Woman, Life, Freedom – The Protests in Iran

Amira El Ahl:

Welcome to a new episode of "Die Kulturmittler:innen" – the ifa-Podcast on Foreign Cultural Policy. My Name is Amira El Ahl and I’m very glad that you’re joining us again. In September 2022, nationwide protests erupted in Iran after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the countries "morality police" on allegations of violating the hijab law, which mandates women and girls to cover their hair and bodies. Under the slogan "Zan, Zendegi, Azadi," "Woman, Life, Freedom," thousands of people protested daily on the streets against the regime in Teheran. From school children to students, workers and pensioneers, many age and social groups were represented at these protests. Two years have passed since then, from the outside, it looks like the protests have died down, but then, President Ebrahi Raisi died in a helicopter crash and a new President, Massud Peseschkian, was elected in July this year. In this episode, we take a look at the developments in Iran and in particular at the situation of women, who played a major role in the protests two years ago.

My guest today is Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. The British-Iranian author and founder and Executive Director of the International Civil Society Action Network ICAN has nearly three decades of experience as a peace strategist, working globally on conflicts, crises, violent extremism and peace building with civil society governments and the UN. Through ICAN, she spearheads the women's alliance for security leadership, comprising independent women-led organizations active in 40 countries globally, preventing violence and promoting peace, rights and pluralism. Since the beginning of this year, she’s a Richard von Weizsäcker fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, such a great pleasure to have you with us. Welcome to "Die Kulturmittler:innen."

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

Thank you, it's lovely to be here! And I'm very sad that my fellowship time in Berlin has ended. I loved being in Berlin, so thank you very much for hosting me now. Yes, I’ll be back in October but it's… my living time in Berlin has sadly come to an end.
 

Amira El Ahl:

OK, so where are we catching you right now?
 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

I'm in London, I'm in London. So not too far away.
 

Amira El Ahl:

Sanam, take us back to the days after Mahsa Aminis death on September 16^th 2022. How did the news of her death spread and what happened then? How did the protests start?
 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

You know, it feels like a long time ago, but I think the reason why it feels so long is that it wasn’t just the first time that we had women out on the streets protesting against the hijab. It really felt like it was the culmination of 30, 40 years of a policy that the regime enacted back in 1979. And a policy that each generation of young women has fought against to the extent that they could, when they faced the onslaught of the security and the – sort of, if you want - the violence of the state. So, when we heard the news of Mahsa Amini being killed, it triggered something so deep for so many of us around the world. Right, you know, we were looking at young girls in Iran, I was in America at the time, and you know, and I'm looking at her and I’m thinking: She's the same age as my children. But at the same time, it was triggering my memories of being eighteen when I first went back to Iran after the revolution. I left when I was eleven and I went back for the first time when I was eighteen. And it triggered memories of arriving and being covered and being fearful in the streets. And of course in those days, I mean the covering that we had to put on was even a more stringent than what we see now. It really felt as if it was 30, 40 years of trauma coming out amongst young audiences all over the world.          

Amira El Ahl:                                                                           
And, I mean the protests continued for a long time over several months and then they took on different forms, I think, the demonstrations on the streets, they also included civil disobedience or forms of strike actions. And although there is less media attention now, the movement is not over. What forms of protests are you still seeing now in Iran?
 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

So, this is where it gets very interesting. So, I think the first thing is that what those protests showed, and it’s been persistent, is that the regime has lost. The regime’s attempt to islamize society according to their very, if you want, strict and extreme sort of version of Islam has failed, and they’ve anchored it in this covering of women, right, from the beginning, they put the scarf on, they made it mandatory, they threatened women with violence back in 1979, my mother’s generation, they were threatened. And every generation as I said, I mean, you know, in my generation people were pushing the scarf back inch by inch, shortening it, tightening the pants, you know, tightening the clothes that they wore and so forth just as a, not even an organized kind of protest form, it just became the norm for young women to push back in that way.

What we saw with the women life freedom movement was the most profound shift, I think which is that we saw men standing shoulder to shoulder with women. And I frame it like this, that if in 1979, my father’s generation of men didn’t really take seriously when the hijab was made mandatory for women, they just kind of either sort of perceived it as a “Oh, it’s not a big deal” or if they, or if many of them may have supported it, more conservative families may have supported it. By the time it was my generation, you know, my father was afraid for me. So when we ran into the street, it wasn’t that he, you know, he thought that I should be covered, of course he didn’t. But he was worried that if I'm walking in a bazar, walking on a street but I should you know, that someone’s going to come and grab me, that someone’s going to come and tell me off, right? And that happened a number of times. In 2021, what we saw was that the brothers, if you want, you know, the younger generation now. The Brothers and the fathers would be standing with their daughters and their wives and their sisters.

