The Ascent of Life: A Narrative of Iran After Jina

Persian edition

This is a lengthy essay because it aims to understand the present through the thread that connects it to the past. Amid the many interpretations of the Jina uprising (2022-23), it is necessary to see the proud yet wounded history of Iranians’ struggle for freedom and the right to sovereignty as a continuous line, not merely a story against one government, but a link in a chain of more than one hundred and fifty years of desire for transformation. This text diverges from the dominant intellectual and journalistic narratives, examining the subject from the perspective of the lowest social layers, which are the primary agents of change.

“Woman, Life, Freedom” encapsulates a century of struggle and the hard-won lessons that have come with it. To grasp Iran’s reality today, on the third anniversary of “Woman, Life, Freedom,” we must look back three decades before it: from the end of the Iran–Iraq War to the scattered protests of the 1990s; from the brief opening of the reform era and the July 9, 1999 (18 Tir) uprising to the 2009 cry of “Where is my vote?”; from December 2017 and November 2019, when the shout of “It’s over” rang out, to the moment Jina’s name became a symbol of rupture. We must also reckon with the erosion of the state’s official ideology, the turn away from religion and the secularization of daily life, the deepening livelihood crisis and workers’ resistance, and the shadow of war that hung over society for twelve fearful days. This essay is an attempt to trace that continuous thread of resistance and life.

Three years have passed since that autumn day when the name Jina first resounded. In that time, Iran’s streets have witnessed many surges and setbacks, history itself seeming, in the blink of an eye, to race through a century of despotism to reach the present. Today, perhaps a grandmother in Zahedan, Sanandaj, Shiraz, Tehran, Ahvaz, Isfahan, or Mashhad gazes into the face of her grandchild, the grandchild who joined the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising and raised the chant of life. Her look carries both pride and sorrow: pride in a generation that stood unflinchingly, and sorrow in recalling how she and her peers once had the same dream in their hearts, only to be trapped time and again in the cycle of tyranny. Once, during the Constitutional Revolution, they fought for the rule of law; later, in 1979, they rose with the hope of breaking free from dictatorship. Yet one struggle gave way to Reza Shah’s despotism, and the other to velayat-e faqih (the rule of the jurist, or Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist). Now, however, the voice of the new generation expresses that same aspiration with greater clarity: the dream of living in a free land, liberated from humiliation and superstition. This dream has taken root not at the margins, but in the very fabric of everyday life.

After the war: the first cracks

When the eight-year war with Iraq ended in the summer of 1988, postwar Iran quickly discovered that external peace did not necessarily bring internal freedom. The artillery fell silent, but the machinery of repression at home accelerated with terrifying speed, as if the government had seized the end of the external war as an opportunity to eliminate its internal opponents quietly. Before the summer of 1988 was over, thousands of political prisoners, many of them young people under the age of 25 who had already endured years of captivity, were executed in secret, without mercy. The gunshots of the coup de grâce behind prison walls revealed that the ruling system had no intention of tolerating dissent. The war had ended, but for ordinary people, peace never arrived.

The decade that followed began with deep economic and social wounds. Cities were filled with young disabled veterans in wheelchairs and with families mourning fathers lost on the battlefield. Inflation and shortages made daily life unbearably difficult. In those years, few dared to protest openly, yet anger and despair smoldered beneath the surface, licking at the ashes of society.

Jamal Cheraghveisi, along with several other labor activists in Kurdistan, was among those arrested in May 1989, only days after delivering a speech at the International Workers’ Day ceremony in Sanandaj. The following year, in May 1990, news broke of his execution and that of 16 others, including two 17-year-old girls, plunging Sanandaj into shock and grief. Jamal had been executed after a long period of torture. His May Day speech remains vivid and inspiring to this day. The “crime” of all these people was their attempt to organize an independent labor union and to speak of what the 1979 revolution had promised but then suppressed: workers’ councils and the people’s right to sovereignty.

In 1992, in Mashhad, people fed up with corruption and soaring prices took to the streets, chanting against the symbols of power; they were quickly met with bullets. Similar protests erupted in Shiraz and Arak, only to be crushed by the rulers’ iron fist. In 1994, thousands in Qazvin poured into the streets and even seized control of the city for a few hours, trying to make their voices heard in the capital. Once again, the government’s response was military repression. The brutal crackdown on the people of Eslamshahr in 1995 marked the peak of this wave. At that time, there was no Internet, no social networks, and with the media tightly controlled by the state, these scattered uprisings remained unreported; people elsewhere in the country could scarcely learn of them. Yet in the memory of those towns, it was etched that whenever people cry out for justice, the rulers understand only the language of force.

