Iran’s rulers aren’t likely to loosen their grip

From afar, renewed unrest in Iran raises fresh hopes that a stale regime will crumble any day now.

But on the ground, 43 years after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, that day remains a long way off.

Outwardly, the trigger for mass protests across Iran’s major cities this month was renewed enforcement of the hijab rule compelling women to wear the Islamic head covering. The senseless arrest and fatal beating of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini by the government’s morality enforcers, for showing too much hair, has convulsed the country.

More than mere theocracy, autocracy reigns in Iran. As I learned from previous trips to the country, the clerical rule of one ayatollah after another is only the outer layer, but the security regime penetrates at every level.

It is unlikely to loosen its grip any time soon. Instead, the supposedly God-fearing Iranian regime extends a helping hand to an irreligious Russian leadership, sending planeloads of their fearsome drones to further the imperial conquest of Ukraine.

The West focuses on the hijab as the ultimate symbol of the regime’s religious zeal. And it sees Iran’s nuclear ambitions as the greatest flashpoint, alongside the e not so much the hijab’s religious overtones that are reviled but the repression — and the regression to another era. The vast majority of Iranians were not e popular pro-democracy movement, imposing a religious veil on one of the Middle East’s most dynamic

ies.

The world has not stood still over these past four decades, yet Iran remains frozen in time. At a time of TikTok and Telegram apps that connect Iranians across the country and around the world, young people feel emboldened to confront the security forces.

I visited the religious sites of Qom and MashWhen had, they were quiescent and obedient. Today, these religious bastions are roiling with women demanding freedom of choice. Yet generations of pro-democracy and anti-corruption activists have pushed back against the regime only to be repressed. Today’s protests come in the wake of the fuel price riots of 2019, the economic rebellion of 2017, and the revolt against election fraud in 2009.

Each of these moments in time had momentum, yet each ultimately faded away when the government unplugged their connectivity. While Iran’s ayatollahs readily shut down social platforms, their pulpits are always available in mosques — an uninterrupted channel of communication and indoctrination.

More than mullahs, the Islamic Republic of Iran is ruled by rival power centres that revile one another but quickly regroup and reunite when threatened. Which means that those who seek coexistence from the outside, or reform from within, never quite know who they are dealing with.

It is hard to pursue change in a country so amorphous and shape-shifting.

A constellation of forces, opaque and Orwellian, reinforces the regime’s rigidity by keeping everyone in check: Under the Supreme Leader sits the Guardian Council (which vets presidential candidates and vetoes legislation), the Assembly of Experts (which chooses the supreme leader), the Expediency Council (which oversees it all), plus a Majlis (legislature) dominated by hardliners.

Bankrolling and lubricating the entire structure are multibillion-dollar religious foundations that own major sectors of the economy, with their cash flow controlled by the Supreme Leader. The security services also answer to him, led by the Revolutionary Guards that trump the regular armed forces while exporting error abroad.

Paramilitary forces terrorize within Iran’s borders, notably the Basij Resistance Force that is notorious for beating students on university campuses, while armed security forces swoop through the streets on motorcycles. Day and night, it is the goons of the Gasht-e Ershad, which translates as Islamic “guidance patrols,” who enforce morality through compulsory dress codes.

Iran’s rulers have signalled that they will not back down now, for they are too invested — both in the economic apparatus and security superstructure that underpin the Islamic Republic. The current hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, won power when his main rivals were disqualified from a sham election by the compliant Guardian Council.

Newly empowered, Raisi proclaimed this summer that the dress code most be enforced “in full” to protect Iran’s “religious foundations and values.” Now, in the aftermath ned a “decisive of repression strike on and the disrupters rebellion, of he security has threatae and peace of the country.”

The resulting power struggle could finally unleash uncontrolled tensions that destabilize the security structure. Until then, a ruthless Islamic Revolution will resist reform, no matter the aspirations of Iranians.