And the mentality of the men has changed. And I think that's really critical because in any society if you have women going progressing in one way and men feeling that that progression is against them, that progress is going to get forted, right? This time what we’re seeing in Iran, and this is why I call it a feminist, genuinely feminist revolution – it's that – it's women leading the messaging of “women life freedom” as something that resonates across the board, life and freedom for everyone. And it’s not just about women's rights, it's challenging the essence of the state. It’s a political statement along with the socio-economic and socio-political statement and socio-cultural statement. So, it’s quite extraordinary, yeah.

Amira El Ahl:
Yeah, it is! So you would call it a feminist revolution even though you say that men are standing shoulder to shoulder with the women and that their mentality has changed, you still would call it a feminist revolution?

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:
I call it a feminist revolution because I work with women around the world dealing with conflict and extremism and so forth… and many of us or in many of places I work, or where I have partners, they can’t call themselves feminists because feminist is understood in so many strange ways and it can become radioactive and can be threatening, right. But if you look at, if you take the label away and you look under it and you say what is a feminist value, what are feminist values, what are feminist practices – and what we see repeatedly is that non-violence is at the core of feminist action. You don't get mass-women’s-movements picking up violence. You might get women joining violence in liberation movements, but inevitably they are the minority, inevitably, they are very rarely the leaders, right? Whereas when you’ve had women leading, what happens is that they take on, it’s almost like a different language, they’re using non-violence to push the boundaries. And in Iran in particular, it reminds me of a poem that we learned when I was nine years old in school in Iran. It used to be a poem that was taught in our schoolbooks. And it’s the story of a little mountain stream coming down at the beginning of spring and it hits a big black rock. And it says to the rock, you know: "Would you mind moving?" And the rocks says: "Don’t be ridiculous, what are you, this is my spot, right." And the little spring just carries on and carries on and, of course, water erodes rock and so it erodes it and it becomes a river. And this to me is the metaphor for what I see when I see the women of Iran, as I say, it’s generational, but this younger generation and its feminism because it is non-violent and the actions that they used were non-violent. We were seeing images of young girls, young women, eighteen, nineteen, even younger and in schools, right, but there were images of these girls sitting on the street without their scarfs, but just sitting. And, you know, security forces surrounding them, not really knowing what to do. Now of course, we saw, we’ve seen also  many, many images and horrific cases of violence and girls being attacked and so forth, but this idea that "I’m just sitting," what have I done, right? It challenges the mentality of the young man who's standing there with a baton and has been told that these are bad girls, or these are, you know, immoral girls and things like that. So, it’s almost like two different languages. It’s like the river and the rock. And the river ultimately wins.
 

Amira El Ahl:

You cannot really overestimate, I think, the act of defiance by women to take off the hijab, I mean in a country where it is mandatory to wear a head scarf and where you can go to prison for not wearing it and then you know doing this as you say like this very nonviolent, it’s a very nonviolent resistance, but still it’s very dangerous for them.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:
Yes.

Amira El Ahl:
And still, I mean, if you’ve seen news of Iran today and you see women walking on the street without the hijab, I mean it's so daring and to still see a lot of women doing this – young, older, very young women. So, their everyday protest is still very visible, even if maybe the protests have died down more. But how can men make their protest visible in everyday life? I mean, for women it's – easy is the wrong word, but you know, they can take off the veil.
 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

Yeah, so I think it's two things: I think one is, you said, you know, what we also see in Iran very often is that you get a generation that protests against the regime and the regime comes and has a heavy crackdown, right, so they crack down on the students in the ninety nineties, they crack down on the people on the streets when they protested the 2009 revolution and then they crack down heavely on the "Woman, Life, Freedom"-protesters. But the crackdown is often followed by a backdown. And so, the images that you’re seeing right now of girls in the streets with their hair showing, recently somebody sent me a photograph, of the platform in one of the Teheran metro, you know, subway stations. And there is a lady who's completely covered. There is a lady who's covered in red, but she’s got a big braid showing and then there’s a young girl who's wearing jeans and cut off, you know her shoulders are showing and she's wearing her hair long, right. And you just see this variety and I looked at that, and I was like "This is, this is when we say that women are leading and women are winning." 