The Short Breath of Reform and July 9, 1999

With the dawn of May 23, 1997, and the election of Mohammad Khatami, the reform era began, and a breeze of hope seemed to blow through the country. People exhausted by suffocation and one-voiced rule cast their ballots for Khatami in the hope that the closed political space might open. That massive 20-million vote was itself a resounding “no” to a government that had underestimated the people’s thirst for reform and change. The election created an exceptional opportunity for citizens to influence politics and shape the future of the regime. On the ballot, they had been offered a list of four prayer-bead-clutching hardliners who defended velayat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist) and had been complicit in 18 years of state crimes. The expectation was that one of them would prevail, but instead, Khatami won on the slogan of reform.

A younger generation, those born in the 1970s and 1980s, now coming of age, carried fresh dreams: a society where life itself had value, not merely survival. But this dream was short-lived. Newspapers continued to be shut down, writers were silenced, and political activists were confined to house arrest. Then came the "chain murders" (a series of assassinations of dissident intellectuals and writers in the late 1990s), marked by the brutal killing of outspoken critics. Even so, society had shed its old skin, and it was no longer easy to force it back into the straitjacket of silence.

In July 1999, a single spark was enough to ignite the powder keg of student anger. The raid by security forces on the University of Tehran dormitories — where students were beaten and even thrown out of windows — brought blood to a boil. The flame of protest spread from campus to the streets; youths who once held books now held stones, facing off against riot police. The government, however, responded with full force, bringing the unrest to a swift end within a few days. Some were killed and wounded, and many more were sent to prison. The wound of July 9, 1999 (known in Iran as 18 Tir, the student uprising violently crushed in Tehran and other cities) was carved into the soul of a generation: students who discovered that the slogan of “civil society,” without the backing of real power, was weak against bullets and batons.

At the same time, the regime’s conflict with global powers over the nuclear program entered a new stage. It was as if the authorities were waiting to graft this issue onto their long-cultivated narrative of foreign interference, using it to justify repression and obscure Iranians’ own stories about their lives. This was also the moment when mass “wholesale” verdicts, under the charge of “acting against national security,” became routine, a grim joke embedded in daily life.

The 2000s: Workers and the Road That Led to 2009

A mix of ups and downs marked the decade from 1999 to 2009. On one side, after crushing the student movement, the state grew bolder and tightened the security atmosphere; on the other, society at its lower levels became more mature and more demanding. With the ruthless killing of workers at the Khatun Abad copper plant (in Kerman Province) in 2003, the government showed that its determination to suppress the labor movement went beyond what most had imagined. The merciless killing of protesters in the cities of Kurdistan — who had taken to the streets on February 21, 2005, to denounce the kidnapping of Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), by the Turkish state — pushed the Kurdish question in Iran onto a different path; protests that unfolded in total silence under heavy censorship.

During this period, a new generation of intellectuals and young activists emerged, fully aware that the struggle for freedom is not a sprint but a marathon that may take years. In the same years, the powerful strikes of the Kurdistan textile workers in 2005, which forced both the employer and the state to back down, inspired others. The reopening of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company and their large-scale strike on December 25, 2005, breathed new life into Iran’s labor movement, which, after more than a decade of harsh repression, had succeeded in reasserting its independent voice against the state. At the same time, efforts to form other independent organizations were underway across the country. The protests of the Haft-Tappeh sugarcane workers (in Khuzestan Province) pushed the labor movement one step further.

Even so, few imagined that an even greater test lay ahead with the 2009 election. One month before that vote, the powerful International Workers’ Day gathering in Tehran’s Laleh Park, and the arrest of more than 200 labor activists and protesters, showed that Iranian society was already moving in another direction.

From “Where Is My Vote?” to “It’s Over”

The 2009 presidential election and its aftermath lifted the curtain on a deep rift that had been building in society for years. When the official results appeared to be fraudulent and manipulated, and the people’s objections were ignored, Tehran and other major cities became the stage for one of the largest protests in the history of the Islamic Republic. Millions, in silence and through peaceful marches, demanded the restoration of their right to vote. Those were days filled with both hope and anxiety; people chanted “Where is my vote?” believing that with such massive presence, they might force change. But by June and July 2009, the familiar rhythm of repression returned: the image of Neda Agha-Soltan’s bloodied body on a Tehran street shocked the world and became a symbol of the Iranian people’s innocence. Dozens were killed, hundreds wounded, and thousands arrested. The people’s calm protest was met with bullets, and once again the bitter taste of despotism soured the mouths of freedom-seekers.

