Iran: Disbanding morality police first sign of letup

In response to 11 weeks of sustained popular protests against the requirement that Iranian women must wear headscarves in public, the clerical government seems to be making concessions with the aim of halting a nation-wide uprising. The ultra-conservatives in power have announced that the morality police will be dissolved, and parliament would take steps to revoke the headscarf (hijab) law adopted in 1983.

If the authorities follow through, this will amount to a major reversal for a theocratic regime which claims it has a mandate of heaven and is infallible.

In another concessionary move, the Interior Ministry has announced that 200 people have been killed since country-wide protests erupted in mid-September over the death in the custody of the morality police of Mahsa Amini, 22, an Iranian Kurdish woman accused of “improper hijab.” After angry Kurds staged protests following her funeral in the restive Kurdistan province, Iranian women of all ethnicities began to challenge the ruling clerics under the slogan, “Woman, life, freedom,” and were soon joined by Iranian men.

The Interior Ministry figure was, however, pre-empted by Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh who told the semi-official Mehr news agency last week, “I don’t have the latest figures, but I think we have had perhaps more than 300 martyrs (security personnel) and people (protesters) killed.” The Human Rights Activists’ News Agency (HRANA) has reported the deaths of 60 security men.

Both figures are far below the 488 fatalities — 60 of whom were children and 29 women — reported by Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR). At least, 18,000 have been detained.

Cancelling the hijab law is too little too late. Iranians seek an end to mismanagement, corruption and, ultimately, clerical rule.

Consequently, the protracted protests have clearly rattled the ruling clique which brought on the crisis by clamping down on hijab violations following the 2021 election of ultra-conservative President Ibrahim Raisi. Strict regulation of hijab-wearing was eroded during the previous presidency of reformist Hassan Rouhani.

While Iran’s security forces have cracked down on protests in ethnic Persian areas, the main focus has been to suppress action by dissident minorities. The largest number of fatalities has been in the insurgent Baluch-majority Sistan-Baluchistan province where 128 have died and more than 100 have been killed in restive Kurdistan.

Even sentences of death have not halted the protests. A UN Iranian affairs adviser, Javaid Rehman, told Reuters that 21 protesters — six last month — have been sentenced to death. Among them is popular Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi who was condemned for “corruption on earth,” spreading proganda, co-operating with a hostile government and incitement. He made no secret of where he stood in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation shortly before his arrest in October. He said Iranians were living “somewhere horrific” and “dealing with a mafia that is ready to kill the entire nation... in order to keep its power, money and weapons.”

The harsh measures adopted by the authorities have not deterred “oil workers, truckers, public transportation workers and factory workers (from) joining other labour groups now waging strikes across the country,” stated New York City’s Centre for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

“These workers are the backbone of the Iranian economy,” said CHRI director Hadi Ghaemi, “The fact that so many workers are striking even while labour leaders are among the thousands who’ve been arrested since September speaks to the level of discontent (with) the government.” The strikers, who have repeatedly halted work due to non-payment of salaries, have adopted the slogans and cause of the protesters. The workers have called for Iran to be expelled from the International Labour Organisation and the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Thousands of Iranian shopkeepers went on strike for three days in Tehran and across the country in mid-November.

For the clerical authorities, stoppages by oil workers and shopkeepers are particularly concerning as their unions and organisations joined the 1978-1979 countrywide uprising which ousted the shah and led to the emergence of the Islamic Republic.

Street protests and strikes by political protesters, labourers and merchants have not, however, reached the level of people’s power that forced the shah to flee. Furthermore, while this uprising has attracted Iranians from all ethnicities, backgrounds, and levels of society, the movement remains largely leaderless.

The major exception is the prominent Sunni cleric, Molavi Abdolhamid in the city of Zahedan in Sistan-Baluchistan province. He has long been a popular, powerful critic of the Shia clerical regime and is seen as a voice of the minority ethnic Baluch and Kurdish communities. Last week a group of Sunni Baluch clerics called for the government to halt repression in their province. They specifically denounced raids and arrests at Sunni mosques in Zahedan and Khash where communities gather to listen to critics of the government. So far, the security forces have left Molavi Abdolhamid alone, fearing a massive backlash.

Forty-three years ago, the imperial regime faced not one but a number of well led and organised revolutionary movements, including the Communists, Mujahedin-e Khalq, the secular National Front, the Fedayeen, and the cleric-led movement of Ayatollah Khomeini who initially sought to recruit religion-based groups. Once the shah departed and Khomeini had seized power, he organised a referendum on an Islamic constitution and set about systematically eliminating rivals.

The fact that the current protest movement does not have a national leader or leaders means that the authorities cannot arrest key individuals with the aim of halting the protests. However, without respected leaders who have programmes for running the country, the protests remain diffuse and without a well-defined objective. This leaves Iranians with a movement without a clear message and could have a result the protesters reject.

International Crisis Group Iran expert Ali Vaez told the US Vox website so far, “Every measure from the regime’s old playbook [for handling mass action] has failed to crush the protests.” He predicted, “The main risk is that if the theocracy proves incapable of reining in the protests, the Revolutionary Guards might push the clerics aside and take over.” This could result in replacing a theocracy with a military autocracy.