Interim outcome of the Iranian uprising Maxim Petrov's analysis

The Iranian uprising is still going on, although to a certain extent it seems to wane. The reason is that it has failed to extend beyond its base, and the base is a couple of hundred thousand young people from different social strata in the whole of Iran. People were united more by belonging to the same generation than anything else: among the protesters were university students from the capital, the unemployed, and the "golden youth" from the richest areas of the Iranian capital. The uprising spanned more than 80 cities, but as a whole, it did not go beyond a certain social stratum - angry youth.

While many journalists, athletes, academics, and other prominent figures have come out in support of the protesters, it is very little for Iran's 90 million people. If a social movement does not spread, does not go deep, capturing more social groups, does not expand to reach millions, it gradually goes downhill. "Everything that does not move falls," says the ancient wisdom.

The uprising that erupted after the morality police killed Kurdish girl Mahsa Amini for improperly wearing the hijab raised slogans against not only the hijab but the Islamic republic itself. The rebels demanded its liquidation, cursing the Supreme Leader and the president. Perhaps the main slogan of the movement were the words often chanted by young boys and girls: "Woman, life, freedom!" This undoubtedly wise and just slogan echoed the one that dominated the 1979 revolution - "Bread, work, freedom!"

The 1979 revolution against the Shah's regime engaged millions of people because its slogans were deeper and more inclusive. At that time, the most powerful of the enslaved classes in Iranian society - the working class - was able to self-organise, elect self-government bodies, based on a factory council established in each factory (shura), hold a general strike, and then take over the factories in self-government. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Iranian intellectuals, sharing ideas ranging from an Islamic republic to constitutional government or council rule, took to the streets at the time, and finally, the urban poor and bazaar traders who supported the ideas of theocracy joined the uprising. Many members of Iran's Shiite clergy come from middle bourgeois families and form one unit with them - a king of large clans - whose representatives later gained important government posts as officials of the new regime. And the poor, the conservative villagers, the people who received social assistance from the clergy in the form of food distributions, followed them.

In 1979, the most conservative and most authoritarian part of the clergy won, relying on an alliance with small and medium-sized bazaar traders and the huge mass of the unemployed or temporarily employed poor suburbanites, but the essence of the revolution was not down to them at all. There was a strong women's movement in those days, too, which had nothing to do with the reactionary part of the clergy.

Why haven't millions of people, dissatisfied with the regime, taken to the streets of Iranian cities today? The reasons for the widespread discontent are rooted in the dire state of the economy (Iran is shaken by strikes of petrochemical workers, truck drivers, teachers, etc.), the environmental disaster (desertification) and police repression, and in the oppression of national minorities. Most people now don't go to the polls or vote against all candidates and, according to research by sociologists, it is the areas where most people ignore elections that are most prone to protests or riots. So why haven't they joined the revolt? Why didn't workers' shuras in factories and students' shuras in universities, neighbourhood committees to protect their neighbourhoods from the police (and distribute goods taken from warehouses to the population), and other structures capable of developing and coordinating the movement reappear? Why did it remain at the level of unconnected, unorganized mobs that threw stones and Molotov cocktails at the police? These questions remain unanswered.

On the other hand, the rebellious young men have clearly made an impression on the authorities. Unlike the "green" protest movement of 2009, they had nothing resembling pacifism. This time, the dead and wounded came not only from the protesters, but also, in considerable numbers, from Iranian security forces. For example, General Hasan Hasanzadeh, commander of the local branch of the Guard Corps in charge of security in Tehran, said: "During the recent riots, they attacked 185 Basijis with machetes and knives and even broke the skull of one of them. Five of the basijis are in intensive care." Basijis are militias used by the regime to kill and beat up protesters.

More than 70% of Iranians oppose the compulsory wearing of the hijab, according to available sociological data. A number of Shiite Muslim theologians also support this view. Ayatollah Mahmoud Tehani, one of Tehran's Shiite leaders during the 1979 revolution, in particular, interpreted sacred texts in this way, arguing that the wearing of the hijab was a woman's choice. But his influential rival who consolidated his power, the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, thought otherwise.

The regime of Khomeini and his successor, who became the de facto absolute ruler of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, imposed a compulsory dress code on Iranian society, including the hijab. The reason was the desire of the religious class that ruled the country to control the daily life of citizens by constantly interfering in it and pointing out their presence. In addition, the requirement to wear the hijab was put forward as an argument in disputes with Khomeini's critics, both with supporters of social revolutionary Shiite movements (such as those of Telegani, who advocated collective property, a classless society, and the power of elected self-government - workers' shura) and with proponents of secular socialist and liberal currents, who demanded a constitutional state system and respect for a number of individual rights and freedoms.

Having defeated its opponents, the dictatorship has tried to turn Iran into a kind of velayet-e-faqih (the state of the supreme jurist-theologian). There, the spiritual leader, the rakhbar, wields almost absolute power, and intervenes in all matters of government through his office, while the elected systems of government - the president and parliament - merely provide the logistics of the regime: they are responsible for infrastructure projects and the economic bloc, executing the will of the supreme leader. It is crucial for this theocratic state to ensure control over the daily lives of citizens by regulating their appearance, marriage and divorce, and other rules under which Iranian society exists.

But today, the state in Iran has failed to stop women who have decided that their clothes are their choice. Now some eateries in Tehran look like the one in this picture. There is a perception that without the compulsory wearing of the hijab there is no Islamic republic, no velayet-e-faqih regime. Let's see how things develop further.