The only outcome of the Green Movement’s broad suppression was a more profound rupture between society and the ruling power. Millions of Iranians, who had held some hope that the government could be reformed until then, realized after 2009 that the power structure had no tolerance for the people’s will. Meanwhile, a suppressed anger piled up among the lower classes and in towns far from the center. They saw that even the urban middle class, who pursued change through voting and peaceful demonstrations, was pushed back by violence. What path then remained for the deprived and marginalized except to break the lifeline of the system itself?

Following 2009, the Islamic Republic entered a period of political stagnation accompanied by intense securitization. Years passed, presidents changed, but the overall policy of elimination and suffocation did not. Every small labor or civil protest was crushed in the cradle. Still, the inner contradictions of society were too great to be contained by naked force. Widespread financial corruption and foreign sanctions pushed the economy to the brink of collapse. In the 2010s, people’s pockets emptied by the day, and the class divide became stark. Massive billion-dollar embezzlements were exposed, while the children of the elite lived comfortably in the United States and Canada, even as workers’ children scavenged through garbage for a piece of bread. Such a situation could not endure.

In December 2017, the first sparks beneath the ashes began to appear. Spontaneous protests started in Mashhad (northeastern Iran) and quickly spread to dozens of small and large cities. This time, it was mainly the lower classes and the marginalized who took to the streets—those with nothing to lose, who had endured years of humiliation and poverty. The slogans were markedly different from the past: instead of “Where is my vote?” (the central slogan of the 2009 Green Movement, focused on electoral fraud), the chants were “Death to the dictator” (a direct call against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) and the decisive “Reformist, Principalist, it’s over” (a rejection of both main political factions within the Islamic Republic: the so-called reformists and hardline conservatives). The December 2017 protests lacked organized leadership and largely emerged through social networks and messaging apps, such as Telegram, catching the government off guard. That uprising marked a turning point in Iran’s class–social struggle, which, with many ebbs, flows, and bloody episodes of state repression, has since continued along a new path. After December 2017, it became clear that the center of protest energy had shifted to the lower classes and that the volcano of anger was now boiling in the country’s most neglected and impoverished regions.

Although the December 2017 uprising was contained relatively quickly, and with brutal killings, its embers did not die out. Two years later, in November 2019, another spark flared up, this time on a far broader scale. The immediate trigger was a sudden increase in gasoline prices. Still, in truth, years of economic pressure and a deep sense of injustice had already brought society to the brink of explosion. Within just 48 hours, more than 100 cities were turned into scenes of street battles. Banks and government buildings burned in the fire of popular anger, and the slogans, more radical than ever, targeted the system as a whole. This scale of struggle against the rule of capital and its violence was unprecedented in Iran’s modern history.

The government responded with direct gunfire. In the following days, one of the bloodiest crackdowns in the country’s recent history unfolded. According to one account, more than 1,500 people were killed across 190 cities, with nearly 400 deaths in Tehran Province alone. Independent sources, such as Reuters, later confirmed these horrifying figures, although officials never released the actual number. The interior minister at the time claimed that only “between 200 and 225 people” had been killed, which, even if taken at face value, still marks a catastrophe and reveals the scale of organized state violence. The November 2019 uprising was quelled by a nationwide internet shutdown and the deployment of massive numbers of IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and Basij (paramilitary militia) forces. The blood of the young was washed off the streets, but their clear, angry voices were etched into the nation’s collective memory.

After the bloody November, Iran effectively entered a period of quiet, near-revolution. Nothing was the same anymore. The protest movement that had risen from December 2017 to November 2019 was apparently crushed, but it had already taken root and gained experience. The gap between the government and society reached its widest point. Even those who once believed in reform from within the system concluded that the ruling religious despotism was beyond reform and had to be overthrown—a view admitted even by some former “insiders.” Throughout 2020 and 2021, waves of labor and local protests erupted repeatedly: from strikes by Haft-Tappeh sugarcane workers and steelworkers, to sit-ins by teachers and retirees, to the uprising of the thirsty in Khuzestan (southwestern Iran, where water shortages fueled massive protests). Each of these tremors signaled that the fire beneath the ashes was still alive.