Because essentially, women have always wanted to have the choice. To have the choice to cover, to have the choice not to cover. To have the choice to wear a mini skirt or a long skirt or jeans or whatever it may be. And to have a control over our own bodies externally and internally, right. So, this, you know, in Iran they’re fighting against the hijab and in the United States, again, we have extremist evangelicals and others who, you know, who want to make abortion, who have made abortion illegal in many states. So, it's the question of having choice and autonomy for ourselves. And we keep pushing those boundaries and creating the spaces. Now what does it mean in terms of men and what they can do? They can join in, right, because if you have men – again, whether it’s your relatives, whether it's the public that you come across, whether it's the authorities – they can be part of enabling and supporting that.

And I’ll give you an example for, you know, in the conversations that I’ve had with people in Iran in the years that I‘ve gone back and forth. So according to Sharia law, right, the law, which is now the constitution in Iran, girls could be married off at the age of adolescents, and that’s kind of shifted from nine to thirteen, let's say. By law, a girl could be married off at the age of thirteen. But somehow, the system in Iran, has evolved, so that you get your identity card, you get an official identity card at the age of fifteen. And if you don’t have an ID card, you can’t get married. So, you have the constitution supposedly claiming you can get married at thirteen, but actually, you know, the civic system, the administrative and bureaucratic system doesn’t allow it until fifteen. And most, and the average age of marriage is actually well into the late twenties, so society is way ahead of all the laws. Now, again, according to Sharia law, once you get married, you have a marriage contract right. In the marriage contract very often the husband, you know, the boy promises you know gold or whatever it is to the girl, and she can also make her claims. In my family, our tradition was to say “I want to have my right to initiate divorce” in that marriage contract alongside as equal.

Amira El Ahl:
Oh, wow.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:
Yes, as equal to the man’s, because in Sharia law again, a man can divorce his wife by, supposedly, by saying "I divorce thee" three times and she’s divorved – whereas a woman would have to prove he’s either insane or he’s impotent, and, you know, like these are the two elementsthat would allow her to divorce. And at the beginning of the revolution, when they first impose these laws, a lot of women would go to court, and they would have to make up all sorts of stories about the impotency or the craziness of the husband. And eventually, they would get their divorce, but they would give up the "mechia," the exchange or whatever it was that he promised. What we see, what I say to the young men now is that instead of promising an insane amount of money, which they would never have, why not just give her the equal right to divorce in the same way that you have, right? And I remember having this conversation with a taxi driver in Teheran and he was saying that his friend had promised his fiancé a thousand gold coins, they’d gotten engaged, she’d asked for the thousand gold coins, he couldn’t deliver and so she had him arrested for breach of contract and now that was a way of extracting money and then getting a divorce and living her life. And I said, well, imagine if you just gave her the right to divorce and right in the beginning had said, you know – "if this is about love, we can exchange flowers or something." The monetary value can be diminished, but you can put equal rights into your contract. Some men do it and many men refused to do that, because they want to have the control. So there are ways in which in their personal lives, people can enable that equality even if the law in principal doesn’t give that equality to women. Sorry, that was a long way of going around telling you a story, but I hope it was clear.
 

Amira El Ahl:

No, no, yeah, yeah, it’s clear and it’s very interesting! But I would like to maybe come back to what you said earlier about the heavy crackdown. I mean the protests, we’ve seen how women and how men are still protesting but they have been heavily crackd down and there was really a strong reaction from the regime. So even though the protests are continuing, we also see that the regime is, you know, intensifying the repression. Just a few days ago, the UN experts expressed alarm over surge in executions during the month of August and urged the Islamic republic of Iran to immediately stop the execution of people facing the death penalty. I think the reported number of executions this year alone has risen to more than four hundred, amongst them fifteen women. At the same time the situation in Iran is getting less and less media attention and coverage, due to the war in the Ukraine, but also the war in the Middle East. What implications does the situation have for the opposition in Iran and the protests currently?
 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

