MESOP MIDEAST WATCH: Der Anfang vom Ende der Islamischen Republik

Iraner haben genug von Theokratie (TEXT GERMAN & ENGLISH)  – Bis Masih Alinejad FOREIG  AFFAIRS18. Oktober 2022

Die aktuellen Proteste im Iran läuten die Totenglocke für die Islamische Republik ein.

Die Ermordung von Mahsa Amini, einer 22-jährigen Frau, die verhaftet wurde, weil sie den Hijab falsch getragen hatte, in Polizeigewahrsam hat eine Welle wütender und blutiger Demonstrationenempfinden, das versucht, ihre sehnlichsten Wünsche zu ersticken. Und sie versprechen, das iranische Establishment auf den Kopf zu stellen.

Seit der iranischen Revolution von 1978-79 hat die Islamische Republik Frauen unter der Scharia und den Einschränkungen der iranischen Verfassung in den Status zweiter Klasse verbannt. Aber Frauen, vor allem junge Frauen, haben genug, und sie lehnen jetzt lautstark die Verpflichtung ab, Boykotten, Arbeitsniederlegungen und wilder Streiks ausgelöst, die die Sicherheitskräfte des Landes erschöpft haben und sich auf mehr als 100 Städte ausgebreitet haben. Die Regierung hat schon früher große Proteste erlebt, insbesondere in den Jahren 2009, 2017 und 2019, aber diese Demonstrationen sind anders. Sie verkörpern die Wut, die iranische Frauen und junge Iraner gegenüber einem Regime

, Hijabs zu tragen, zusammen mit der sozialen Ordnung, die die Islamische Republik dem Land aufzwingen wollte. Einige Frauen haben ihr Kopftuch verbrannt, eine Tat, die vor zwei Monaten mit Peitschen und einer Gefängnisstrafe bestraft wurde, aber jetzt in iranischen Städten nicht mehr so selten ist.

Es wird gesagt, dass Revolutionen ihre Kinder verschlingen, aber im Iran verschlingen die Enkel die Revolution. Irans Kleriker haben auf diese existenzielle Herausforderung mit roher Gewalt reagiert, aber Gewalt und Unterdrückung werden den Willen einer Nation, die so gegen ihre Regierung aufgehetzt ist, nicht auslöschen.

PILLARS OF THE STATE

The Islamic Republic rests on three ideological pillars: vehement opposition to the United States, obdurate antagonism toward Israel, and institutional misogyny, especially in the form of compulsory hijab rules requiring women to wear coverings in public spaces. If any of these pillars weakens, the whole edifice of the Islamic Republic falls down. Tehran needs enmity with the United States and Israel to keep the revolutionary flame alive. Anti-Americanism is seared into the Islamic Republic’s identity. The enforcement of the dress code for women is also a redline for the clerical leadership. The compulsory wearing of the hijab is to the Islamic Republic what the Berlin Wall was to communism, a symbol not just of power and endurance but of vulnerability. The Berlin Wall was also an admission of the fragility of the communist system, which depended on exercising great control over people. Similarly, compulsory hijab laws reflect the Islamic Republic’s fear of allowing its citizens personal freedoms and its intent to control society by treating women as if they are pieces of property to be corralled and protected. Once the Berlin Wall fell, communism was doomed. The same fate awaits the Islamic Republic once women can throw off their veils and participate in social life as men do.

The Islamic Republic began to enforce dress codes on women soon after the Iranian revolution. The architects of the revolutionary state wanted to control how women dressed in public, banning tight-fitting clothes, bright colors, and makeup and insisting that women cover their hair. Under the country’s compulsory veiling laws, women and girls as young as seven are forced to wear a headscarf. Women who disobey face harsh punishment and are often charged with “inciting corruption and prostitution.” The state has given a number of women, including the activist Yasaman Aryani and her mother, Monireh Arabshahi, jail sentences—some as long as 16 years—for defying these laws. But hundreds more have paid and continue to pay that price for seeking the freedom to choose how to dress.

Compulsory wearing of the hijab is to the Islamic Republic what the Berlin Wall was to communism.