Three Words That Broke a Century: Jina and the 2022 Uprising

At last, in September 2022, a fateful spark reached the powder keg. Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year-old woman from Saqqez (a Kurdish city in western Iran) who had traveled to Tehran for a short visit, was arrested by the morality police (a unit charged with enforcing compulsory hijab laws). Only a few days later, her lifeless body was released from the hospital. The news of Mahsa’s death — she was called “Jina” by her friends and loved ones — flashed across Iran like lightning. The images of her family’s grief at Kasra Hospital and later at her funeral in Saqqez struck millions with shock and pain. It was at that very funeral that the cry of protest first rose: “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” (“Woman, Life, Freedom,” the historic slogan of the Kurdish women’s movement) was spoken by those present and quickly became the central slogan of Iran’s new uprising. These three simple, shining words condensed more than a century of demands: the dignity of women against a misogynistic system; life, valued and improved, against the rulers’ death-seeking, martyrdom culture; and freedom against a century of suffocating despotism.

The protests that erupted after the killing of Jina Amini in mid-September 2022 were unprecedented in both geographic spread and social composition. From Kurdistan to Tehran, from Baluchistan in the southeast to Mazandaran in the north, cities and even villages erupted in flames. Young women were the beating heart of the uprising: high school girls burned their headscarves in schoolyards; university students, both women and men, linked arms on campus and chanted for freedom. In the streets of Tehran, Tabriz, and Rasht, unveiled women shouted “Death to the dictator” (a direct call against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) and “I will kill whoever killed my sister.” Their courage on the front lines of protest broke the old taboo of fear. Men also stood beside them, often in solidarity, and proudly carried the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom.”

From the outset, the Jina movement had several defining features that distinguished it from earlier waves of protest. First, its slogans explicitly targeted the Supreme Leader and the regime as a whole, leaving no room for minimal or reformist demands; this was a movement for fundamental change, not partial adjustment. Second, there was a rare unity across social groups and ethnicities: Kurds and Persians, Baluchis and Azeris, as well as middle-class and lower-class individuals, all burned in the same fire of anger against oppression and discrimination. Third, Generation Z was widely present: youth who had lived their entire lives in the age of the internet and the modern world, a generation whose way of life stood in open conflict with the regime’s official ideology. Fourth, social networks and citizen media played a decisive role: videos of women removing their hijabs in subways or young people knocking turbans off clerics’ heads spread rapidly across Iran and the world, inspiring others to join.

The state confronted this historic movement with its full force. The regime’s propaganda machine branded the protesters as “rioters” and “separatists,” while state media insisted the uprising was a plot orchestrated by the United States and Israel. Yet this official narrative found no real buyers among the public, whose own daily lives explained why they had come to the streets. Every Iranian had a daughter in their family, or among friends and acquaintances, who could suffer the same grim fate as Jina for a few strands of visible hair. At the same time, poverty and systemic failure had become so widespread that few still held hope for improvement within the existing order. Thus, the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement grew into a mass and unprecedented uprising that advanced with remarkable bravery for months.

The apparatus of repression entered the battlefield more mercilessly than ever. The harrowing images published in September and October 2022 will never be forgotten: teenagers killed in the streets by live bullets, like 17-year-old Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh, whose smiles seemed to vanish from Iran’s collective face; or the photograph of Mahsa Mogouyi, a schoolgirl from Isfahan (central Iran), shot dead in her school uniform on her way home. In Baluchistan (southeastern Iran, home to a predominantly Sunni and heavily marginalized population), the “bloody Fridays” mourned dozens of youths and even children massacred by snipers positioned on police-station rooftops. Security forces used not only bullets and tear gas but also spiteful methods: transporting troops and abducting the wounded in ambulances; deploying plainclothes agents to infiltrate protest crowds and spread fear; and harnessing thousands of city CCTV cameras to identify protesters’ faces.

Based on credible human-rights reports compiled later, during one year of the 2022 nationwide protests, at least 551 protesters, including 68 children and 49 women, were killed by security forces. Most were killed by direct gunfire or baton blows. The Islamic Republic killed dozens in this way to “prove” that it had not killed Jina Amini. Thousands more were wounded or arrested, and a significant number were sentenced in show trials (staged legal proceedings designed to intimidate) to long prison terms or even execution. The executions of Mohsen Shekari, Majidreza Rahnavard, Mohammad Mehdi Karami, and Mohammad Hosseini, young men whose only “crime” was taking part in the protests, were carried out to spread public terror.

Yet against this injustice, society’s resistance was both magnificent and inventive. One of the most striking arenas of confrontation was the war of narratives: protesters used mobile phones to record and transmit the true story of the streets. Their videos exposed how plainclothes agents directed violence and destruction, and how security forces opened fire on unarmed people. One of the starkest examples of police violence against citizen-journalists was the shooting of Shirin Alizadeh in Mazandaran (a northern province on the Caspian Sea); a video of her being hit by live ammunition while filming police brutality from inside her family’s car spread quickly across social media.

