This is not a revolt of the non-religious against a theocratic regime, nor is it a secular movement against a religious political system. Indeed, women who opt to wear the veil as a choice rather than a state-mandated obligation have protested alongside the women demanding that the veil not be mandatory. Young men, who are not necessarily opposed to the religious garment - though they are probably opposed to its imposition on women who would prefer not to wear it and to other restrictions enforced in the name of religion, the nation, doctrine, the revolution, and the family - have also joined in.
The scene we see unfolding in Iran is one of the scattered protests that need time first and continued momentum second, in addition to organization and leadership, in order for their goals, components, and catalysts to fully develop and transform into a fully-fledged insurgency. However, in terms of its deeper connotation, it has two characteristics that no previous protest movement had: (revolution against the revolution) or (revolution within a revolution). These two qualities mean that, for the first time in the history of this regime, its nature is in jeopardy, as this movement undermines its doctrinal surface by attacking the imposition of the garment that women must wear in an Islamic state.
Indeed, the mandatory veil, in this equation, is a major component of the regime’s doctrine at the heart of its outward appearance. It is directly concerned with the image of the veils it imposes on women being worn in public, and it is thus directly concerned with appearance only, not content. Its security and morality forces are not concerned with whether the women wearing the veils practice their religion nor does it even follow up on this matter and punish them if they do not. However, what it won’t tolerate is those who undermine outward appearances.
For this reason, regardless of the likelihood of the regime succeeding in putting down the protest movement through excessive force and tightening its grip on women, whose demands it cannot address lightly in this transitional phase or in the near future after having decided to go back to its first nature- a return that necessarily implies that the restrictions on Iranian women are reimposed after nearly two decades in which the state and the regime had been implemented them flexibly and leniently- the ideological obstinateness of the country’s current and future decision-makers has cost them a genuine opportunity to win over the public and reduce the resentment felt by many segments of Iranian society. The regime could have done so by addressing some public issues with more flexibility. However, the current make-up of the regime has cost it its pluralistic nature, as it chose extremism over reform for fear of lacking the capacity to endure in the long term if it meets the Iranian street's future demands.
Thus, we would not have seen this explosion of anger among both women and their other halves if they had not become desperate and fed up with the aesthetic that the regime has sought to re-impose. It did not take long for women to react and try to safeguard the gains they had made, courageously taking to the street as they sought to retrieve the gains that they had obtained under the founding Shah Reza Pahlavi, who gave them many rights and strengthen gender equality without undermining the core of Iran’s religiously moderate society. It lost those gains after the Islamic Republic had been established. These were very steep losses, especially since Iranian women had had privileges within the family and society that enabled them to become independent psychologically, culturally, and materially and to exert as much influence with the family, society, and public life as men.
The most dangerous thing about this clash between women and the regime is that the latter is fine with a society that is religious on the surface even if it is less religious beneath that surface. Meanwhile, for decades under Reza Shah and the reformists, society was not religious on the surface but was religious in actuality. This is true for both men and women; how else could the Pahlavi regime have stabilized or could the reformists have won over the Iranian street?
Based on all of this, what is happening socially in Iran is akin to the crisis that Mohammad Reza Shah had faced in dealing with the social changes that Iranian society had been undergoing toward the end of the seventies. The current Iranian regime and its apparatuses are facing a quandary and will do so in the future because they are facing a vivid and honest opponent that has taken to the streets, parks, universities, and institutions of the country. There is no need to look more deeply into their identity, interrogate them, or find out whether or not they are hostile. Indeed, every woman in the street is vocal about its opposition and explicitly challenging the regime, and the latter will fail to force these women to acquiesce, as the massive rupture between it and them began with the establishment of the regime.
