These days, Iran appears to be at peace (reasonably). However it’s not an natural calm, however one imposed by way of pressure. Human rights organizations document that the federal government’s crackdown in fresh weeks has left 1000’s useless and tens of 1000’s detained, whilst caution that the actual collection of sufferers is most probably a lot upper, hidden thru enforced disappearances, secret burials and executions performed with out due procedure.
A girl searches for a relative on the Kahrizak mortuary, south of Tehran, on January 11, 2026. The sufferers of the repression are estimated to quantity within the 1000’s. (writer equipped), writer equipped (don’t reuse)
The preferred protests, which started within the wake of the industrial cave in, temporarily become an open political rebellion, as chants moved from calls for for survival to outright rejection of the regime. A regime that, to cover the effects, made up our minds to bring to an end interior and exterior virtual and phone communications.
What’s at stake now isn’t a easy go back to a cyclical collection of protests. This can be a continuation of the feminist rupture began in 2022 by way of the “Women, Life, Freedom” motion, which these days faces two forces made up our minds to neutralize it: the Islamic Republic and its patriarchal and militaristic choices.
Ladies, political gadgets of self-discipline
Many years of repression have taught ladies that their our bodies are the principle terrain of state energy: obligatory veiling, public surveillance, morality patrols, compelled confessions, sexual violence in custody, threats of execution towards younger ladies.
Beneath the Islamic Republic, those our bodies are controlled as political gadgets to be disciplined. Earlier mobilizations have obviously proven this: by way of attacking the very symbols of domination, Iranians have showed their political function. They accomplished visibility victories, however the felony regime in accordance with Sharia (Islamic legislation) remained intact. This rigidity is what buildings the present riot.
The Instagram account of Reza Pahlavi, son of the overdue Shah of Iran, prior to and after disposing of “Women, Life, Freedom” from his web page on January 7.
A professional-anarchist stance has evolved, facilitated by way of get entry to to Western media and political platforms, which favors Reza Pahlavi, the son of the overdue Shah of Iran, to interchange the regime. In his public interventions, Pahlavi refers to repression as “crimes against humanity” and positions himself as a long run chief. Alternatively, in early January, she got rid of the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” from her legitimate platforms, a choice that used to be publicly criticized by way of activists and households of the ones killed all over the 2022 rebellion.
What does this selection constitute? Not anything to soothe the Iranians. Pahlavi appears to be sending a transparent message: there could be a new revolution, however with out ladies. If it comes, team spirit can be invoked to prolong equality, as came about at the eve of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Neither the Islamic Republic nor overseas bombs
This feminist motion could also be plural. It does no longer constitute a unmarried Iranian voice, however a constellation of oppressed teams that acknowledge every different. Kurdish, Baluchi, Arab, Azeri and Persian ladies formed this riot.
A number of of its maximum radical voices are in jail these days. Amongst them is Kurd Verisheh Moradi, who not too long ago despatched two letters from her cellular. In them he rejects the false selection imposed on Iranians. “We don’t want an Islamic Republic,” he writes, “but we don’t want foreign bombs either.”
This isn’t about neutrality. This can be a feminist and anti-colonial place, in accordance with the attention that dictatorship and armed forces intervention damage ladies first.
1000’s of ladies in Iran reproduced the picture of a lady atmosphere fireplace to a photograph of Ayatollah Khamenei with a cigarette. (writer), equipped by way of the writer (don’t reuse)
This rejection is essential. When Israeli squaddies wrote “Woman, Life, Freedom” on missiles all over the warfare in June 2025, the feminist rebellion used to be stripped of its which means to change into a colonial slogan of domination. The slogan arose from the homicide of a tender Kurdish lady, Jina Mahsa Amini, by way of the ethical police. She used to be born from the frame of ladies in riot, no longer from the military.
A gadget for domination in accordance with the humiliation of ladies
Out of doors of Iran, fact is repeatedly misinterpreted. The riot is frequently lowered to a war of words with Islam and framed as a civilizational warfare between faith and modernity.
Such interpretations flip the political battle right into a cultural one. They have got inspired vacillation and selective harmony in portions of the Western left and Muslim communities, erasing many years of resistance directed no longer towards faith however towards a regime that used faith as an device of punishment, surveillance and loss of life.
However what’s at stake isn’t religion, however energy.
The present riot is in accordance with this amassed enjoy. By means of persisting in organizing, attesting and resisting in spite of executions, torture and knowledge blockade, ladies don’t seem to be formulating easy calls for. They verify a brand new political order wherein existence, no longer obedience, turns into the central worth.
“Woman, Life, Freedom” used to be no longer happy with opposing the regime. It profoundly modified the discourse of authority that had structured Iranian politics for a century.
That is precisely what the Islamic Republic and its alleged successors are seeking to overthrow these days.
Blackout impoverishes ladies
The regime considers its inhabitants as an enemy. Protesters had been described as terrorists, Mossad brokers or Daesh-like components.
In a felony gadget the place moharebeh محاربه, “war against God,” is punishable by way of loss of life, this language lets in executions even prior to trial. An entire virtual blockade intensifies this violence. By means of getting rid of visibility, the regime concealed the killings and reworked their political which means. Violence may also be controlled when it can’t be noticed, counted or mourned in combination.
The blockade additionally destroys livelihoods. 1000’s of Iranian ladies, excluded from formal employment by way of discriminatory regulations and gender-based employment practices, depend on on-line micro-economies to provide house attractiveness services and products, tutoring, translation, crafts and small business.
By means of chopping off virtual infrastructure, the state shatters the delicate autonomy ladies have controlled to realize underneath structural exclusion, pushing them again into dependency, invisibility and unpaid care.
Violence towards them
Added to that is repression. Scientific professionals and human rights analysis have documented shootings concentrated on ladies’s faces, eyes, and genitalia, in addition to sexualized violence all over arrests and detentions.
Rape and sexual torture no longer most effective serve to extort confessions, but in addition damage social bonds, marriages and long run plans. Ladies launched from jail undergo everlasting trauma. Their our bodies nonetheless endure the scars of warfare lengthy after the capturing has stopped.
Conflict calls for that some lives be handled as disposable, and ladies are virtually all the time some of the first to be sacrificed. Iranians know that. His rejection of each dictatorship and overseas saviors isn’t naive. It’s political intelligence.
Who will write after the revolution?
The Iranians have already accomplished one thing exceptional. They destroyed the rules of the political order constructed on their subjugation.
A girl walks within the middle of Tehran, January 15, 2026. What long run awaits Iranian ladies? (AP Photograph/Vahid Salemi)
What’s at stake in Iran these days isn’t just a query of energy. That’s the very definition of a revolution. Will it once more be a tale of guys grabbing the longer term on the expense of ladies, or will this time the ladies who arranged, resisted and shed blood after all have the ability to forge the longer term?
If historical past repeats itself, ladies chance being left in the back of once more after main the struggle. Alternatively, Iran’s long run can’t be constructed with out those that have became their lives into an act of resistance. The day after the autumn of this regime additionally belongs to them. And so long as this proof is still puzzled, “Woman, Life, Freedom” will proceed to be the dividing line, no longer the slogan of the previous.