Despite the scale of cruelty and violence, this digital evidence boosted society’s confidence and undermined the regime’s false narrative. In cities where repression prevented large gatherings, other forms of civil disobedience took root: nightly rooftop chants; writing slogans on alley walls and even on banknotes; posting photos of the dead across public spaces; and symbolic acts such as unveiled girls dancing in the streets or solo renditions of the anthem “Baraye…” (a protest song that became an anthem of the movement) in public places.

The uprising had no centralized leader, but it had thousands of anonymous leaders in neighborhoods, schools, and universities who rekindled the flame each time. The courageous presence of the families of the dead, from the parents of Jina Amini to families whose loved ones were killed in the protests, gave the movement its deepest moral force. With loud voices at the fortieth-day memorials (a traditional mourning rite in Iran marking forty days after death), they held the government responsible for the killings. They transformed the demand for justice into a public cause.

Erosion of the Official Ideology: Secularization, Hijab, and Everyday Life

One of the most important outcomes of the 2022 uprising was the deep crack it created in the regime’s “ideological base.” This time, the system itself has confirmed the change through its own official data. According to the National Survey of Iranians’ Values and Attitudes (Wave Four), conducted by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (through the Research Institute for Culture, Art and Communication) in November 2023 with 15,878 face-to-face interviews across all 31 provinces, 73% of respondents favored the separation of religion and state (compared to fewer than 31% in 2015). Furthermore, 85% said society had become “less religious” over the past five years, and more than 81% predicted the same decline over the next five.

Behavioral measures underscored this erosion: only 11% reported that they “always” attend congregational prayers, while 45% said they never attend Friday Prayer. Just 13% said they “always” read the Quran, while 19% said they “never” do. On the issue of hijab, responses revealed a collapse in support for legal compulsion: 38% said “if a woman is without hijab, it doesn’t matter to me,” 34.4% stated “it should not be compulsory,” and only 7.9% supported “absolute obligation” (compared to about 18.6% in 2015). These results, initially released in a limited way and later shrouded in controversy when news spread that the full report would remain “confidential”, demonstrate the regime’s own acknowledgment of the erosion of its ideological authority.

This picture also aligns with earlier state data. The Parliament Research Center, in a report from those years, explicitly noted declining public support for the strict enforcement of the hijab and acknowledged the failure of the “coercion model.” At the level of public policy, this amounted to a tacit recognition that religious compulsion had lost legitimacy in Iranian society.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of secularism’s growth in Iran is the people’s everyday behavior. Years ago, few dared to speak openly about not believing in religion; today, even in family gatherings, conversations about the inefficiency and backwardness of the state religion have become commonplace. Mosques are emptier than ever, so much so that Friday Prayer imams themselves admit the thinning ranks of congregational worshipers. Religious textbooks in schools have become neglected subjects, often overlooked and rarely taken seriously by students. In contrast, interest has grown in modern concepts such as human rights, gender equality, secularism, and scientific reasoning. For many, religiosity is now viewed as a private matter, rather than a social obligation. This quiet but profound intellectual shift has widened the gap between the people and a government that claims legitimacy through religion. The Islamic Republic understands well that if the majority of society no longer holds strong religious beliefs and no longer sees a religious government as legitimate, the very foundations of its rule are undermined.

The symbol of this social change is most visible in the struggle over the hijab. Once one of the central ideological pillars of the system, the mandatory hijab has now become the Achilles’ heel of its legitimacy. After the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement and the widespread removal of the hijab by women across the country, the government launched an aggressive campaign to roll back this gain. The morality police were redeployed to the streets; cash fines and denial of public services were imposed on unveiled women; shops and restaurants that served women without hijab were forcibly closed.

Yet these pressures produced the opposite effect. Not only did women refuse to return to wearing the hijab, but a larger portion of society actively embraced practical opposition to this religious compulsion. It can now be said with confidence that, three years later, the face of Iran’s cities has changed: in large urban centers, more than half of women either do not wear headscarves at all or wear them very loosely; even in smaller towns, the visible presence of unveiled women in streets and marketplaces is striking. This widespread civil disobedience demonstrates that people no longer recognize the government’s authority in shaping their most fundamental way of life. A regime that once called the hijab the “honor of the revolution” now finds itself bewildered before a generation that has lost its faith and refuses to submit to ideological commands and prohibitions.

