As Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei grapples with the knowledge that his proxy terrorist groups throughout the Middle East are falling one by one, either through war with Israel or rebel factions in the case of Syria, only one domino with meaningful power is left standing: Khamenei himself.
To what extent external forces can aid in the fall of Khamenei’s regime is still unclear, but the popular uprising that can finally topple the ayatollahs can only come from the streets of Tehran. And it would seem the regime’s days are numbered.
Whether that is in years – as Assad managed to hold onto power throughout the Syrian civil war – or days, such as the Romanian Revolution of 1989, remains to be seen.
The latest cause for domestic murmurings was the introduction of a newer and harsher “Hijab and chastity bill,” which was approved by the Iranian parliament earlier this month.
The bill mandates the wearing of a hijab for all women in public and online forums for girls as young as 12. It imposes strict punishments on those who flout the law, as well as an increase in civilian surveillance to ensure its implementation. Punishments range from fines to prison time and even the death penalty.
A statement released by UN experts on Friday described the law as “an intensification of state control over women’s bodies in Iran and is a further assault on women’s rights and freedoms.”
Even Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who was elected on a reformist platform (relative to Iran), opposed the bill despite having very little power to prevent it from coming into effect.
“In my opinion, the hijab law, which I have to implement, is vague,” he posted on X/Twitter at the beginning of December. “We should not do anything to disturb the harmony and empathy of society. We have to talk and interact about the issue.”
So, could the new hijab law be the final nail in the coffin of Khamanei’s regime and the concept of an “Islamic republic”?
IRGC founder on the Islamic regime's failures
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Mohsen Sazegara, an Iranian dissident, journalist, and founder of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), said: “In Iran, we have two historical forces of change: the women of Iran and the young generation. At the intersection of both groups, young girls are the main dynamism of movement in Iran, in high school, in universities, and everywhere. These two groups have lots of potential.
“After the 2022 hijab protests, a survey was carried out, and 93% of the women did not believe in [an] imposed hijab. Around 40%-45% of women in Iran don’t wear the hijab, and the regime can’t tolerate it, because the hijab is a [weapon] against the people. These types of regimes must show the people that they control both the body and the soul of the people. This is why they implement clothing laws. The regime can’t tolerate women not wearing the hijab.”
The protests that Sazegara referred to are perhaps the most famous resistance to hit the Islamic Republic of Iran since the fall of the Shah. Protests erupted in Iran in September 2022 after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, died in police custody after being arrested by the Guidance Patrol, or morality police, for allegedly violating the country’s strict hijab law.
THE PROTESTS that were initially sparked by Amini’s death soon became a broader movement against the government’s oppressive policies, particularly its control over women’s rights and freedoms. The slogan for the protests became: “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
In response, the government implemented harsh measures, including Internet blackouts, social-media restrictions, and the use of tear gas and live ammunition to suppress demonstrations. By the spring of 2023, the protests had largely subsided, but the ruling regime remained firmly in control.
According to Sazegara, a more recent survey conducted in Iran has shown almost 40% of the youth have no belief in God and no desire for a religious Islamist state. For the one-time revolutionary – who accompanied Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei on his infamous Air France flight back to Tehran after the Shah’s fall – the rejection of the concept of an Islamic republic by the youth proves that the ideals he helped to bring about more than 45 years ago have ultimately not succeeded.
“After 45 years, [Islamic rule] is not attractive anymore for the majority of Muslims,” he told the Post. “There are hardliners, but the majority don’t think like that. Saudi Arabia is an important country, and the world of Islam looks at Saudi Arabia as the source of emulation to true Islam. And now look at [Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. They have started to leave behind the Islamic orders and modernize the country.
“The Islamic regime in Iran has been defeated. They failed. They can’t solve any problem, and the biggest is the economic problem, high rate of inflation, more than 40%. If Iran was now a wealthy country, and people were satisfied, then OK, the theory [of Islamist rule] was successful. But now, Iran is miserable. Even according to the politicians, we have shortages in everything – a deficit in the budget, a shortage of electricity, in natural gas, in gasoline, a shortage in water,” Sazegara said.
The economic difficulties in Iran must anger ordinary Iranians when they think of the billions of dollars their regime has thrown away in the name of supporting foreign proxy groups.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Iranian people in a broadcast last Thursday: “Your oppressors spent over $30 billion supporting Assad in Syria, a regime which in just 11 days of fighting collapsed into dust. Your regime spent over $20b. supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon; in a matter of weeks, most of Hezbollah’s leaders, its rockets, and thousands of terrorists went up in smoke.”
For Sazegara, genuinely successful civil resistance is based upon three pillars: protests, strikes, and defection from the regime.
“There are lots of tactics in protesting,” he said. “The most common one is the street protest. People come out onto the street and shout and chant. The second pillar is paralyzing the regime. It means strikes, boycotting, not going to work, not paying utilities. And the third pillar is defection from the regime and joining the people. And whenever this third pillar reaches the suppression machine of the regime, then the regime is finished.”
Dissent within the IRGC is not well documented, but it’s known that a small group of generals among its higher echelons have used the IRGC’s illicit smuggling and drug trade to grow rich, while there is barely a trickle down to the ground troops of the organization.
For many lower-level IRGC operatives, watching the fat cats get fatter while they continue to battle the country’s economic minefield could lead to the type of desertion that could aid any future overthrow of the regime.
Iran has been through much this year, from direct confrontation with Israel to watching its proxies fall by the wayside one by one. Its domestic issues have been elaborated on much less in the foreign media.
For Iran watchers, however, the latest hijab bill – just as was the case two years ago – could well prove a major thorn in the regime’s side.
Coupled with the economic difficulties, the siphoning of billions of dollars for terrorist proxy groups, and the corruption that exists within the regime, many are watching the coming months in Iran with great interest.