Armita Garavand's death splits Iran again Analysis by Mikhail Shereshevskiy

In modern Iran, certain events are repeated with depressing regularity - the morality police maim and/or kill young women. On September 16, the country celebrated a tragic date - the death of Gina Mahsa Amini. Last year, police beat to death this 22-year-old girl who had come to Tehran to visit relatives. The reason was an incorrectly worn (according to the security forces) hijab. Amini's murder sparked protests across Iran. They lasted more than six months and were suppressed by regime forces, who killed about 500 protesters and arrested about 20 thousand people.

However, the authorities, fearful of riots and revenge (dozens of security forces were also killed - this time the protesters fought back), eased the pressure on society, and many women began to go out into the streets without hijabs. But the government decided to tighten the screws again. This decision immediately led to similar results.

In recent days, Iran has been discussing another tragic event - an attack by morality police on 16-year-old Armita Garavand. She entered the subway in Tehran without a hijab, but she was no longer destined to get out on her own. Surveillance cameras recorded how the girl was carried out of the train carriage. This video went viral on social networks, where the hashtag “Armita Garavand” (#آرمیتا_گراوند) appeared. After a conflict with the police, the girl fell into a coma and was taken to the Fajr military hospital in Tehran. According to human rights activists from the Hengaw organization, Garavand was beaten by a police patrol, the girl fell, hit her head and fell into a coma.

When journalist Maryam Lotfi went to the hospital to report on Armita's health, she was detained by the police. Then the girl’s parents, who were hiding their faces, were shown on TV - they reported that Armita's blood pressure had simply spiked. They were not at the scene.

Will last year's protests repeat again in the same format? It's not impossible, but it won't necessarily happen. Despite calls spread on social networks, on September 16, a relatively small number of people and a very large number of security forces took to the streets of Iranian cities, who were able to disperse the protesters in a few days - last time it took at least six months.

But mass protests in Iran are becoming part of normal public life and dissatisfaction with the authorities is growing. Videos are being circulated on social media showing numerous police attacks on young women who are beaten, thrown to the ground and forced into police cars simply because they took to the streets without wearing a hijab. This ferocious “piety” increasingly angers Iranians, especially young people, a huge part of whom are completely alien to religious traditions, formed in global social networks and differ little from their peers in the United States or Europe.

In Iran, against the backdrop of acute social-class conflicts and an economic crisis, there is also a conflict of generations, and at the same time, a cultural conflict. We are talking about the complete socio-cultural incompatibility of young people under 30, who make up half or even the majority of the population, and old people from among the clergy and military who rule the country after the revolution of 1978-1979 and were brought up in Islamist ideals. These two Irans are not only dissimilar, they are mutually exclusive. As Rowling says in her book, “one cannot live while the other lives.”

The Iranian regime is something like a church-state, or something more, velay-e-faqih (the state of the supreme jurist-theologian). Moreover, as the first leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, wrote, this state has “the sovereignty bestowed by God on the most noble Prophet” and “the state has priority over all divine decrees of the Sharia.” That is, the word of the Supreme Leader is supposedly the will of God, which stands even above Muslim law. Khamenei does not just rule the country: from his point of view, he relays divine order to the earth.

Anyone who does not follow the leader’s instructions (and Khamenei demands the obligatory wearing of the hijab) rebels against God. To allow such a violation means to agree with the attempt to destroy the state and its sacred foundations, to allow the public rejection of the divine will. In addition, Khamenei is convinced that concessions to the protesting youth will lead to a further escalation of demands, and therefore it is impossible to give in to them.

During the “Mahsa Amini uprising,” young women shouted a slogan that then spread throughout the country: “Hey, you who are sitting at home - the next Mahsa will be yours.” And so it happened.