So I think, you know, if we look at it from an international standpoint, right, one of the things that I get worried about is that, you know, when you have the, I mean the protests abroad, right, we have Iranians in Diaspora, are protesting, demanding that say we end diplomatic relations, you know, kick out all the Iranian diplomats and so forth… -  what happens is that they reciprocate, right, and they kick out German or European diplomats or they also cause limitations and constraints, you know, on the role of outsiders. What I, again, based on my observations on the work that I’ve done, you know, I don't say this because I'm a fan of the regime in any way, but what I think is that it's really important to be present to shine a light, right. It's very important to be present and have the diplomatic presence and relations that are good and good in many ways like, I mean, at least, good as in, what I mean is, respectful – so that if and when you want to exercise your right as a diplomat to go and observe what's happening in court and law, you can do that, if and when you want to go and say I want to, you know, we have the right as diplomats to come and visit prisons and so forth, exercising the international rules and norms is part of the leverage that our diplomatic systems and the international sort of body of law allows for. But if you’re absent, you can’t to do that, right?

Amira El Ahl:

You can’t.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:
So if you’re absent, it means there’s even less attention to these issues, there’s even less engagement to understand really what’s going on and find nuances of how you might engage, what you might say and so forth… So that’s one thing that I really actually worry about, the kind of isolationism that we are enabling from the west towards Iran and other countries. And to be honest with you, the isolationism fleets and emboldens the extremes. And this is another thing that – it's often not talked about in the media – but, you know, if tomorrow economic sanctions were removed and we had some level of normalcy in terms of people to people exchanges, it would diminish the power of the hardliners in Iran. The isolationist forces in Iran don’t want contact with the outside world. So, you know, this puts a question around what are the strategies and tactics that we are using from our side.
 

Amira El Ahl:

But how would you evaluate the international response to the protests – especially if you look at the UN and Germany, I mean.
 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

Honestly, I don't think that they had much effect. I think there’s a lot of virtue signalling, right? But I don't think that bashing the regime and constantly sort of naming and shaming has had any effect in terms of their tactics at home. As you said, the executions are up. So, you know, do we, you know, you could argue that either it’s had no effect whatsoever because the executions are up, or you could say that it’s doing more harm because the executions are up, but whatever it is, you know, the executions have increased. And abuses of human rights have increased on one level by the state and on the other level, the public is doing what it's – you know, the girls on the street are doing whatever they were going to do anyway, regardless of what we say in Germany. I don’t think that they’re listening to the German foreign minister to get instructions about, you know, whether they should have their hair out or not. You see what I’m saying? So, there is a question of the value. Now, one aspect of this, which I think is important is that when you're isolated – and Iran is very much, or Iranian civil society and the public at large is increasingly isolated from the rest of the world because of sanctions, because of visa restrictions, all these things – to know that the world is paying attention to you and that you're not forgotten I think is really important. You know, so whether it's the music, whether it's in the public sphere and the cultural sphere etc. I think that solidarity is extremely important. But from a governmental standpoint, if we’re going to critique – and especially from the UN standpoint – if you’re going to report, I actually would like to know what's the next, you know, how do they strategize to be effective? That I think is the real crux of it, because we have mountains and mountains of reports about everywhere, but what difference does it make? So maybe it's time to think about new out of the box strategies, different ways of thinking about it and very much listening and heading the advice and the council, if you want, the recommendations of people who are on the ground and asking them, what do they want.
 

Amira El Ahl:

Yeah, so if you talk to people on the ground would you, I assume, you do very regularly, do you feel or hear that people feel let down and forgotten by the international community?
 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

I think so… again, I think it varies enormously because if you think about the effect that sanctions have had, okay, sanctions have affected the import of really critical medical supplies, medicines and things like – and again, if you take… let’s say… we just think about it in terms of women, right? All sorts of things to do with women’s health are missing. So, you know, it's one thing to say “Oh we’re sanctioning because we don't like the regime.” It's a whole other thing saying “We want to do – we want to take actions that can help the society thrive and people thrive while also critiquing and diminishing the power of the regime.” And frankly speaking, when you have authoritarian and dictatorial regimes these days, when you put sanctions, they benefit. They and their friends find ways around them. But ordinary people don't. And so, in Iran, we have this incredible diminishing of the independent economic sector in the middle class and so forth, who had normal businesses and were hiring kids out of school and out of university. Since 1994, frankly, we’ve practiced over the years. So, if you squash all of that, business continues, but it's going to be in the hands of people who are close to the regime. So, you know, at the end of the day, you have to wonder what is the end goal? Is it just to make ourselves feel good about, you know, the fact that we’re taking action, or is it actually to try and make a difference on the ground over there? And related to this is the other big challenge, which is that – you know, we saw this with Iraq, when Sadam Hussein was in power – the assumption that oh, if you squeeze people hard enough, they will rise up and try and overthrow their regime, that theory also doesn’t work. You know, it just has not worked. We can’t assume that just because sanctions worked in South Africa back in the 1990s, that the same policy is going to work in 2024, 2025 in other parts of the world. So, it needs, we need a different playbook, and we need some bold thinking on the part of how, you know, Foreign Policy experts.

