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The Beginning of the End of the Islamic Republic

(Foreign Affairs) Masih Alinejad - The current protests in Iran sound the death knell of the Islamic Republic. A wave of angry and bloody demonstrations, boycotts, work stoppages, and wildcat strikes have exhausted the country's security forces and spread to more than 100 cities. The government endured major protests in 2009, 2017, and 2019, but these demonstrations are different. They embody the anger that Iranian women and young Iranians feel toward a regime that seeks to stifle their desires. And they promise to upend Iran's establishment. It is said that revolutions devour their children, but in Iran the grandchildren are devouring the revolution. Despite widespread censorship, Iran's Internet penetration rate (the percentage of the country's population that have access to the Internet) at the beginning of 2022 was 84%. Iranians have found ways to bypass censorship through the use of virtual private networks, or VPNs. Almost 80% of Iranians with Internet access have installed anti-filter and VPN software to evade censorship. The U.S. government and its western European allies involved in the nuclear deal should halt negotiations with the Islamic Republic as long as Iranian authorities are suppressing the protests and throttling the Internet. The U.S. should introduce respect for human rights as a condition for continuing any negotiations. Congress should also refuse to release frozen Iranian funds in foreign banks, conditioning doing so on tangible improvement in Iran's treatment of its citizens. If the U.S. were to revive the nuclear deal with Iran at this moment, it would strengthen an unpopular regime that is savagely crushing peaceful protests. In 2014, the writer launched a campaign against compulsory hijab laws in Iran. She is the author of The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran.
2022-10-20 00:00:00
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