Women leading the growing political defiance in Iran

As one of the very few foreign journalists allowed in to report on the political and social conditions in Iran, the Globe and Mail's Geoffrey York centre-fold article on the growing political and religious defiance in Iran is eye-opening.

When Mohamad Khatami was elected Iranian president on a reformist/liberalization platform in the late 90s, there were wild hopes that the Iranian people could rise from under the cruel yoke of an Islamic fundamentalism that, in particular, mandated repression of women, through the police state of the revolutionary guard and the much-hated "morality police". But Khatami's attempts at liberalization were soon clamped down and rolled back by the "authorities" (i.e. the religious leadership and the police).

Since the election of new "reformist" presidents like Ebrahim Raisi in 2021 and Masoud Pezeshkian in 2024, and building on the widespread protests following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini in 2022, there has been a growing quiet defiance in Iran. Iranian women are openly defying the fundamentalist rules of the theocracy, quite literally letting their their hair down in public places. The younger generation in particular is leading this brave defiance. 

These women are still risking arrest, but increasingly the police are overlooking such contraventions. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this year, Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Javad Zarif said, "If you go to the streets of Tehran, you see that here are women who are not covering their hair. It's against the law, but the government has decided not to put women under pressure. This was a promise that President Pezeshkian made. He did not implement the law, with the consent of the leadership. So, we are moving in the right direction."

Iranian hardliners slammed Zarif's interview, and many women were somewhat disgusted at the government's attempt to take credit for a protest that they themselves had instigated (and for which they still run the risk of summary arrest). But this is nevertheless an extraordinary development in modern Iran, and gives hope that eventually the country will be able to shake off the stifling chains of its Islamist theocracy. 

And, never forget, it is grass-roots Iranian women that are leading the charge here.