Amira El Ahl:

Yeah. And I guess it also gives the regime kind of, some sort of legitimization if to talk to them about their Nuclear Program and you keep on, you know and the sanction, kind of, they get stronger inside, I guess, in a way.
 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

Exactly, and just to add that, I mean, the whole nuclear deal was meant to be an opening to be able to have some engagement to reduce the sanctions, to sort of begin to foster some sort of relationship. The Trump Administration threw it out, the Biden Administration also didn’t really do very much and in fact, even Obama didn’t reduce the sanctions. So, people didn’t really feel a difference on the ground, so that was one thing. The other thing right now is that when you look at how the west dealt with the Taliban, how we basically handed Afghanistan to the Taliban at the negotiation tables in Doha. And what's happening to Afghan women, essentially at the cost of women instigated of our policies, Iran looks like a progressive place in comparison, right? So, the Iranians are looking, you know, it's now really easy to criticize the west and say you guys are hypocritical, look at what you did over there – similarly with Gaza. The starvation that’s happening in Gaza, the fact that medicine isn’t getting in, the fact that women are having caesareans without anaesthetic – how can we possibly talk about women's rights? And criticizing Iran, when we, our various governments, are enabling that policy and the killing of children so forth in Gaza? So, you know, hypocrisy and inconsistency really undermines what we stand for, what we claim we stand for.
 

Amira El Ahl:

So, talking about hypocrisy brings me to the next point, which is the feminist foreign policy, which has been implemented in many countries around the world, amongst them Germany, France, Mexico, Chile. Has this had any implications on how these countries have dealt with Iran in the aftermath of the uprising? And how is this feminist foreign policy perceived by the civil society in Iran? Is it even a topic or is it even recognized?
 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

You know, I doubt that Iranian civil society is sitting there, thinking “Gosh, they have a feminist foreign policy. What does that mean?” Certainly, in other countries where we’re not really seeing much of a discussion about it, and even where there is, amongst those of us who are aware of this and are trying to sort of connect and bridge between the existing silos, it's really difficult because you know, what do we mean by feminist foreign policy, right? As I said at the beginning, if I were to talk about my experience of feminist action and feminist priorities, nonviolence and a reduction of violence in militarism is a pretty high… comes pretty high in a realm of thinking about issues. It's not to say that everybody is a pacifist, but it’s saying that across the board and across time and geography what we see is that when woman engage and feminists engage, they are trying to reduce militarization as a solution. So, you look at that and then you look at where budgets are going and development budgets budgeting for anything to do with peace and diplomacy has been radically cut down, including by the current German government, but it's across the board in Canada and elsewhere that they claim feminist foreign policy. So, from a budgetary standpoint, you know, one has to question what the priorities are. From a practice standpoint, we have to question, it's now 2024, from way back, we were advocating for the participation of Afghan women and other woman in peace processes – Afghan women are still kept out of the negotiations with the Taliban. They’re still kept in the dark. Vis-à-vis Sudan, you know, we are making sort of centimetre-by-centimetre progress to have some space for women in the dialogs. But it's been nearly 25 years of having policies and laws and so forth… So, you know, if we are gonna call it feminist foreign policy, it needs to be radically different across the board in all the different areas of the German, sort of, engagement with the world. And sadly, I fear that right now we are in the realm of old wine and pink bottles basically, and it's actually gonna do harm to any of some of the progress that we’ve made, like as we’ve seen in Sweden. You know, in Sweden, the new government just got rid of feminist foreign policy. But ironically, when you look below the surface of what they’re actually doing, they haven’t necessarily changed a lot of the way that they understand the importance of women’s organizations and so forth… But they’ve kind of taken a political action against it. So, in the context of Germany, I would – if I were in charge – I would be saying please let's look at the coherence, let's look at the vision, let's look at the values, and let's make sure that we’re not instrumentalizing women and as I say, just putting, you know, pinkwashing what we’re doing. Because that's detrimental to us, to Germany and its own values and contexts and it’s detrimentalto women around the world.

