The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after Iran’s morality police arrested her to impart “guidance” on how to wear a headscarf correctly looks increasingly like the definition of the butterfly that flapped its wings.
Amini, who is Kurdish, was reportedly arrested for wearing her hijab too loosely. Within hours of her death in custody — officially from a heart attack, though her family has doubts — protests began breaking out all over the country.
Iranians, it seems, have had enough of repression, rocketing inflation and fuel prices, and a sanctions-battered economy.
That is the hill of incendiary material on which Iran’s leadership has been sitting and which the flaming ember of Amini’s death has now lit.
By Monday, protests had spread to 80 cities. Women, many burning their headscarves on pyres and others cutting off their hair in public, have led the outrage, cheered on by men.
The response has been predictably heavy-handed, with the Basij — a volunteer unit attached to the feared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — breaking up demonstrations and President Ebrahim Raisi promising the authorities will “deal decisively” with the protests.
That decisiveness apparently includes using live ammunition against protesters. At least 50 people have been killed, including Basij members, and Iran Human Rights says the number is certainly higher.
The government has tried to block internet access while the foreign ministry has summoned the ambassadors of certain Western countries to explain growing critical media coverage, which it says is interfering with Iran’s internal affairs.
By Sunday, the town of Oshnavieh in one of the country’s western Kurdish regions had fallen to the protesters.
Despite the guards hitting back with drone strikes on what they say are “terrorist and antirevolutionary groups”, the balloon, as the English saying goes, appears to be up.
Posing the question: how long can the authorities keep a grip on the rope?
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