Iran's Clerical Regime Faces A Hopeless, Rebel Generation
The ongoing protests in Iran have given rise to debates about the significance and implications of Iran's Generation Z that is defying rules and restrictions.
The ongoing protests in Iran have given rise to debates about the significance and implications of Iran's Generation Z that is defying rules and restrictions.
This is a generation that is also called the social media generation who were born after the year 2000, although teenagers as young as 12 now are protesting in Iran.
They are absolutely different from the previous generations in Iran. For the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, this is a generation that has not been affected by state propaganda and enforced lifestyle. On the contrary, thanks to the Internet and satellite television, they know how other young people live elsewhere in the world and they find life under the restrictions imposed by the clerical regime humiliating.
As the current protests began more than two weeks ago, people noticed youngsters between the ages of 15-25 leading demonstrations in the streets carrying their backpacks and mostly dressed in black. They were not so afraid of Iran’s security forces as previous generations had been and were ready to break taboos.
Already, many girls and women among them walk around without hijab, while the protests started when a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini was arrested by the hijab police and died in their custody with severe head injuries.
Schoolgirls without hijab driving out an education ministry official who came to convince the to "behave".
In an interview with Iran's leading economic daily Donyaye Eqtesad, Iranian sociologist and author Maghsoud Farastkhah tried to explain what is it that Iran's Generation Z wants. The interview was published on October 3, on the same day that Iran's high school and junior high school students joined the nationwide uprising.
According to Farasatkhah, to put it simply, Iran's new generation wants the right to live a normal life. However, they cannot not express their demands in the closed political system. The academic added that for the first time in Iran, the new generation's parents sympathize with them.
"Generation Z sees itself in a dystopian atmosphere," said the academic, adding that out of despair, they wish to express themselves by opting to resist the status quo even at the price of their lives. What Farasatkhah explains can be possibly best described as hopelessness. The reason why they act boldly and courageously is because they received a lot of attention by their parents and are self-confident.
This is a society suffering from inefficient governance, chaos and trauma. Everyone feels to have been victimized and overwhelmed by violence and accumulated shortcomings.
Farasatkhah further explained that the generation of the 2000s wants social freedoms, but it is not allowed to choose the lifestyle it likes. When the government imposes its own traditional lifestyle, it tends to resist, and this resistance is stronger among women because there are always more challenges for them than for men.
In a nutshell, Farasatkhah said that Generation Z has no epic to uphold and no hope for the future.
Another sociologist Taqi Azad Armaki said in an interview that Generation Z knows what it wants and it also knows that it is difficult to get it. Nonetheless, they will not become anarchists. Armaki added that Generation Z is not idealist. They simply want to live a normal life characterized by welfare, freedom and human rights. "But we have deprived them of this life. We have sent them to schools and universities, but we cannot give them a job. So, they have skills that they cannot use," Armaki explained.
The sociologist said: "We should stop calling them decadent, illiterate and morally corrupt. “These labels will prompt them to react in a radical way. We need to talk to them, but this needs to be done by intellectuals and social leaders."
Meanwhile, conservative politician and commentator Mohammad Mohajeri acknowledged that "it is difficult to deal with Generation Z." They do not care what traditions say about everything. The new generation has a different concept of freedom. On the other hand, while the previous generation got ideas from books, the new generation gets its ideas from social media. Mohajeri also pointed out that Generation Z has no leader and does not want to have leaders. They work like a tsunami and surprise the officials who have no idea about how to deal with them. Their only solution is to introduce more restrictions so that they can control the society. And this further annoys the new generation.
Biden issued a statement on Monday saying he remains “gravely concerned about reports of the intensifying violent crackdown on peaceful protestors in Iran, including students and women, who are demanding their equal rights and basic human dignity.”
But the President went further and said, "This week, the United States will be imposing further costs on perpetrators of violence against peaceful protestors. We will continue holding Iranian officials accountable and supporting the rights of Iranians to protest freely."
Earlier in the day, Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei had already blamed more than two weeks of street protests on the United States, which he again labeled as “the enemy”.
The only response by Iran was a low-key statement by the spokesman of the foreign ministry Nasser Kanaani on Instagram, where he repeated customary criticism of US ignoring human rights in “Palestine and Yemen”.
Many Iranians saw Biden’s statement as a show of support that was more than what they had expected. Iranian activists and many others who reject the Islamic Republic do not forget President Barack Obama’s initial meek response to large protests in 2009. But Biden sounded a bit more resolute, given the fact that his administration has been negotiating for a year and a half to revive the Obama-era nuclear deal known as JCPOA and lift the sanctions imposed on Iran.
“For decades, Iran’s regime has denied fundamental freedoms to its people and suppressed the aspirations of successive generations through intimidation, coercion, and violence,” he said.
Gabriel Noronha, a former Trump administration official, reminded the public on Twitter that Secretary of State Antony Blinken in December 2017 had endorsed an advice to Donald Trump to remain silent over nationwide protests that had broken out in Iran.
Considering that the Biden Administration has not relinquished hopes of reviving the JCPOA and might still reopen suspended talks with Iran in the weeks and months ahead, Biden’s tougher position on Iran’s violations of human rights is a bit surprising.
Previous rounds of protests in Iran generally received less attention by Western media that has often treated the clerical regime with kid gloves. But this time it is different for several reasons.
First, it is important that the protests began when a 22-year-old woman was arrested for “improper hijab” and then received fatal head wounds in police custody and died. Mahsa Amini’s story caught the attention of the world and her hashtag surpassed 100 million retweets, easily dwarfing any previous issue.
Second, mostly very young Iranians began protests and persevered for more than two weeks, bringing images of teenage girls removing their headscarves and facing a brutal security force that in November 2019 had killed more than 1,500 protesters without hesitation.
Third, the power of social media in bringing these events to billions of smart phones made classic media a bit irrelevant. No one waited to see what the New York Times reports, and far, far fewer people would even read any reporting compared to hundreds of millions who instantly saw what was happening in Iran on their phones and computers.
These factors made the Iran issue powerful, and Biden reacted a bit differently than Obama. Mahsa Amini became a face people everywhere could relate to and easily understand what is wrong in Iran.
The old arguments that criticizing the clerical rulers in Iran would harm dissidents or lessen the chance of a rapprochement with Tehran, seemed weak - an Obama-era view that was tested and failed.
The argument of those who have been saying that the Islamic Republic is a multi-faceted threat and not just a nuclear issue has been strengthened. Europeans also seem to have been a bit shaken by Mahsa Amini’s death and it won’t be easy for Iran’s clerical rulers to overcome the international awareness about the nature of their rule.