What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom

In late September 2022, a young Kurdish woman from the western Iranian town of Saqqez was visiting the capital city of Tehran with her family. On what should have been an ordinary Tuesday, Mahsa Amini was arrested by the Iranian police’s Moral Security Division for allegedly violating hijab regulations. During her arrest, Mahsa was brutally beaten and, after losing consciousness, was taken to Kasra Hospital, where she was declared brain-dead and died three days later. Mahsa’s death sent shockwaves across Iran and became a catalyst for months of mass protests and civil disobedience against the regime. Iranians from all over the country boldly rose up, outraged with the Islamic Republic’s draconian policies. Protests in Iran spread to some 160 cities,1 with the participants in the tens of thousands,2 risking their safety to voice their dissent. As Iranians took to the streets, the Kurdish slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” was born (5–7).Arash Azizi, an Iranian-born writer, historian, and senior lecturer at Clemson University, focuses his second book, What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom, on the tragic death of Mahsa Amini and the emergence of the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement. Azizi’s book explores the political and social aspirations of Iranians, with a particular focus on the diverse social movements that emerged in Iran following the Islamic Revolution. As the first book to discuss the 2022–23 revolutionary movement in Iran, What Iranians Want builds on the foundational work of scholars such as Sanam Vakil3 and Arzoo Osanloo4 who have previously examined the evolving role of women in Iranian society. Azizi adds to the existing literature on Iranian social movements and provides a more contemporary approach, straying from a strictly historical perspective and instead analyzing Iran’s current political and social landscape through a collection of non-chronologically ordered stories and narratives from Iranians involved in various social movements that have challenged the Islamic regime over the past three decades. Azizi asserts that the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement has been hindered by the absence of a distinct leader or unified message and seems to position his new book as a political manifesto, as indicated by its title. What Iranians Want is not merely a history of Iran’s social movements spanning the past three decades; rather, it is a compilation that articulates the demands of these movements and advocates on behalf of the Iranian people. Through its nine chapters, Azizi showcases the courageous voices that have emerged from different social movements in Iran, answering the vital question: Who are the voices driving this revolution?A unifying theme runs through the book, beginning with the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, and extending back through the preceding three decades, illustrating the small steps, revolts, and acts of bravery that shaped the broader movement beginning in 2022. By focusing on the martyrdom of one or more individuals in each chapter, Azizi effectively demonstrates how ordinary people from a variety of backgrounds have united in their struggle, despite the Iranian regime’s best efforts to keep them divided. Azizi shows the deep interconnections between how a government treats the environment, its workers, its artists, and the rights of women and girls. When one sector is neglected or undermined, others often follow, like falling dominos.Azizi credits his opening chapter, “Freedom is Global: The Fight Against Compulsory Hijab” as being heavily influenced by Negar Mottahedeh’s, The Whisper Tapes,5 which explores the first International Women’s Day demonstrations in Iran in 1979 and the subsequent protests for women’s rights.6 Azizi delves into the origins of Iran’s Hijab laws, beginning with Khomeini’s early actions against women, including the annulment of the 1975 Family Protection Act, which marked some of the regime’s first restrictive measures. Azizi focuses on the early Iranian feminists who warned the public of their waning rights. He shows how their concerns were largely ignored in political conversations centered instead on issues like the economy or agriculture. This critical dismissal of feminist concerns reflected a societal underestimation of women’s rights’ symbolic and practical significance during that period. Azizi drives home this point with a quote from Homa Nateq, a female Marxist historian and teacher in Tehran during the revolution: “I said the Hijab didn’t matter. What I didn’t understand was that someone who tells you what to wear will soon also tell you what to think” (26). Restrictions on women’s freedoms were merely the first ripple, one that would spread and disrupt every corner of Iranian society. In the following chapters, Azizi spotlights the women who have consistently been at the forefront of the women’s movement, refusing to be silenced, even from within the cell walls of Evin prison (39).7 He underscores that these courageous women laid the foundation for the feminist activism in Iran today.He continues to address various social movements including the labor rights movement, vividly describing the metalworkers’ union defying the regime by screening left-wing films with elements of rebellions and critiques of capitalism, such as Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, and Michael Moore’s Sicko (78). He also addresses the environmental movement, linking the death of Pirouz, a critically endangered cheetah in Iran, as a symbol of the regime’s environmental negligence. He continues by discussing the support from religious minorities in Iran, particularly the Sunnis and the Bahá’ís, and the more contentious side of the movement concerning refugee rights, drawing attention to the widespread anti-refugee sentiments in Iran.He draws a connection between the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which coincided with the 2022–23 protests in Iran, showing how these events connected the individuals’ suffering under oppressive regimes in both countries. This includes approximately five million Afghan refugees living in Iran, who, despite experiencing frequent discrimination and little solidarity from Iranians in their daily lives, face similar state-sanctioned police brutality. Azizi argues that this shared experience allowed Afghan refugees to identify with Mahsa Amini and join the movement. Dozens of Afghan refugees were arrested in cities such as Tehran and Mashhad for participating in the protests. “In a country that had never treated them as their own, they had given their lives for freedom” (165). While Azizi celebrates the participation of Afghan refugees in this struggle, he offers limited critique of the broader Iranian society’s treatment of Afghans and the lack of social value attributed to Afghan refugees until they demonstrated their solidarity with the Iranian cause by risking their lives.He concludes his series of social movements with an interpretation and consolidated version of the various movement’s demands: the pursuit of peace and a normal life. He argues that Iranians do not necessarily seek to “Westernize” as a result of the revolution but rather desire a foreign policy characterized by “an Iran that doesn’t support armed militias in neighboring countries and pursues peaceful relations with other states, including the United States and Israel” (184). Azizi discusses the struggle for a normal life, detailing the arbitrary and oppressive restrictions imposed by Iran’s dictatorship—particularly those on women, which are unparalleled in number elsewhere in the world.8 He recounts the deaths of ordinary young Iranian women, such as seventeen-year-old Nika Shahkarami, who disappeared on September 22 and whose body was found in a morgue a week later; twenty-three-year-old Hadis Najafi, who was killed on September 23; and sixteen-year-old Sarina Esmayilzadeh, who was beaten to death by the Islamic Republic’s batons during a protest following Mahsa Amini’s death (194–96).By moving away from a traditional historical method, Azizi occasionally leaves gaps in his narratives, particularly concerning life in Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This limitation comes across in Azizi’s minimization of Khomeini’s policy shifts, noting, “To build his ideal society, Khomeini needed to deal with the women” (11). A more comprehensive inclusion of the historical context, such as the specifics of the Shah’s overthrow and the role of Western powers, could enhance the understanding of readers without an academic background on Iran, particularly in understanding the widespread social upheavals during this period. What Iranians Want appears to be geared more toward a general, possibly Western audience, than toward scholars already familiar with Iranian history. This observation is not a critique; it underscores the importance of engaging a broader global readership beyond the academic sphere. Readers less acquainted with Iran’s complex political landscape and historical developments might find it helpful to start with Azizi’s first book, The Shadow Commander, to understand pre-revolutionary Iran and its global ambitions.9 Despite the occasional oversimplification, Azizi excels in vividly portraying and humanizing the diverse segments of Iranian society.Azizi significantly contributes to the existing literature on Iran by presenting a work that addresses the ongoing social crisis in the country. His book is tailored to engage readers with limited prior knowledge of Iran’s history or political landscape and to articulate the current demands of the Iranian people. He critically examines the movement’s lack of organization and the absence of a clear political leader, contending that Iranians have yet to unite behind a viable political alternative to the Islamic regime. Rather than merely critiquing the movement, Azizi bridges the gap between past and present struggles by weaving personal narratives and historical context together. His approach reconfigures the fragmented pieces of the movement into a cohesive narrative, one that had yet to exist, offering a unique and humanizing portrayal of the fight against oppression in Iran. His book serves as a manifesto aimed at unifying the movement’s diverse voices and highlighting a central demand for potential leaders to come. This demand is not for immediate democracy or liberal freedoms but for what he calls a “normal” life. This sentiment is underscored by his reference to the revolutionary James Connolly’s words: “Our demands most moderate are, we only want the earth” (208). According to Azizi, the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement’s demands are anything but radical. It is a simple demand for the earth, for nature, and for the right to a normal life.