For most Iranian Americans, the past four months have been unspeakably harrowing. Since the tragic death of Mahsa Amini at the brutal hands of Tehran’s “morality police” in September, we have watched thousands of videos of young protesters, armed with nothing but their bravery, standing up to a regime bereft of mercy. We have shuddered in horror at the killing of nearly 500 people—including more than 60 children—with live ammunition, the blinding of hundreds of protesters with rubber bullets and metal pellets, and the execution of four protesters after tortured confessions and sham trials. We have cried as so many loving young men and women have had their lives cut short to prolong an oppressive gerontocracy. We have been awed by the grit of schoolgirls who are burning their mandatory headscarves, and we have had our hearts broken as we watched these girls sob on their loved ones’ graves. We fear the worst for the thousands who have been arrested, and we have been relieved about the ones who have been freed. And given that all of the past protest movements against the so-called Islamic Republic have ended in grief, we dread that this could become another turning point in Iranian history where history fails to turn.
The uprising has lost some momentum in the past few weeks. The protests have been scattered and relatively shallow. But the regime remains too resolved to cling to power, too fearsome, and too totalizing in its control over the airwaves and cyberspace. The protests fell short, for now, of a revolution in the streets.
