Rosa Rahimi is a graduate student at the University of Oxford, where she studies Iranian politics as a Rhodes Scholar.
Three months after 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini died in custody in Iran for allegedly failing to wear her headscarf properly – and three months into protests that began as a response to her death, and have since grown into calls for revolution – a top Iranian official said that the country’s “morality police” had been disbanded. They have been “shut down from where they were set up,” attorney general and public prosecutor Mohammad Javad Montazeri reportedly said on Saturday, following comments that, the day before, the parliament and the judiciary had met and were “working on” a broader review of the country’s mandatory hijab law.
This seemed to signal a victory for Iranians who have taken to the streets in opposition to repressive forces, which include the morality police. But while English-language media interpreted Mr. Montazeri’s seeming concession to mean that the morality police would be shut down, Iranian state media reported his comments to mean that the morality police is not the business of the judiciary (that is, Mr. Montazeri’s business), and so it remains up to the police to shut this program down. Mr. Montazeri’s comments have since been denied in Iranian state media.
This is the crucial distinction: the morality police are not a unit that can be simply dissolved, but a program that runs according to directives issued by the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution. And so true disbandment can only be enacted by one man: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who has remained silent on this matter.
Nevertheless, there is talk in Iran that hijab laws might be relaxed or reformed. Yet this would be no reason to call it a day on Iran’s current revolution. At best, any legitimate reforms that might be announced in the months to come would only demonstrate reluctant concessions from a government that knows it has lost the battle on one front, but still seeks to win the larger war being fought for the future of Iran. At worst, they would represent cosmetic announcements that lack long-lasting effects; there is no guarantee that such reforms would be permanent, or that other security forces would refrain from violently attacking those who challenge the morality laws, all the same. The mandatory hijab, after all, represents a cornerstone of the Islamic Republic’s identity. It was one of the very first mandates issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and it was met with mass resistance from the very beginning.
So regardless of potential reforms and the attorney general’s comments, what we must recognize is that these are distractions, especially in the more powerful context that Iranian women have created for themselves since Ms. Amini’s death. In the face of a government that maintains a death grip on its morality laws, streams of photos and videos have come out of Iran of uncovered women walking in shopping malls and crowded squares, browsing next to mullahs in bookstores, taking the subway and showing up to work and school. They are clearly past the point of waiting for permission. And they want more than just the freedom to show their hair in public: Their qualms with the mandatory hijab are just one symbol of the many ways Iranian women have felt subordinated in a society that places them under formal male guardianship. As the sustained momentum of their revolution shows, they will not rest until this system falls.
Instead of hailing prospects for reform at the edges of Iranian society, we in the West should focus our attention on the demands of Iranians who continue to risk their lives every day in the name of revolution. The real news coming out of Iran is that nationwide strikes and protests have started this week, and are set to last for three days, culminating on National Student Day with a mass demonstration in Tehran’s Freedom Square. These protests are grounded in grievances that span four decades and are amplified by the horrors of recent weeks, which include reports of authorities stealing the bodies of dead protesters, murdering young children, using rape to quell protests, and charging at least 28 people with crimes that are punishable with the death penalty, including three 17-year-old boys and dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi, who was detained shortly after giving an interview to the CBC.
As Iranians take to the streets, they will shout: “death to the dictator,” “woman, life, freedom,” and “be our voice.” We owe it to them to listen.