling afoul of a stifling modesty code is a symbol of everything vile and stupid about the regime. Mahsa Amini, on the other hand, represents everything that is beautiful about the people, and especially the women, of Iran, who deserve far better than the loathsome theocracy imposed upon them in 1979. Let us hope that the blaze ignited by her death and that is currently engulfing the regime is the one that finally razes it to the ground.
With the health of the Ayatollah Khameini apparently ailing and given the sheer scale and breadth of the demonstrations against everything he represents, this does feel different from previous protests. Most inspiring of all the sights in Iran lately are those of the women setting their veils alight and spinning away joyously and freely, with the wind in their hair. That the men of Iran are side by side with them as they do so makes me even more optimistic.
I think I long ago tweeted something along the lines of, “When the compulsory hijab law falls, so too will the Islamic Republic.” I hope I am currently being proved right. Because if the regime gives in and relaxes or abolishes the modesty code, it will have shown its weakness in the face of radical protest, and the rest of the edifice won’t be long in crumbling. Less literally, that tweet was another way of saying that it will be the women of Iran who bring the regime crashing down. The resistance of those who bear the heaviest burden under the regime is the flashpoint. Immured in their veils, they have bravely and cleverly resisted their subjugation for a long time. And their veiling is central to the sharia ideology at the very heart of the Islamic Republic. If that goes, so too does the regime.
Emblematic of Iran’s womanhood is the brilliant, beautiful, fierce Masih Alinejad, the Iranian exile and feminist who spearheaded the anti-compulsory hijab My Stealthy Freedom and White Wednesdays campaigns which have so emboldened the women of Iran in recent years.
The regime hates her so much that in the past year or so they have tried, on two separate occasions, to kidnap or assassinate her. The Islamic Republic knows very well that she represents an existential threat to their theocracy. Once more: the fight of the women of Iran is the flashpoint issue. (Incidentally, Alinejad’s memoir, The Wind in My Hair, is a moving record of the life of one of the great human rights heroes of our time. If you haven’t read it, you must.)
I have written before about the thwarted hopes of the revolution against the Shah. Some democrats and secularists and feminists threw in their lot with the Ayatollah Khomeini, the only force who, it seemed, could depose the tyrant, and paid very dearly for it when he turned around and slaughtered or exiled them. They did not intend to create the Islamic Republic, but they were outwitted and betrayed. Others simply could not command as much support as Khomeini. But they have continued to oppose the new tyranny, and now a new generation is redeeming them, and might just bring about the change they sought to make.
If the Islamic Republic falls, what next? Anything could happen. But Iran has a strong and long-standing democratic opposition at home and abroad, and the people on the streets are fighting for liberty, not to impose another tyranny on their fellow Iranians. So I think it’s reasonable to hope that liberal democracy might just follow the fall of the Ayatollahs. I have often said that the Islamic Republic regime will fall within my lifetime, and probably sooner rather than later. And maybe that prognostication will still turn out to be correct (or not), but, with guarded optimism, I now think that we might just see Iran become a democratic republic or constitutional monarchy very, very soon.
(I mention the latter possibility because the Shah’s son is the leader of an opposition faction. Happily, though, he has stated that whatever comes next in Iran must be secular and democratic, so a Pahlavi restoration would not mean a return to the despotism of the past. And even if Reza Pahlavi did want to rule as an authoritarian, the people of Iran, dedicated to democracy as never before, would not allow it. I very much doubt they would repeat the mistakes of 1979.)
But even if this dream does come to pass, the future of a democratic Iran is not guaranteed. Dictatorship and fanaticism will long pose a threat to any free Iran; theocratic thugs will no doubt try to stop people from voting, or force them to vote a certain way, at gunpoint, and they will harass immodest women and gays and atheists and anyone else who doesn’t conform to their constipated view of the world. There will be no glorious utopian dawn. A free Iran will have to be on constant guard against those who will seek to utterly destroy it.
And what of the West in all this? Again, I’ve written about this before, and suffice to say I am as disappointed now as I was then. American imperialism and, more recently, American stupidity in the form of the nuclear deal, which was being flouted even before Trump withdrew from it, need hardly be raked over again. They are, lamentably, to be expected.
No, the real disappointment came from the Western radicals and feminists who shrugged their shoulders at and averted their eyes from the plight of the Iranian people. In 2019, I wrote that “A particularly poignant betrayal, however, comes from western feminists. Iranian women, who have lately been tearing off their hijabs in protest at its enforcement by the regime, receive very little support from western feminists.” And so it would still seem. But I can’t put this nauseating spectacle (or should that be “lack of”?) any better than Khadija Khan recently did in Areo Magazine:
But revolutionary change of this kind seems unlikely when even women who live in free western societies feel unable to voice their concerns about hijab. Every time a woman is tortured or killed in the name of religious morality, there is an outpouring of condemnation from across the political spectrum in the west—but when western women dare to speak out against religious modesty, they are branded bigots and Islamophobes.
