Since the death of Mahsa Amini on 16 September 2022, Iran has witnessed widespread protests, mostly by young women, against strict dress code imposed on women in public by the Islamic Republic. The rule is enforced by the religious police, formally known as Guidance Patrol (Ghast-e-Ershad), sometimes also referred to as morality police. The demonstrations started off as an outburst of anger by family and friends of Amini outside the hospital in Tehran, where she was under treatment and died after allegedly being assaulted while in custody of religious police, but soon turned into a wider protests against the law mandating compulsory hijab for Iranian women in public. The first major city to witness protests was Saqez located in the northwest Kurdistan Province, the hometown of Amini who herself belonged to the Kurdish community. Soon, the protests spread to the provincial capital Sanadaj and other cities and town too witnessed demonstrations, including Tehran, Qom, Tabriz, Masshad etc. Solidarity protests were also reported from Istanbul and other Western capitals.

What does the protests entail? Can it bring any change; legal, political or social? Is the regime under threat? What does it tells about the Islamic Republic and its future? These are some of the questions all observers of Iran and the Middle East are asking. For outside observers to provide any definitive answers is difficult due to the firm control over the Iranian media by the regime and its institutions. Even the semblance of a free media and civil society does not exist, and this makes outside observers to depend on social media or on Iranians settled in the West who gather news on domestic developments through familial connections. Having a glance at such reports makes it clear that the regime is not under any serious threat. True, that people raised anti-regime slogans and even shouted “death to the dictator”, but this is not the first time such outburst of anger against the regime has been expressed publicly.

In fact, realistically speaking at best the ongoing protests are not as widespread as they were, for example, during the Green Movement in 2009 or some of the recent protests seen in Iran. Over the past five years, Iran has witnessed several widespread, and at times sporadic, protests triggered by issues related to lack of public services such as electricity and water, or against incidents such as the accidental downing of a Ukrainian civilian flight in January 2020 in the commotion that gripped the country in the wake of the killing of Qassem Soleimani by US forces in Baghdad. These are likely a result of accumulated anger against serious economic challenges facing the country and the people both due to US and international economic sanctions as well as corruption, unemployment and other socio-economic problems.

To deal with such protests, the Iranian regime and security forces have often applied a tried and tested tactics, widely used by authoritarian regimes all over the Middle East and beyond, to dispel the protests and bring back the situation under control. More often than not the anti-regime protests are termed as rioting causing law and order situation and those leading or encouraging such protests are detained and tried. If this fails, force is used liberally to dispel protests causing death as was the case in the ongoing protest in Iran where over 40 have reportedly lost their lives. Finally, counter- and pro-regime protests are encouraged and staged to showcase the support enjoyed by the regime. Again, many cities in Iran have witnessed pro-regime protests over the weekend. Hence, to expect a political change due to the ongoing protests would only be naïve. It is rather symptomatic of the deep despair in Iran, both political and economic.

If not political change, can the protests force the Iranian regime to take recourse to legal reforms to loosen the strict dress code imposed on Iranian women? The mandatory dress code exists since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Soon after the revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini imposed the public dress code on women banning them from coming to offices without covering their head; that is, mandatory use of hijab, and this became the basis of incorporating a strict dress code for women in Iran. The rule has basis in interpretation of Islamic sharia, and violation is punishable by public reprimand, detention, imprisonment up to two months or a fine of up to 50,000 Iranian riyals. Accordingly, girls as young as 7 years old are mandated to use hijab or head scarves that must cover their hair, head and chest. The dress code also mandates women wear long and loose clothes so as to cover the whole body. In practice, women use a long piece of dull-colored clothing, known as chador in Persian, for covering their head, and wear long overcoat extending below the knees and loose trousers. As noted, there are religious police to implement the dress code in public places who are often accused of a high-handed approach when dealing with “defiant” women.

Apparently, this is not the first time women in Iran have protested against the dress code and imposition of hijab including soon after the revolution in 1979 when some women gathered at prominent squares in Tehran to protests the directive imposing hijab. Sporadic protests have been reported from time-to-time in later years, but this has not forced any rethink or legal revisions. Both Principalists and Reformists factions within the regime, who often differ on various political, economic and foreign policy issues, remain united on issue of dress code for women. Given this precedence, it would be fair to assume that despite the widespread nature of the protests against hijab this time around and the way young women have used social media to come out in public without hijab or even cut off their long hairs might only lead to crackdown, and not a rational rethink on issue.

At the societal level as well, the issue can be very sensitive. Muslim societies the world over have for decades struggled to respond to the questions posed by modernity, especially on the question of women’s rights and gender equality. Justification of dress code and other patriarchal restrictions on women prevails in many societies in the name of sharia, tradition, culture, honour, identity and so on. And, although the lived experiences have been varied with individuals and social groups finding ways to come out of the clutches of patriarchy, the issue of hijab and niqab (face covering) remains divisive and inflammatory. Counter-imposition of dress code mandating women to not use hijab or/and niqab also add fuel to the debate on individual choice and agency when it comes to Muslim women.

In Iran too, hijab or chador remains a divisive issue at the societal level, and notwithstanding the wider debate on the issue, it is fair to assume that Iran is unlikely to witness any significant change on the issue of female dress code. This is representative of the wider malaise facing the people of Iran who since 1979 are ruled by a clerical regime that has refused to be responsive to the aspirations of the new generation of Iranians. This, however, does not mean the Islamic republic has lost support among the people although deep despair and anger can be assuaged from recent developments. A key sign of this was the lower turnout in parliamentary (Majles) and presidential elections held 2020 and 2021, respectively. In this gloom, in the sight of women protestors demanding their rights despite fear of retribution and violence lies the hope for a better future for the people of Iran.

-The author is Fellow, Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies & Analysis, New Delhi. Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of MP-IDSA or Government of India. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda