Iran is going through sporadic nationwide unrest. Many led by young woman burning their headscarves and cutting their hair to protest the mandatory hijab regulations. Iranians are fed up with the morality police, the clerical establishment, and even the Supreme Leader himself. More than 80 cities have seen large scale protests. Dozens are dead and hundreds are injured and detained. Iran hasn't seen this level of unrest since 2009 when the Green Movement shocked the foundations of the state. The difference this time is that the country is experiencing a multitude of crises simultaneously, including grievances over social restrictions, rising food and energy prices, crippling inflation and economic collapse. Still worse, Iranians are going out on the streets at a time when the 83 year old supreme Ayatollah is rumored to be ailing and while The Islamic Republic is not yet ready to fall, it has inadvertently stepped with one foot into its grave.
Forty years ago, the Islamic Revolution capsized social life and religious laws took root including a mandatory each up mandate. Over the years these Islamic customs have seen nearly no change even under reformist governments and yet since the moment of its foundation the Iranian public has expressed its resentment of theocracy and religious dogma. In recent years, however, protests against compulsory religious mandates have accelerated. The current unrest erupted in northwestern Iran at the funeral of Mahsa Amini who was beaten into a coma by the morality police and then died .Her crime ,violating the hijab dress code. Thousands of Iranians took to the streets and set off a wave of civil disobedience. From there demonstrations spread to all corners of the country.Demonstrators burned images of Khamenei and attacked Iranian law enforcement services with firearms and blunt weapons. Things haven't been this tense in a long while. That said, the Iranian state is not facing an imminent collapse the current demonstrations lack organization and political representation, plus the government retains enough coercive capabilities to put down the unrest. Tehran will not collapse anytime soon. But in Iran, frustrations are plenty and they tend to coalesce whenever there is a crisis. Ethnic minorities hold grievances against Tehran due to political disenfranchisement Including the Kurdistan province where Amini was from. Meanwhile, with inflation at 52% in August 2022 Iranians have watched their bank notes buy less and less for years on end. Basic items including food and medicine have become unaffordable for many Iranians and even though the Iranian leadership has promised salvation, International sanctions are still up and the nuclear deal is still missing. Iran's GDP dropped from $644 billion in 2012 to $231 billion in 2020. As a result, living standards in Iran have reached their lowest point in more than a century. Outrage and resentment are thus endemic and the more resources Tehran pours into suppressing the unrest, the more vulnerable it gets in places elsewhere. So far, the government has tried to maintain control over the flow of information by restricting access to internet connectivity, telecommunications and social media platforms. These efforts have isolated the protests into smaller pockets preventing organization and keeping the demonstrations from snowballing into a full fledged uprising. Meanwhile, to shield himself from further criticism, President Ebrahim Risi and his allies have spoken about the need for investigations into the morality police. So to placate the protesters, some reshuffling of personnel is likely but at its core, no change will come to the functions and powers of religious law enforcement.
Tehran can't turn its back on absolute rule. As a mountainous nation, Iran was historically ruled in much the same way as the Holy Roman Empire, a deeply divided realm with self governing regions. Federalism defined historical Iranian states however, in the early 20th century,Iran shifted to a centralized form of governance. This transition was brought about violently and suddenly accompanied by a dose of repression. You can't have a revolution in white gloves after all. The shah's Dictatorship eventually ended, only to be replaced by a religious dictatorship. Since then, the Shia face has kept the Iranian identity intact. Without it, self aware ethnic regions would drift apart .For the Iranian clerics this means they view any social reform as a step towards de-centralized power. So for Iran to exist in its present form, it will consistently need a dose of either Theocracy or Autocracy. And yet, the Iranian state and the public have totally different views on the role that government should play. More Iranians than ever have access to outside information and most have never lived in a state that wasn't governed by strict religious codes. Iranians know they're missing out. So even after the current unrest subsides, public frustrations will again pour out into the streets. Waves of sporadic unrest will keep hitting Iran again and again.
But while the protests present an imminent threat to the Iranian state, the succession of the 83 year old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei presents a more deliberate crisis, one that could harm the very legitimacy of the state. Having succeeded Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, Khamenei is now the longest ruling leader in the Middle East. His eventual death would bring about dramatic change in the periphery. Intricate power plays are already taking shape in Tehran. Potential contenders and even 11th hour candidates are vying for power. Further convoluting the succession process is the Iranian deep state. That sounds like an ominous thing, but a deep state usually refers to long embedded civil servants whose loyalty and longevity go beyond the executive office. In Iran, the deep state is a complex web of civil servants who affect all aspects of political life, including its judiciary system, security architecture, intelligence apparatus, and business conglomerates. These civil servants are brought together by a shared philosophical creed and beliefs. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard corpse, or IRGC represents the main body of the Iranian Deep State. One of their tasks is to combat infiltration within the political establishment. For instance, when reformist President Khatami wanted to liberalize some aspects of daily Iranian life, the IRGC took that as a threat akin to the glasnost and perestroika reforms in the Soviet Union. As such, the IRGC undermined Khatami's presidency by covert means. The same playbook was used again in 2009 to suppress the Green Movement and place its leader Mousavi under house arrest. This is why the Tehran leadership is unwilling and unable to reconsider its mandatory hijab regulations. Even an inch of concession is fear to ignite an avalanche of crisis much like the glasnost and perestroika did in the late 1980s. The IRGC together with Khamenei's Office supervises the foreign affairs ministry, Defense Ministry, Intelligence Ministry, interior ministry and justice ministry. Khamenei is the architect of the deep state, but the IRGC is so powerful that if it were not a theocratic dictatorship, Tehran would likely be a military dictatorship.
The paradox is that all of this has happened before. In 1921, Colonel Raza Khan turned to politics and became Iran's Prime Minister. Later in 1925. He overthrew Ahmed Shah of the Qajar dynasty, established the Pahalavi dynasty. What followed was a centralized military dictatorship, which decades later, was replaced by a centralized theocratic dictatorship. So in Iran, things can always go from bad to worse, even when it's unfathomable. While the state is incapable of reform ,society is changing. Iranians are more aware of the outside world than previous generations. Much like during the Pahlavi era, the gap between the government and the public will gradually grow until they can no longer cope in the same place. the sanctity of harmony and the ruling religious establishment is no more. The next Iranian revolution is unpacking, brief bursts of civil disobedience will remain sporadic and localized. But over time, unfiltered resentment, could turn into substantial anti government demonstrations, because those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution, inevitable
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