Iranian women have never quietly accepted the imposition of the headscarf. In 2014 alone, according to government figures, Iran’s so-called morality police (the detachment of Iranian law enforcement charged with upholding Islamic moral standards) warned, fined, or arrested 3.6 million women for “inappropriate dress.” Data for subsequent years were not publicly released, probably because it would reveal the extent to which Iranian women are fed up with restrictions on their dress. Even before Amini’s death, Iran’s clerics could sense the rising tide against the hijab. In early July 2022, the morality police issued warnings to women that they would be arrested if they did not comply with the hijab requirement. On July 12, the authorities held the annual celebration marking the National Day of Hijab and Chastity, which involved public rallies by pro-government loyalists in large stadiums to encourage the wearing of the hijab. But simultaneously, many women challenged the regime, using the hashtag #no2Hijab on social media and posting videos and photographs of women not wearing the hijab in public spaces. The regime arrested and beat up some of these dissenters and forced them to make apologies on national TV.

Iranian officials have used footage from surveillance cameras in public places such as subways and motorways to help identify and fine women who flout the mandatory hijab rule. The chief of the Headquarters for Enjoining Right and Forbidding Evil, a government body responsible for enforcing Islamist laws, warned in August that women who post pictures of themselves without a hijab on the Internet will be deprived of some social rights for six months to one year. Authorities have prevented women whom they perceive not to be in full compliance with the dress code from entering government offices and banks and from riding on public transportation.

IRAN UNVEILED

Such measures have not stopped Iranian women from resisting the hijab. For the past decade, the authorities have had to deal with greater online militancy by Iranian women. With traditional media completely controlled by the state, Iranians have flocked to social media, especially platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Twitter, and WhatsApp, to push back against the veil. For instance, millions follow the social media campaign “My Stealthy Freedom,” which seeks to get rid of compulsory hijab laws in Iran, and its various initiatives, such as White Wednesdays (encouraging women to wear white scarves on Wednesdays as a sign of dissent), Walking Unveiled (when women unveil themselves in public), Men in Hijab (when men post pictures of themselves wearing hijab), and My Camera Is My Weapon (in which women share mobile phone footage of abusive men or interactions with the morality police), all designed to enable women to challenge the onerous dress code. The campaigns have empowered women to take off their hijabs and defy the strictures of the regime. Using their mobile phones, women have shared so many videos of morality police harassment via “My Stealthy Freedom” that the government introduced a 2019 law that made sending videos to the campaign an offense punishable by ten years of imprisonment.

For the regime, trying to control a young generation that wants social change and stronger connections to the West is an uphill battle. Despite widespread censorship, Iran’s Internet penetration rate (the percentage of the country’s population that have access to the Internet) at the beginning of 2022 was 84 percent, a high mark. Iran has over 130 million mobile subscriptions, which gives the country of 84 million people a staggering mobile phone penetration rate of 161 percent, with the average person having more than one phone. The reported number of Internet users in 2022 increased to 72 million from 58 million in 2020, and the real figure could be even higher.

Although the regime has banned many websites and social media platforms, Iranians have found ways to bypass censorship through the use of virtual private networks, or VPNs. According to a member of the Iranian parliament who was lamenting how strict censorship laws force Iranians to circumvent them, almost 80 percent of Iranians with Internet access have installed anti-filter and VPN software to evade censorship.

Young Iranians want the same freedoms and choices available to youth in the West. The Islamic Republic cannot bend to these desires without undermining its own authority, so it has contended violently with this wave of protests. Authorities have killed dozens of women, including 16-year-olds Sarina Esmailzadeh in Gohardasht and Nika Shakarami in Tehran.

A ROLE FOR AMERICA

The protests in Iran put the West in an awkward position. The Biden administration has tried hard to restore some version of the nuclear deal that the Trump administration jettisoned. But this deal cannot be salvaged. The Islamic Republic is not an honest broker: it has a track record of cheating (failing, for instance, in May to answer International Atomic Energy Agency probes about unexplained traces of uranium at three undeclared sites) and it has yet to fully come clean on its past attempts to develop a nuclear program with potential military uses. And worse, should U.S. President Joe Biden manage to reach some compromise with Iran, a new deal would fly in the face of his forceful condemnation of the regime’s crackdown on protesters. Any deal would likely release billions of dollars to the Iranian government, funding the same authorities who are viciously attacking citizens in the streets.

