In Iran, protesters, particularly ladies protesters, are matter to extraordinarily violent repression, with the specificity that photographs are incessantly aimed toward their eyes. Via blinding the “enemy” who dares to problem them, the government write their movements within the lengthy historical past of the rustic.
All through the Iranian mobilizations of latest years, and much more so for the reason that Ladies, Lifestyles, Freedom 2022 motion, the prime occurrence of eye accidents inflicted on protesters has anxious observers. Ladies, younger folks, scholars, occasionally even passers-by, lose an eye fixed – or even their sight – after bullets or projectiles from a brief distance. The practices of the protection forces that we’re these days revisiting: legal professional Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, estimated on January 9 that for the reason that starting of the protests at first of the 12 months, “at least 400 people have been hospitalized in Tehran due to eye injuries caused by gunfire.”
This violence is not any bizarre mistake. They’re a part of a political good judgment that reveals an echo in Iran’s lengthy historical past of energy, the place capturing the eyes symbolically approach stripping the sufferer of any capability for political life.
View as an characteristic of energy
In pre-modern Iranian political tradition, gaze is inseparable from authority. To peer is to grasp; to peer is to pass judgement on; to peer is to rule. This conception runs via Iranian literature and political creativeness. For instance, within the Shahnameh (Guide of Kings), via Ferdowsi (tenth century), blindness is a story marker of political and cosmic decline: it indicators the lack of farr (divine glory), the primary of legitimizing energy, and acts as an everlasting symbolic disqualification from the workout of sovereignty. To be blinded is to be fallen.
Within the Shahnameh, the blinding of Esfandiyar via Rostam represents a seminal scene within the Iranian political creativeness: via concentrated on the eyes, the tale explicitly hyperlinks the lack of sight to the disqualification of energy and the tip of all sovereign pretensions.
Rustam blinds Esfandyar with an arrow (opaque gouache and gold on paper), undated. Click on to zoom. San Diego Museum of Artwork/Bridgeman Photos
Traditionally, self-deception has been used as an device of political neutralization. This made it conceivable to take away a rival – a prince or a dignitary – with out dropping blood, which used to be thought to be sacrilegious when it affected the elites. The blind guy used to be no longer completed: he used to be got rid of from the political order.
Shah Abbas I (dominated from 1587 till his demise in 1629) blinded a number of of his sons and grandsons suspected of plotting or more likely to contest the succession.
In 1742, Nader Shah ordered the blinding of his son and inheritor Reza Qoli Mirza, an act symbolic of the observe of political neutralization in pre-modern Iran.
From ritual blinding to safety blindness: Why do Iranian safety forces shoot protesters’ eyes so incessantly?
The Islamic Republic does no longer require blindness as a punishment. However the mass repetition of eye accidents throughout fresh repressions finds a symbolic continuity.
As soon as uncommon, focused and authorised, blindness is now diffuse, denied via the government, produced via so-called “non-lethal” guns and infrequently sanctioned.
On the other hand, the political serve as stays related: neutralize with out killing, mark our bodies for deterrence, save you any resurgence of protests.
In fresh Iran, the gaze has change into a political weapon. Demonstrators file, file, broadcast. Pictures flow into, move borders and undermine the authentic narrative. Touching the eyes due to this fact prevents seeing and makes folks see: it prevents recording, id, witnessing.
The objective isn’t just a person, but in addition a sequence of perspectives that connects the Iranian side road with world public opinion.
In contrast to historical blindness, reserved for the male elite, present eye violence most commonly impacts ladies and younger folks. The feminine gaze, visual, self reliant, free of ideological keep an eye on, turns into politically insupportable for a regime in response to the keep an eye on of the frame and the visual.
A continuum of visual violence
The present crackdown, which adopted mass protests introduced in overdue December 2025, has been intensified via a national web blackout in a transparent try to save you visibility of the violence inflicted on protesters.
Scientific testimony and unbiased reviews describe hospitals crushed with circumstances of significant trauma – specifically to the eyes – whilst the expanding use of are living ammunition in opposition to crowds has been documented in numerous provinces. Those violations ascertain that the frame, and particularly the facility to peer and file, stays a central goal of repressive energy.
Except for the numbers, the tales of the feminine sufferers talk of every other size of those fresh practices. Whilst Iranian society has noticed ladies at the vanguard of mobilization for the reason that demise of Mahsa Gina Amini in 2022 – a few of whom had been intentionally blinded throughout protests – those accidents characterize each the trouble of the ones in energy to erase the self reliant feminine gaze, a supply of political risk, and the resistance embodied via the injured, all over again dealing with torment.
The tale is due to this fact no longer restricted to the far-off previous of political neutralization: it permeates the physically enjoy of girls nowadays, the place the assault at the eye is learn each as instrumental violence and as an indication that the political battle takes position within the field of vision as neatly.
The frame because the final box of sovereignty
The Islamic Republic broke with the holy monarchy, however preserved the traditional idea: the frame because the position of registration of energy. The place the sovereign blinds himself to offer protection to the dynasty, the protection state maims to keep its survival.
This technique, alternatively, produces a paradoxical impact. In historical Iran, blindness made folks disappear politically. Nowadays, the violence of the regime makes it visual. Disfigured faces flow into, sufferers change into symbols, and misplaced eyes testify to a deep disaster of legitimacy.
Historical past does no longer repeat itself, but it surely survives in gestures. Via concentrated on the eyes, Iranian energy is reactivating the traditional grammar of domination: combating one from seeing in an effort to save you one from present politically.