This is the height of hypocrisy.
We cannot turn a blind eye to the plight of these oppressed women and still have a legitimate claim to be the torchbearers of the Enlightenment. Women who live under constant surveillance in theocracies cannot protest against the regimes under which they live, unless they are ready to lose everything. They need the support of free western women. But, sadly, the international response to the events like those in Iran has demonstrated far too little solidarity with these courageous women who are being subjected to violence for demanding their basic human rights. Instead, Hijab Day has been given the status of an international celebration.
Between relativist, cowardly feminists, craven, campist leftists, and criminal, indifferent, or idiotic American administrations, the people of Iran would be well within their rights to hate the West forevermore. But there is still time for the West to live up to its best ideals, by supporting the Iranian people, explicitly and without equivocation.
Never mind sad mumblings about how awful Mahsa Amini’s death was or vague hand-waving rhetoric about freedom. The Western democracies, America most of all, should say it loud and clear: we support the revolutionaries of Iran in their brave fight against religious tyranny and in their attempt to build a free society.
And they should offer what concrete help they can to the protestors and others in opposition, whether that be in the form of money or legal help or sanctions or anything else—but always and only at the behest of Iranians themselves, with no real politicking or impositions or conditions apart from a commitment to secular democracy.
In this way, Joe Biden could become one of the greatest presidents ever to hold the office. He can never be forgiven for the Afghanistan betrayal, but he has shown great strength in the face of Vladimir Putin’s vicious assault on Ukraine and demonstrated his commitment to that beleaguered democracy. Thanks to Western assistance, the bulk of which comes from the U.S., the hardy soldiers of Ukraine are rolling back Putin’s armies. Biden’s commitment to and skill in this task (so far), whilst avoiding direct engagement with Russia and thus nuclear escalation (also so far), must count as one of the great foreign policy triumphs of any U.S. president.
So, here’s an idea. Biden should gather all the Iranian secular democratic opposition figures and groups in exile, including, if possible, people from the current protests, and sponsor a Grand Coalition for Iranian Freedom so that the opposition can set out a plan, to be funded by the U.S. and other democracies, for supporting the protests, with the eventual aim of toppling the Islamic Republic and bringing democracy to Iran. The constitutional details of a future Iranian democracy would be worked out later. Right now, the Coalition would simply lay some groundwork, while mainly focusing on the immediate task of bringing down the theocracy that has so blighted their great, ancient nation for decades.
Perhaps this is wishfulness. I doubt Biden will really do such a thing or anything like it. But if he did, he could end up as one of history’s great heroes of democracy, though Afghanistan will forever besmirch his record (but even there, as I have previously written, there are ways in which he could at least try to make at least some amends). Biden, the ultimate scourge of tyrants and tyranny, everywhere? Anything, as they say, is possible.
But at the very least, Biden and the West could offer some support beyond the vague and the rhetorical. They could take a principled, explicit stand against the very existence of the Islamic Republic. And the Left, of which I count myself a part even now, could regain some honour by truly living up to the old ideals of internationalism and standing with the brave, oppressed people of Iran against a ruthless and repulsive tyranny, even if that means finding themselves on the same side as the dreaded American Empire.
I want to end by returning to the streets of Iran. There, after all, march some of the true radicals and revolutionaries of our time. It isn’t just Mahsa Amini, or Masih Alinejad. It is all of the women (and the men, too) demanding their freedom, most of whose names we will never know. They represent the heights of nobility to which the human species is capable of reaching at its very best, as set against the darkest, dingiest dungeons of human cruelty and stupidity represented by the Islamic Republic.
The wine and women-loving medieval Persian poet and polymath Omar Khayyam is the ancient godfather of the protestors. He, too, attacked and mocked the religious cretins of his day. One of his stanzas, at least in Richard Le Gallienne’s 1897 translation, has always struck me as the perfect description of the Islamic Republic (and, indeed, of all theocratic tyrannies):
But yours the cold heart, and the murderous tongue,
The wintry soul that hates to hear a song,
The close-shut fist, the mean and measuring eye,
And all the little poisoned ways of wrong.
And so, in closing, I leave you with some of the most beautiful, inspiring images I have ever seen, or am ever likely to see: the women of Iran dancing and chanting and setting their hijabs ablaze, risking their very lives to burn away the cold hearts and wintry souls of their oppressors.