A week ago, I worried that the anti-regime demonstrations in Iran might falter if the mostly young protesters didn’t get some help from grown-ups — like the trade unions, say, or the so-called moderate elements within the theocratic state. I reckoned it would take the participation of groups of that stature to rattle Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s ruthless supreme leader.
The adults have not yet risen to the occasion, but the tyrant and his theocrats have been confronted and confounded by an unexpected constituency: schoolgirls. They represent a new kind of challenge for a regime that usually deals with dissent by licensing its security forces to use torture and murder. Does Khamenei dare turn his thugs on children?
Now in its third week, the protests have evolved from an expression of disgust over the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Iran’s notorious morality police. Women continue to dominate the demonstrations, but they are no longer content merely to burn their hijabs, or headscarves, in symbolic opposition to the regime’s restrictive dress code. Now, they are calling for the dismantling of the entire theocratic edifice of the state.
