Iran protests: Regime challenged by push for change

Almost three months of protests in Iran have left the clerical regime facing an existential challenge by shattering taboos and shaking its ideological pillars in a push for change that shows no sign of retreating.

The demonstrations, which erupted in mid-September following the death of Mahsa Amini who had been arrested by the Tehran morality police, are a reflection of pent-up public anger over economic shortcomings and social restrictions, analysts say.

While there have been protests in Iran before, this movement is unprecedented due to the duration, its spread across provinces, social classes, and ethnic groups and readiness to openly call for the end of the clerical regime.

Banners of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have been set alight, women have openly walked down streets without headscarves, and demonstrators have at times sought to challenge the security forces.

Iran, for its part, accuses hostile foreign powers of stoking what it labels "riots", chiefly its arch-foes the United States, Israel and their allies, but also exiled Kurdish Iranian opposition groups in Iraq whom it has targeted in repeated missile and drone strikes.

In an apparent response to the protests, Iran's prosecutor general said Saturday that the morality police had been abolished. Activists received the declaration with skepticism, given the continued legal obligation for women to wear a headscarf.

French President Emmanuel Macron, after holding a landmark meeting with exiled Iranian dissidents last month, described the movement as a "revolution" by a generation of "young women and men who have never known anything other than this regime".

"It was very obvious from the beginning that the protests were not about reform or the morality police, but were targeting the entire regime," said Shadi Sadr, founder of the London-based Justice for Iran group that campaigns for accountability for rights violations.

"What is happening is a fundamental challenge to the regime," she told AFP. "They know they are facing a real threat from protesters."

Never more vulnerable

"The mood in Iran is revolutionary," said Kasra Aarabi, Iran program lead at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, arguing there had been a growing trend of anti-regime dissent for the past half-decade.

"While they can try to suppress the protesters they cannot suppress the revolutionary mood," he told AFP.

The Islamic republic has ruled Iran, first under revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and then his successor Khamenei, since ousting the more West-leaning and secular shah in 1979.

It swiftly imposed policies including sharia law and compulsory headscarves for women in public.

Rights groups accuse the regime of committing gross human rights abuses ever since, including extra-judicial killings and abductions abroad and holding foreign nationals hostage at home.

It now carries out more executions than any country other than China, according to Amnesty International.

Norway-based group Iran Human Rights says the country has executed more than 500 people this year alone.

The Islamic republic remains at odds with Western powers over its nuclear program, and has also spread its influence throughout the Middle East, notably through Shiite allies in Lebanon and Iraq.

Iran has been an active participant in the civil war in Syria, and backs rebels in Yemen. — Agence France-Presse