This gesture of power towards women and protesters comes on the eve of three days of strikes and demonstrations.
It is a gesture – the first – of the regime towards the protesters. But it shouldn’t be enough to extinguish their anger. On Sunday, the Isna news agency indicated that the revolutionary justice, in the person of the Attorney General, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, had announced the day before that “the morality police”, at the origin of the revolt launched two months ago and half against power, “has been abolished by those who created it”.
Known as the “orientation patrols”, this police had been created under the ultra-conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013), to “spread the culture of decency and the hijab”, compulsory in the Islamic Republic of Iran, for more than forty years. It was this morality police who arrested on September 13 Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, in Tehran, accusing her of improperly wearing the veil. His death three days later – after succumbing to a beating, according to his family – sparked a wave of protests during which women burned their headscarves, shouting: “Woman, life, freedom. »
They have since been joined by students across the country, as well as residents of Kurdistan and Balochistan provinces, in a protest movement of a magnitude and duration unprecedented since the advent of the revolutionary regime in 1979.
Despite the death of more than 400 demonstrators, the arrest of more than 15,000 others and bloody repression, particularly in the peripheral provinces, the regime is unable to quell popular anger and the fed up of the population. Until now, he had only opted for repression in the face of his opponents.
“It’s a victory for the demonstrators”, estimates from London Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, at the head of a think-tank, who however believes that “this concession will not satisfy the demands of the protesters who are deeper” than the wearing of the sail. Faced with a power unable to reform itself over the years, many of them are calling for the fall of the regime.
Although significant divisions have not emerged publicly between Islamic Republic officials, “some Revolutionary Guards (the very powerful elite unit in charge of protecting the regime) had criticized the morality brigade for its behavior which threatened the survival of the regime,” says academic and Iran specialist Jonathan Piron.
First concession
Before the election of the ultra-conservative president Ebrahim Raissi in June 2021, it was not uncommon to see girls drop their headscarves over their shoulders for a few moments, which did not attract the wrath of a religious police, which had become, on the other hand, more intrusive for a year and a half . The Attorney General also announced that Parliament and another body headed by President Raissi were working on a modification of the law on the wearing of the veil, without specifying in what direction the text will be modified, within two weeks.
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According to some parliamentary sources, the police could cease all arrests and impose fines for non-respect of the veil. In recent weeks, more and more Iranian women, young people in particular, have been walking around unveiled, or even without a simple headscarf, without the police reacting.
These announcements come as calls have been made for three days of protests and strikes starting on Monday. For Jonathan Piron, “the regime is seeking to demobilize the demonstrators, but since there is no breach within it, it will not fundamentally back down”. His opponents, however, have just shown that street pressure pays off. While “their movement has experienced a certain decline in recent days”, according to researcher Farhad Khosrokhavar, it will be interesting to examine the impact of this first concession of power on the mobilization.
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