Instead, Biden needs to take a clear and forthright stand. He should use the bully pulpit of his office to deliver a major address on Iran—speaking to its people, its diaspora, and the world. Biden should applaud the democratic ambitions of the Iranian people and move beyond the White House’s narrow focus on the nuclear issue to demand that the human rights of protesters be respected. The administration has made the contest between autocracy and democracy a central theme of its foreign policy. Iran should be part of that policy. It is time to encourage the Iranian people to fulfill their democratic aspirations.

Beyond rhetoric, the U.S. government and its western European allies involved in making the nuclear deal should halt negotiations with the Islamic Republic as long as Iranian authorities are suppressing the protests and throttling the Internet. The United States should introduce respect for human rights as a condition for continuing any negotiations. Congress should also refuse to release frozen Iranian funds in foreign banks, conditioning doing so on tangible improvement in Iran’s treatment of its citizens.

It is time to encourage the Iranian people to fulfill their democratic aspirations.

At the same time, the United States should work with Starlink, the satellite Internet company, and other enterprises with similar capabilities to help provide Iranians with a free and secure Internet. The U.S. government should create a special method exempt from U.S. sanctions (perhaps by moving funds through banks in Erbil in northern Iraq and the Persian Gulf and leaning on the trust-based hawala system of money transfers that makes tracking payments difficult for states) to disburse frozen Iranian funds to striking workers inside Iran. Such support could embolden the strikes that have spread in parts of Iran and lead to a convergence of labor and political movements that would represent a significant threat to the Islamic Republic.

Hochrangige Mitglieder der Biden-Regierung sollten private und öffentliche Treffen mit Mitgliedern der iranischen Diaspora, iranischen Dissidenten und iranischen Oppositionsgruppen abhalten, um die wahre Situation im Iran besser zu verstehen. Der Kongress sollte sich auch einmischen und öffentliche Anhörungen abhalten, sowohl zu den Protesten im Iran als auch darüber, wie das Regime US-Bürger, einschließlich Mitglieder der iranischen Diaspora, bedroht, um das Bewusstsein für diese Herausforderungen zu schärfen.

VON DER THEOKRATIE ZUR DEMOKRATIE

Einige in Washington befürchten, dass, wenn die Vereinigten Staaten die Demonstranten offen unterstützen, das iranische Regime leichter in der Lage sein wird, sie zum Schweigen zu bringen und sie als ausländische oder US-Agenten darzustellen. Im Jahr 2009 folgte die Obama-Regierung dieser Argumentation und verzichtete darauf, die Proteste zu unterstützen, die damals das Land erschütterten; Obama machte sogar Annäherungsversuche an die klerikale Führung nur wenige Tage nach Beginn der Proteste. Obamas Zurückhaltung machte keinen Unterschied: Das Regime bezeichnete die Demonstranten immer noch als US-Handlanger, die den Iran destabilisieren und das Land ins Chaos stürzen wollten.

Seitdem skandieren iranische Demonstranten: “Sie erzählen Lügen, wenn sie sagen, dass es Amerika ist. Unser Feind ist genau hier.” Das sollte für die politischen Entscheidungsträger in den USA von Interesse sein. Obwohl die Übersetzung dem Gesang nicht gerecht wird, ist die Botschaft klar: Die Iraner sehen das klerikale Regime als ihren wahren Feind. Wenn die Vereinigten Staaten das Atomabkommen mit dem Iran in diesem Moment wiederbeleben würden, würden sie sich in die inneren Angelegenheiten des Landes einmischen. Es würde ein unpopuläres Regime stärken, das friedliche Proteste brutal niederschlägt. Die Vereinigten Staaten stünden auf der falschen Seite der Geschichte, indem sie die Islamische Republik stützen.

Mit Frauen an der Spitze wird Irans Transformation von der Theokratie zu einer Demokratie bemerkenswert sein. Es wird nicht über Nacht geschehen. Aber in seiner Tapferkeit hat das iranische Volk eine zentrale Bitte an die westlichen Regierungen gerichtet: Rettet die Islamische Republik nicht. Im Jahr 2009 entschied sich die Obama-Regierung, mit Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dem obersten Führer des Iran, zu verhandeln, anstatt die pro-demokratische Grüne Bewegung zu unterstützen. Die Biden-Administration sollte diesen Fehler nicht wiederholen. Jetzt ist es mehr denn je an der Zeit, dass Verfechter der Freiheit ernsthaft über eine Welt nach der Islamischen Republik nachdenken.