Could protests in Iran grow into revolution? Experts say it's hard to predict
Violent crackdown shows fear of younger generation demanding change: author
The violent crackdown against protesters in Iran shows that the Islamic Republic is afraid of a younger generation demanding change, says an author who has researched unrest there.
"This generation specifically was born and raised in this regime, and they've done anything and everything to indoctrinate them within the ideology of the regime — and that hasn't happened," said Maral Karimi, author of The Iranian Green Movement of 2009: Reverberating Echoes of Resistance.
"From the forces of repression, we can see that [the regime is] quite scared, and they should be," she told The Current's Matt Galloway.
Protests erupted in cities across Iran following the Sept. 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died after being detained by the Islamic Republic's morality police for allegedly wearing the hijab incorrectly. The unrest has also spread to the country's universities and high schools, with violent clashes at Tehran's Sharif University this week.
Security forces have sought to disperse demonstrations with tear gas, metal pellets, and in some cases live fire, according to the Associated Press, which puts the total number of protesters arrested at 1,500. The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights estimates that 154 people, including children, have been killed.
WATCH | Iran cracks down as protesters gain international support
The protests have captured global attention, despite disruptions to internet access within the country, and Iranian officials blaming the unrest on foreign opponents to the regime.
Karimi said the unrest is "an eruption against 43 years of repression," sparked by "some of the things that these youth are not willing to put up with anymore."
"Economic decay, severe political repression, corruption — you name it, has been mounting," she said.
Student demonstrators this week have taken up the chant, "This isn't a protest anymore, but a revolution."
Karimi cautioned that "theoretically, we can never say if it's a revolution until it's concluded," but added that "it definitely has that potential."
Protests could become 'all encompassing'
Karimi said the initial protesters have been mainly young, middle class and based in urban areas, but other social-economic and ethnic groups are becoming involved, showing that it "has the potential to be all encompassing."
"If it's going to gather more momentum and go further, then we would need more, other segments of the society to join in," she said.
One of Iran's main teachers' unions has called for a strike this week in solidarity with protesters.
Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said it will be important to see if other groups follow suit, "namely the merchant classes, the bazaars, oil workers."
"I do think that there is a desire for wholesale change in Iran, but we're dealing with a very brutal regime which doesn't have any option B," said Sadjadpour, who is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the most isolated countries in the world, and I think for the leadership, they may feel that it's either rule or die."
Talking to CBC News this week, foreign affairs expert Janice Stein said that a critical factor might be whether police and security forces remain loyal to the regime.
"Are the police and the army willing to fire on their own people?" said Stein, founding director of the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs,
"In some countries they are not, and that's where revolutions succeed. In other countries they are."
Iranians need international support: expert
Sadjadpour said it's impossible to predict whether the protests will escalate into a full-scale revolution, but it's clear that many Iranians do not believe the Islamic Republic is capable of reform.
"I would argue there's probably no nation in the world with a greater gap between state and society than the Islamic Republic of Iran," he said.
"You essentially have a regime which resembles North Korea, and you have a society which really aspires to be more like South Korea."
WATCH | Protests against Iran's repression of women's rights held around the world
He said he will be watching for "fissures" among the ruling regime.
"To actually change an authoritarian regime, it doesn't only require popular unrest and pressure from below, but you also need divisions at the top," he said.
Canada imposed sanctions on 34 Iranian officials this week, but Sadjadpour said that while the move has symbolic importance, sanctions have limited impact given Iran's international isolation.
"Sanctioning individual Iranian officials from visiting Canada or visiting, you know, the United States or the West? Well, they don't really leave the country all that much," he said.
He said world governments could offer meaningful support to ordinary Iranians by helping to ensure they have internet access, such as establishing access to satellite services.
I spoke w/ <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a> about Starlink in Iran, he gave me permission to share this: “Starlink is now activated in Iran. It requires the use of terminals in-country, which I suspect the [Iranian] government will not support, but if anyone can get terminals into Iran, they will work"
—@ksadjadpour"The most important support we could provide would be to inhibit the Islamic Republic from cutting Iran off from the rest of the world, cutting Iranian society off from the rest of the world," he said.
Governments should be actively having those conversations, he said.
"When you haven't yet opened up that conversation, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy to think, you know, we can't really help people inside Iran."
Audio produced by Kate Cornick and Enza Uda.
