Iran: Don’t Count Your Revolutions Before They’ve Hatched

Jay Ramesh

What goes around comes back around. We’ve all heard about the brutality of the Iranian regime. Since the 1979 revolution, the country has been ruled as a theocracy, with revolutionary guards enforcing strict Islamic law and morality. And recent protests have the potential to topple the Iranian government, dragging the theocratic regime back into the flames of revolution from which it was born.

Mahsa Alini was arrested by Iranian morality police for allegedly wearing a hijab “too loosely” on September 13th, 2022. She died in police custody 3 days later, but witnesses allege that she was tortured and insulted in police custody before her death. Iran has denied this, claiming that she died of pre-existing conditions, including a heart problem that her family denies her ever having. 

Regardless of the truth, outcry over her death sparked waves of violent protests in Iran’s Kurdistan region which eventually spread to most major cities in Iran. Human rights groups alleged that at least 154 people have died during the protests as of October 4th, and at least 1,200 have been arrested. And to make things worse for the government, protestors are becoming more and more bold. 

Schoolgirls have been waiving their hijabs in the air shouting “Death to the dictator [Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini]”, while others have set up roadblocks, defaced images of Khomeini, and burned their hijabs, acts that would have been unthinkable a mere 15 years ago. Many claim that these protests, which directly target a pillar of the Iranian regime’s ideology, will lead to its eventual collapse. 

Don’t be so sure. 

Many of us still view the legitimacy and stability of regimes through the lens of a cold-war mindset. It’s the idea that, just as in the Soviet Union, protests and widespread discontent can easily bring about the collapse of authoritarian regimes, especially in non-first world countries. But the world has changed, and to examine examples of widespread pro-democracy protests against authoritarian regimes in the Islamic World, we need not look further than the Arab Spring. 

Of the 14 countries engulfed by protests during the Arab Spring, there were 2 success stories: countries where the ruling regime was successfully toppled and a new government came to power. And only 1 of those two countries, Tunisia, implemented a democracy; in Egypt, the military took power and remains in control of the country to this day.

In Syria, president Bashar al-Asad turned his military on the people, opening the door for salafists to entrench throughout the country and sparking the Syrian Civil War. In Algeria, the government responded immediately by passing sham “reforms” that ended up increasing the power of the central government. And in Yemen, increasing brutality against protestors eventually thawed into a transitional government that left the country vulnerable to the Houthi movement and the start of civil war.

Despite the fact that there appears to be a “revolutionary mood” on the streets, especially among young people, these protests pale in size to the millions that demonstrated and brought the Shah down in 1979. Young people were instrumental in bringing down the hated Shah back then, and young people will be just as instrumental now if the theocracy is to be brought down, but one crucial group of people must not be overlooked: the “Burnt Generation”, Iran’s equivalent of the Baby Boomers.

The Burnt Generation derives its name from the fact that this generation, born during the 1960s and ’70s, lived through decades of violence and rapid change; the 1979 revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranian hostage crisis, and years of economic sanctions. This generation was molded by conflict and holds most positions of power in the Iranian government. They tend to be the archetypes that the Iranian government draws its support from; more conservative, working class, and valuing stability and peace above all else.

The Iranian protests have been mostly led by Iran’s “Gen Z”, but the protestors must gain the support of the burnt generation and the working class if they are to have any chance of toppling the regime. 

Iran is a land of diverse cultures, ethnic groups, and regional interests, all of which have been repressed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). If the regime were to fall, these sectarian groups could ignite conflict and tear the region apart, threatening three decades of “peace and stability”. The burnt generation is likely to realize this, and as Iran is unlikely to agree to any sort of transfer of power to a democratic government, it seems unlikely that the protests will give way to a popular revolution that topples the regime.

Although we may see these protests as similar to ones that brought down the Soviet Union, South Korean, Libyan, and Romanian governments, we must not overlook other examples of brutal repression of protests: Tiananmen Square in China, Bloody Sunday in Turkey, the Tishreen Revolution in Iraq, and the 1956 Hungarian revolution. And don’t forget the numerous examples of failed revolutions erupting into civil war.

The point here is to never count your chickens before they’ve hatched. The collapse of the Iranian theocracy is by no means inevitable, and if anything, unlikely. It may foster growing resentment that could lead to a future revolution, it may cave into a civil war, or it may succeed and replace the government with a more brutal regime. The future of Iran is uncertain, but don’t bet on the collapse of Khomeini’s government. If anything, the violence is just getting started…