Bread and Freedom: An Exhausted Economy, the Working Class, and Society’s Endurance

The economy and people’s livelihoods have themselves become decisive battlegrounds between society and the state. At the start of the 2020s, the Islamic Republic faced the most critical economic crisis in its history: official inflation above 40% (with independent experts estimating the real figure at 50–60%); the free fall of the rial, which pushed the dollar’s exchange rate from 5,000 tomans to more than 50,000 tomans in a decade; near-zero economic growth over the past ten years; and widespread unemployment, especially among educated youth. The class gap reached unprecedented levels, while the middle class was being steadily crushed under relentless economic pressure.

In this situation, millions of families have been pushed below the poverty line. Even according to the regime’s own official reports, about 25–30% of the population, close to 25 million people, live in poverty. Independent economists, however, paint an even darker picture: if the real poverty line is used, more than 50% of the population may be unable to meet their basic needs.

In recent years, widespread labor and sectoral strikes have emerged in direct response to this collapse in livelihoods. Workers and employees, stretched to their limits, find that meager wages no longer cover the cost of living. As a result, across the country, factory workers, teachers, nurses, retirees, and even small shopkeepers have repeatedly stopped work and staged demonstrations. At times, these protests have taken a nationwide form, with coordinated teachers’ strikes in dozens of cities demanding higher pay and the release of their imprisoned colleagues, or the truck drivers’ strike against soaring fuel prices and unbearable living costs. According to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, at least 44 labor protests and strikes were recorded in 26 Iranian cities between December 2023 and March 2024.

These numbers demonstrate the increasing intensity of dissatisfaction among workers and the poor on a daily basis. Basic demands, payment of overdue wages, salaries above the poverty line, job security, and an end to corrupt privatizations are met not with solutions but with frame-ups and repression. From Esmail Bakhshi, a well-known Haft-Tappeh sugarcane worker, to Jafar Ebrahimi, an imprisoned teachers’ union activist, and dozens of others, such as Jafar Azimzadeh and Parvin Mohammadi, many labor activists have been jailed simply for seeking justice. This ruthless repression stems from the regime’s awareness that if livelihood demands join forces with the freedom-seeking movement, its very existence could be threatened. In the slogans of the 2022 uprising and its aftermath, protesters repeatedly cried out in solidarity: “Worker, student, unity, unity.” Such a union is a nightmare for a ruling power that survives by cultivating division and social fragmentation.

Yet despite these crushing problems, something alive in the depths of Iranian society refuses to surrender completely to poverty and suffocation: a culture of resistance. Throughout their long history, Iranians have risen from ruins time and again. Today, despite prevailing injustice pushing many to the edge, the spirit of steadfastness and solidarity among the people has only grown stronger.

The scenes of recent years, amid brutal repression, remain unforgettable: when shopkeepers in Saqqez and Sanandaj (cities in Iranian Kurdistan) and in Tehran pulled down their shutters in solidarity with blood that had been shed; when spectators in Azadi Stadium (Tehran’s main stadium) sang the anthem “Yar-e Dabestani” (“My Schoolmate,” a 1979 student movement song that has become a symbol of solidarity) with tears in their eyes; when drivers on city streets honored the dead with continuous horn blasts; or when grieving mothers in cemeteries stood hand in hand by their children’s graves and sang, “Pour out fire, for this fire will not turn to ashes.”

These images testify that, despite all the pressure, the spirit of society has not been extinguished. The people of Iran are sorrowful and angry; they may at times lose hope, but they are neither submissive nor defeated. In the streets, one still sees the smile of solidarity in the eyes of strangers; still, when the name “Mahsa” (Jina Amini) is spoken, eyes well with tears and fists tighten. This aliveness in people’s hearts is something no government can extinguish with bullets and prisons.

Twelve Days of Fear: A Short War and Social Suspension

As we mark the third anniversary of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, Iran has faced not only internal turmoil but also a storm of external events. Over the past year, tensions between the Islamic Republic and its foreign adversaries reached a dangerous peak. For years, the government, already under sanctions and international pressure for its regional interventions and its contentious nuclear program, had been engaged in a shadow war with Israel. Israel, which regards the Iranian regime (and, by some readings, any policy that challenges its existence) as a threat, had repeatedly struck in recent years through cyberattacks, sabotage of nuclear facilities, and assassinations of scientists. However, in mid-2025, this hidden confrontation suddenly became open and direct: a devastating war broke out.

