Mahsa Amini. Could this be the one? Could hers be the name that leads to seismic change?
As an Iranian American watching the dramatic events unfold in Iran, I’m afraid to hold my breath. For I have seen this narrative play out before. The Green Movement protests of Iran in 2009 due to election fraud claims. The protests of 2019 in Iran due to fuel costs and food shortages. In both cases, I hoped for the change that would lead to a free Iran, one in which a theocracy of corrupt mullahs that has had a stranglehold on the nation and its people for more than 43 years is toppled and replaced by a legitimately elected democratic body of officials that would represent the will of the people. But in the 2009 and 2019 protests in Iran, the demonstrators were brutally suppressed by the ayatollahs’ paramilitary forces. And life under the tyranny of the ayatollahs continued.
Yet these latest protests feel different. They were sparked by the recent death of Amini, a 22-year-old woman, at the hands of Iran’s notorious morality police. She was killed for not properly covering her hair with a hijab. So this time, Iranians aren’t protesting fraudulent elections or skyrocketing costs. This time, they’re making it clear that they’re sick of being brutalized, and they want regime change. They want a return of their basic freedoms and an end to suffocating rule under the ayatollahs.