Amira El Ahl:

Hmm. So, Let's go back to 2022. The uprising morphed into the most serious challenge to the legitimacy of Iran’s ruling since they took power in 1979. Still, the regime prevails until now in an interview with CNN shortly after the protests began in 2022, you said that these types of protest ebb and flow a great deal, and that women were on the forefront of many protests, be it in Sudan, Myanmar, Egypt, Yemen. And you kind of warned back then, because there was so much enthusiasm especially in the west and you said that one should not underestimate the responses and the systemic and structural forces that exist in such regimes. And that there will be a backlash. You said: "Looking at other countries, this is worth bearing in mind." I guess you were right to be cautious looking at the current situation. Can you explain how the regime survived the protests, the serious challenge to their legitimacy and what was missing to overthrow the regime back then?
 

Saman Naghiri Anderlini:

Thank you. You know, I think I made that. I gave that comments before the outbreak of the Sudan war, but sadly it was prescient because now we’re dealing with a horrific situation in Sudan as well. How does the regime survive? The regime survives for multiple reasons. Number one: When you’ve had the – going back to the sanctions – when you’ve had years and years of sanctions and the regime and its kind of ecosystem go bulling up the economic space, and becoming the factor, the main employer of many, you know, many young people, family –being the feeder of families, right? You have to bear in mind that there are millions of people whose bread on the table is tied with a stick in the hand of the father or the husband or the brother or whoever it may be, right. So, the question of how many people are beholden to the regime for their daily bread is an important question. And you can’t just say oh, the former Shah’s son, one of the things he was saying to the Revolutionary guard, was: "If you leave the revolutionary guard now, we won’t prosecute you when we come to power." And it was so absurd because he was sitting in Potomac in Maryland saying to, you know, a bunch of people in Iran: "Oh, risk your lives now, so that later on, we don't prosecute you, assassinate you," I don't know what he was promising no to do if they didn’t, you know, give up their support for the regime. But, you know, people are pragmatic. They will look and see which way they should lean. And I think that there was… You can’t underestimate the number of people that are beholden to the state for their livelihoods, as I say, it has to do with the fact that other employment opportunities aren’t there. So that’s one thing. The other thing which got missed in all the news and everything, was that, you know, Iran is surrounded… there are lots of American bases that were in Afghanistan, then were in Iraq. And then, of course you’ve got Saudi Arabia in the region, also at play. And one of the things that, if we look at the long term… you know, at what happened with Iraq in the last twenty years and so forth, is that every time one of these authoritarian regimes fell, there was a moment, there was an opportunity where the locals had risen up and there was a sense that wow, there’s a possibility of a democracy emerging from this. And, you know, whether it’s Iraq, whether it was Libya, they had wealth. So, there was wealth, there was education, there was the public. And if Iraq or Libya had become, you know, a stole well of democracy or a bastion of democracy in the middle east, they would have threatened Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabi, a very extremist versions of Islam. And they would have probably challenged Israel more effectively in terms of is treatment of Palestine. And become a, you know, it would have contained the power of the UAE, which is now becoming a military force and projecting its own influence around the region. But none of those countries ever made it, right? And in the case with Iran, when we were watching this, the Saudis just as the regime was getting kind of weak, as you said, it was really feeling the threat, the heat from the protest. The Saudis come in and make a deal with the regime. And to me what that signalled was that the Saudis, the US, etc. didn’t want the regime to collapse and create a vacuum. They didn’t want chaos in that major country in that region, because out of chaos comes also things that you don’t know, so they didn’t want the chaos and the uncertainty. They didn’t necessarily want a democracy because a democracy would have threatened and challenged them in terms of the status quo that’s there. They didn’t want a strong Iranian regime either, because it challenges them from another standpoint, they wanted a weak regime with which they could get along. And that’s what they got. They made the deal, it stabilized things for Iran, it stabilized things for the region and, you know, life goes on. It has enabled the state to sustain itself. And then the third part of all this is… the regime in Iran is very astute to what it needs to do to survive for itself. And this is what I mentioned earlier when I said there were crackdowns and there were backdowns. When we see women walking in the streets, you know, wearing a variety of different types of clothing or uncovered and so forth… These are ways in which the regime is letting steam out and letting some pressure off, right. It's kind of, it maintains control, but it just occasionally kind of turns the dile down and allows people to carry on their lives. And things evolve in this way, and that again is one kind of those tactics that the public understands, it pushes, the regime pushes back, then the regime comes and inches just forward a little bit. And the fact that we have Pezeshkian being allowed to run for elections and being purported as a more reformist guy is part of that solution. The public vote for him, because they have a choice between bad and worse, and the regime puts him there because he’s OK for them, but more palatable to the public than the hardliners. These are the ways that they continue to survive, I think.

