2022 will be remembered as a momentous time in Iranian history—just not in the way many observers thought at the start of the year.
This was supposed to be the year that the Iranian regime and the Biden administration finally addressed their stalemate in negotiations over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program. A major structural obstacle seemed to have been cleared by last year’s presidential election in Iran. Tehran’s new administration, led by President Ebrahim Raisi, was unabashedly conservative—but for that same reason, Raisi was believed to be empowered to bring talks with the West to a decisive conclusion. Those hopes, however, have been dashed: By year’s end, the nuclear deal remains in a sort of zombie state, caught in limbo between life and death.
That failure to achieve any resolution is due, at least in part, to the dominant Iranian political development of the past year—one that nobody saw coming. The “Women, Life, Freedom” protest movement began in September following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s so-called morality police. It shows little sign of dissipating. Protesters have taken to the streets across the country to demand equal rights for women—and an end to a regime that’s proven incapable of guaranteeing them. The government has responded with brute force, killing hundreds of people and arresting thousands.
