(Dobbs) Iranians Gave Their Lives 40 Years Ago, They're Giving Them Again Today
But their government only acts tougher, not contrite.
Although it’s good to see the Islamic Republic’s government challenged by nationwide protests right now, I can’t really smile about the rage that’s roiling Iran. Too many people killed, too many tortured, too many arrested.
But I kind of want to smile about what the protesters are doing. Provoked by the death in police custody three weeks ago of a young woman named Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the nation’s “morality police” for wearing her hijab too casually— photos of her comatose on a hospital bed showed facial bruises and blood dripping from her ear— the protesters are talking back to their dogmatic and despotic government. And not just talking back, they are fighting back.
Women are defiantly discarding their hijabs and showing themselves without the modesty the Islamic government demands. In some cases their only facial coverings are Covid masks.
Some are standing in the streets and cutting off their hair, an in-your-face way of saying to their government, “If you don’t want to see our hair showing, this should fix the problem.”
Some are setting fire to their hijabs.
What’s more, protestors in different cities have pulled down ubiquitous pictures of the longtime Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and of the stern Islamic icon who started the revolution more than 40 years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini. The ceaseless chant we Western reporters had to hear for months on end when covering the revolution, then the crisis with hostages at the American embassy, has taken a new turn. Instead of “Death to America,” the streets now ring with “Death to the dictator.”
Tragically though, they do not protest without cost. Amnesty International got its hands on a government paper ordering military commanders to “severely confront troublemakers and anti-revolutionaries.” And that’s what they’ve done. Amnesty has recorded the names of 134 people killed in the protests, and says it has reason to believe the actual toll is “far higher.” Because the Islamic Republic has fairly effectively cut off the internet, no one on the outside can be sure.
But what is known is that they are dying brutal deaths. Amnesty says it can see from videos and photos that have made their way out that “most people were killed by security forces firing live ammunition,” sometimes metal pellets fired at close range. It documents at least one 16-year-old girl who died “after being severely beaten in the head with batons.” The majority of victims, Amnesty says, “were shot in the head, heart, neck and torso.”
That speaks volumes about the government’s determination, at any cost, to crush these protests.
Such reports give me shivers, because it’s deja vu to what I saw while covering the revolution that brought in the Islamic government. It was a revolution against the Shah. Although a friend of the United States, he was a dictator with a brutal force of secret police that ruined innumerable lives, and was introducing Western cultures that ordinary citizens found decadent and didn’t welcome. But it was the Shah’s forces with the guns back then, and on Friday after Friday, the Islamic sabbath, my camera crew and I recorded thousands of protesters gathered in large public plazas where sometimes dozens, sometimes hundreds, were mowed down.
Now history repeats itself.
Of course I can’t be sure that my experiences in those explosive days in Iran reflect what’s happening on the streets today. But they are worth considering. Namely, that not everybody in Iran, although most were Muslims, ever wanted an Islamic government. What I concluded from my own reporting on the ground, including countless interviews over those years, was that most Iranians, although not religious fanatics, wanted to get rid of the Shah, so when Ayatollah Khomeini emerged as the most powerful contender to replace him, they jumped on Khomeini’s bandwagon. But they got more than they bargained for.
Over the years, life for the ordinary Iranian has gone downhill. Whether motivated by Islamic repression, or Western isolation, or just the difficulties they have today buying meat or finding a good job, people in Iran evidently have had enough. The current turmoil may have been sparked by the death of Ms. Amini, but the anger has been festering for years. It is telling that we are two generations down the road since the Islamic Revolution, and Hassan Khomeini, one of the grandsons of the revolution’s founding father Ayatollah Khomeini, has publicly defied his government and voiced support for Mahsa Amini.
One could conclude that just as the protesters I covered more than 40 years ago, although initially unorganized and unarmed, eventually forced their dictator out, the protesters today can do it against a different kind of dictator, again. But there might be even more at stake today than there was back then, because from what I’ve seen over the years in other parts of the Islamic world, extremists like those who now run Iran can be even more dangerous when their dogma is denied. I liken them to suicide bombers with a nation strapped to their chests. In this case, it’s the second most populous nation in the Middle East. A nation that supports terrorists. A nation long bellicose to Western interests. A nation with a secretive nuclear program that already might be more lethal than we know.
So its own people are fighting back. I can only hope they can sustain the losses they’re suffering right now and somehow win this fight. They would have a saner nation. We would have a saner world.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Good piece—hope protests bring progress!! Why is our govt trying to do a nuclear deal with them?? Think suspended for now—but hope it doesn’t happen. Lovya, george
Greg, Excellent analysis of current Iran crisis. We can all hope the Iranian people get a try at democracy. Curt