Amira El Ahl:

Yeah, so what would you say would this new president and a new parliament mean for the movement? I mean, could this bring about any change for the situation of women and the opposition in Iran? I mean, you just said, he is like labelled a reformist, he kind of said, I don’t know, something on his views on the hijab and he apparently said that the hijab crackdown would jeopardize human dignity. I mean, is this just a sham, is it just tactics?

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

I don't think it's a sham, but I think that it is… it’s less powerful than it sounds in words, right? The rhetoric does represent something, but it's not entirely false and it's not entirely, you know, that progressiveness that we would want. But the rhetoric does represent something, but it’s not entirely false and it’s not entirely kind of, you know, that progressiveness that we would want. But again: The proof, if you want, is when you take a snapshot on the streets of Iran or any of the provinces, let’s say Teheran is the big urban hub, but if you go around the provinces, and you look at the way women are dressed and how society is managing itself, if the more we see, you know, women in a variety of clothes, getting on with their lives in public spaces, doing what they need to do – these are all ways in which they are dialling down and trying to navigate and evolve the system. You know, one of the things that we have to remember is that this regime’s identity is – you know, there are, sort of, few pillars that define the Iranian regime as an Islamic republic. What is it, that makes it Islamic, right? And, essentially, they put their Islamicness, or Islamist, I wouldn’t even call it Islamic. Its Islamist in terms of their social control and their social control is basically related to how women are treated and how women look. So, in a way, you know… if they suddenly said “Oh, yes, women can wear whatever they want”, they would be a kind of a different regime. It would be a transformation. So, they struggle with that and of course, they have their own hardline flank behind them that kind of pushes also. So, it’s kind of… the direction of travel goes back to what I was saying about the trickle, you know, the mountain stream and the river. The river is coming, and the river is flowing, it’s just that maybe the rocks aren’t willing to admit it, and are trying to still navigating it so that it doesn’t implode and become chaotic. And I think this is one of the things that is also worth remembering: That… we… you know, my generation, I was eleven when the revolution happened. You know, we saw the revolution, then my generation experienced the Iran-Iraq war. People in Iran are wary of just being against something.

You know, they may not like the regime, they may despise the regime, and most do. But they have had the experience or the historic memory of being out against something without being clear about what would come next, what comes the day after, what are we for. And this is where again the opposition movements and others have consistently failed. They have not been able to articulate a clear vision of what does our future look like. How do we deal with those that are, you know, the 20 % that may align with the regime or the conservative values und so forth. So, as long as you don’t have a clear vision of what you are for, the incumbent regime will stay in power because a lot of people are gonna be afraid of the uncertainty and the chaos that could ensue. And the worst elements that could arise, if you have a toppling of a regime and something – the something new could be worse than what we already have. So, these are things that as Iranians, we have kind of lived with and have experienced at a high price.
 

Amira El Ahl:

Yeah, and if you look at countries that you just mentioned, also Libya for example, then you see that where it can lead and it's not really something to aspire to. But as you said, like to articulate a vision, like to what will the future look like – do you have the feeling that the youths have lost faith in change? I mean, if you look at the turnout of this year’s parliamentary election, there’s only 40 %, and especially young people boycotted the election – do you feel that there is no more faith that things will change?
 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