At dawn one day in June 2025, residents of several Iranian cities awoke to the thunder of massive explosions. Israeli fighter jets had launched a surprise attack—the most extensive foreign military incursion onto Iranian soil since the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). The IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s primary military-security force) and the Iranian army retaliated immediately, firing missiles toward Tel Aviv and Haifa. The United States initially stood aside but, after about a week, entered the conflict by bombing several Iranian nuclear sites. A short but unequal war erupted, lasting nearly twelve days. During this period, destruction and fear dominated daily life: Israeli missiles and drones struck IRGC bases and radar centers; massive explosions shook areas around Tehran and Isfahan. Iran’s air defenses fought back but could not overcome Israel’s air superiority. Sirens wailed in Tehran, Isfahan, and Tabriz, and civilians rushed to shelters. Though it was not a full-scale war and the attacks were selective, Iranian society endured feverish days of profound anxiety about the future.

Already reeling from the repression of the 2022–2023 uprising, society now faced the shock of an external war. One writer inside the country described it this way: “The developments in this short span unfolded so rapidly and severely that, in confronting the shock, society was gripped by conflicting emotions. A state of suspension emerged—unpredictable and marked by a palpable nervousness.” People were stunned; many did not know whether to rage at the foreign assault or to feel satisfaction at the regime’s weakening. Should they worry for the homeland, or wait for the fall of despotic rulers? This contradiction left society in a suspended state.

Sensing mortal danger, the Islamic Republic swiftly shifted its tone. The same rulers who had long exalted the Islamic ummah (the global Muslim community) and denounced nationalism suddenly wrapped themselves in national symbols. Streets in Tehran and other cities are filled with patriotic billboards featuring Arash the Archer (a legendary Persian hero who sacrificed himself to defend Iran’s borders) and slogans glorifying the nation. On state television, singers performed “Ey Iran” (a patriotic anthem composed in the 1940s, often considered Iran’s unofficial national anthem). Even Seyed Ali Khamenei, who throughout his life had called himself a soldier of Islam, now urged the people to “defend the soil of the homeland.” This sudden and opportunistic change of rhetoric did not go unnoticed. Many quipped that the same regime, which had long accused critics of “secular nationalism,” was now waving the national flag to ensure its own survival. In truth, only under its first serious existential threat did the Islamic Republic realize it had no resource for rallying public support except people’s patriotism. But did this ploy work? Public reaction suggested otherwise: lost trust cannot be restored with a few nationalist slogans. The prevailing sentiment was captured in one bitter question: “If you truly care about Iran, why did you spend years pushing the country to the brink of war with your reckless policies?”

At the same time, some opponents of the regime — specifically two camps, the monarchists (supporters of restoring the Pahlavi dynasty) and the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK, or People’s Mujahedin of Iran, a controversial opposition group with a history of siding with foreign powers) — behaved in ways that revived bitter memories of betrayal. It was striking that the very voices who claimed to stand for “love of Iran” and the “defense of territorial integrity,” during Israel’s twelve-day war against Iran, openly aligned with a hostile state. Satellite media close to these groups enthusiastically celebrated Israeli military “victories” and even expressed hope that the Islamic Republic would fall through foreign intervention.

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince who dreams of restoring the monarchy, placed such hope in Israeli and American action that, amid the strikes, he sent condolences for the deaths of two Israeli citizens—while never offering condolences to the families of Iranian conscripts or civilians killed in the assaults. His conduct, and that of his allies, amounted to spiteful opportunism and betrayal of the homeland. Ironically, those who call themselves “nationalists” revealed their reliance on foreign powers to destroy their own country. Such positions won them no legitimacy inside Iran; instead, they underscored the conviction that any authentic alternative must emerge from the people themselves and from independent movements, not from the lap of foreign states.

The war ultimately came to an end under international pressure and great-power mediation. Israel and the United States, after dealing heavy blows to Iran and sustaining a few missile strikes in return, finally pulled back—recognizing that prolonged confrontation risked spiraling out of control. For the Islamic Republic, the ceasefire functioned like artificial respiration. The government immediately declared, “We defeated the foreign enemies,” and official propaganda sought to manufacture a “victory” out of the ruins.

The reality, however, was different. Iran’s nuclear facilities sustained severe damage, several hundred military personnel and civilians were killed or wounded, and, perhaps most critically, the already ailing economy took a fresh hit. The prices of dollars and gold soared, and frightened citizens rushed to hoard necessities. Even after the ceasefire, the regime kept beating the war drum, hoping the atmosphere of external threat would obscure domestic discontent. Inside the country, repression intensified: peace advocates and political activists were arrested on charges of “collaboration with the enemy” (a broad accusation used to silence dissent), and critics were silenced with the refrain that “the country is at war.” In effect, the Islamic Republic used Israel’s assault as cover to push repression to its peak and intimidate society under the shadow of external threat.