I think there is a deep skepticism and the laws of legitimacy of the existing state, right, of the way things are. Back in 2009, people were saying "OK, let’s use the same structure and bring in new people and they can, you know, they can rearrange and evolve from within." That was the promise of the reform movement, if you want, we will reform. But even they never really articulated what it would look like ultimately, right? It was like oh, we are going to change, but if you said to them, what are going to change, what’s it gonna look like, they didn’t really have a clear answer. What I see now is, that while the legitimacy of the state and the state’s system has diminished significantly, I think people in their own minds and the sort of the younger generation are actually well better placed in terms of articulating what they do want. And this is again where Woman Life Freedom comes in and it’s so powerful. The song, "Baraye," the one that the young man who has been arrested and has been banned – but this was a young child, he asked people through social media what to use protesting for, baraye means for, right. And he made a song taking the messages that he received from people, and if you look at the lyrics of that song and you say, put that and say… this is the vision. This is what we want for our society. You know, the bad things, we want to get rid of, and the good things that he talks about – that’s a pretty compelling vision of the kind of society that people want. And again, as far as I’m concerned, the labels are irrelevant, what do we call it is not the issue, it's the substance that should be looked at. And I think the public and the younger generation are really there, but yes, they have no faith in the existing system and structure that… around which they’re political active… around which they are allowed to vote. You get to go vote, but so are the candidates and how much power each of these candidates has remains limited. And so, those are the tensions… how can the system evolve itself to be more inclusive, to evolve towards a democracy and diminish the power of the unelected elements and the sort of theocratic elements and the military, frankly – the military guard. These are all big questions that are out there. But sometimes, it's important to understand the cultural DNA of a country and Iran is… Iranians… it’s an aspirational society. So, even people who come in and gain power benefited from the revolution in one generation; by the second generation, the kids are against all the limitations that the regime puts on them. So, I think that's also part of the, sort of dynamism and the flux that I think gives me some hope on how things can evolve and change without having absolute chaos again.
 

Amira El Ahl:

Yeah, that sounds good. But we’ve been talking a lot about Iranians in Iran, I just, maybe, I would like to shed light on the many Iranians in exile. Iran is a country where not only can you be punished severely for your actions, but also your family can severely be punished for your actions. So many Iranians have fled the country, also after the protests, and still want to be active in exile. How difficult is this, knowing that you possibly put your family in danger? And how can you exert influence from abroad?
 

Sanam Naghari Anderlini:

I think that this is one of the hardest challenges that we all face, you know. My father was alive until 2015 and it was always a concern that, you know, what am I saying, what am I doing – and even now, you know, even now, I have other relatives that are there. My work overall has not been focused on Iran. Primarily because I didn’t want people with whom I’m associated with to be affected. Like even colleagues in Iran, right. So, I’ve done research there, I never did anything in any sort of clandestine way. You know, when I was allowed to go and do workshops during the Khatami year and stuff, we were talking to people who were working with children and in rural areas, but the minute you get targeted, anybody that has any association with you gets targeted. And they are vulnerable because of their affiliation with you. And so, I think that this is one of the most heart wrenching aspects of the division with you and between being in Diaspora or being inside the country. So definitely, I feel for those who have come more recently, who feel they still want to connect, you know, connect and still be active, but worry about the effects on people they care about and their families back home. It’s a very, very real concern.
 

Amira El Ahl:

Yeah. I mean you’ve already given a statement of hope, but maybe like as a last question and maybe like in a, I don't know, short one sentence because we are running out of time – but is there something that makes you hopeful that change will come for the people in Iran sooner rather than later?
 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:

Oh yes, the girls. The girls and the boys, I should say. I mean – you can’t stop the power of the future. And they are the engine of our country. And I think that – again, if I were in charge, I would try to open up every opportunity to them engage them in the world, let them let them thrive, let them thrive and benefit from what the world offers, but also acknowledge, what Iran brings as a country or a history or a culture, the arts and all the sort of incredible education frankly that’s there. But, I think that – you know, right at the beginning I said this – I wish that there was a different way of looking at and engaging, and, you know, putting all the tools back on the table and thinking what could enable and support this younger generation which has already put its life at risk and put its life online for Women, Life and Freedom. You know, how can we help them? Because they are the hope and I have immense immense respect for them, they give us much joy and inspiration every time we see what they’re doing.
 

Amira El Ahl:

Thank you, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. Thank you so much for your time and insights. If you enjoyed the podcast, please feel free to recommend this episode to others. Also, you can find over sixty episodes on our website ifa.de or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can also subscribe to "Die Kulturmittler:innen" so you don't miss any of the upcoming episodes. You can find out even more about ifa and our projects on our website and our social media channels. You can find our profile on Instagram with the handle @ifa.de and on LinkedIn as ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen. If you have any questions or comments about the "Kulturmittler:innen", please send us an e-mail to podcast(at)ifa.de. My name is Amira El Ahl, thank you so much for listening, and see you next time!