After the Ceasefire: Narrative Engineering, a Feverish Economy, and a Wounded Yet Living Present

The situation in Iran today is a mix of hope and fear, of light and darkness. On one side, society is wounded but awake. Nothing is as it was three years ago, neither in people’s hearts nor even within the ruling apparatus. Those who have tasted freedom, even briefly in the streets, and who have discovered their collective power, will not easily return to submission. Social norms have shifted: fear of the police and the Basij (a paramilitary militia under the IRGC, often used for street repression) has crumbled; the young have chosen living over dying in fear. Girls walk unveiled with courage; families confront bullying officers openly; shopkeepers, doctors, and even celebrated athletes have gradually distanced themselves from the state. Even among those who may personally value religion, disgust has grown toward a regime that trades in religion for power. Iranian society is today more secular, more aware, and more united than in the past. The religious and ethnic rifts that the state exploited for decades have receded in the face of a shared movement. Women and men, Kurds and Persians, Shi‘a and Sunnis have stood together for a higher goal—this is social capital that will not vanish.

On the other side, serious dangers loom. The Islamic Republic is wounded but still dangerous. The new wave of sanctions and intensified international isolation after the 2022 crackdown have pushed the economy to the brink of collapse, with no exit in sight. To preserve itself, the regime may once again resort to foreign adventurism or even to bloodier repression. Experience has shown that this system does not hesitate to turn the country into scorched earth to hold on to power. Many who care about Iran worry about the risk of repeating the Syria or Libya scenario, civil war, or foreign intervention. The twelve-day war with Israel revealed just how vulnerable the country is, and how defenseless ordinary people remain. Thus, society faces a hard question: how can internal despotism be ended without falling prey to foreign war or internal chaos?

There is no easy answer, and no one holds a magic formula. What is clear is that the regime is sliding further down the slope of lost legitimacy. It has neither a way forward nor a way back: it cannot reform, and it cannot even manage the country in a normal fashion. Public dissatisfaction has reached a peak, and, as analysts say, society is in a “revolutionary” state: one without a fixed course or inevitable end, but one that will not return to the past. People want life, and that demand cannot be suppressed by force. Signs suggest that cracks have appeared even within the ruling apparatus: pragmatic conservatives acknowledge the dead end, while the slogans of hardline ideologues no longer resonate even with the regime’s own loyalists. After Israel’s assault, some government moderates even spoke openly of the need to change the “governance paradigm”, a euphemism for setting aside velayat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) and Shi‘a expansionism. That such words are uttered from within the establishment shows recognition of a profound impasse.

Still, social transformations take time, and Iran’s path may pass through difficult crossroads. The government may survive for a while longer through sheer force, but it stands on a sea of gunpowder, the people’s anger, where any spark can ignite a new explosion. Protests will continue in various forms, including labor strikes, boycotts of sham elections, symbolic commemorations, and anniversaries. The freedom-seeking movement has had its ups and downs, but it has not stopped, as it is rooted in the natural and universal desire for a better life.

In such circumstances, Iranian society looks to the future with anxious eyes, but also with a stubborn hope in the heart. Hope that this night will yield to a bright morning. Hope for an end to more than a century of despotism and the beginning of a new chapter in Iran’s history. On the walls of Tehran and Sanandaj, one still sees the hastily scrawled slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom.” Officers may paint over it, but each time another hand writes it again. This is the fate of the ideal of freedom in contemporary Iran: repression may silence it for a while, but it returns, flaring up again and again.

Rulers can break pens, silence tongues, and consign the bodies of the free to prisons and graves. But how can they kill the spirit of freedom? That spirit, rooted in the people’s souls, cannot be extinguished by any bullet or prison.

Three years after the Jina uprising, the country is wounded but alive. The people have suffered greatly, but within that pain, they have nurtured a beautiful dream: the dream of a free Iran, an Iran where a woman is not oppressed for being a woman, where life is honored, and where freedom is the right of every human being. This dream cannot be stolen from a people who have bled for it. We may not know the exact hour of the sunrise of freedom, but its dawn is on the horizon. Every grieving mother who keened at her child’s grave and hummed the anthem of freedom, every young woman who laughed unveiled in an alley, every young man who did not flee the officers and shouted for justice, all bear witness to the truth that a new chapter has begun. A chapter in which the people are no longer silent subjects of the past, and the rulers no longer command unquestioned authority.

Woman, Life, Freedom is the distillation of a long, rugged path: a path paved—and to be continued—by women’s struggle for their rights, by the people’s effort for a better life, and by everyone’s sacrifice for freedom.