Iran and Kurdish headscarf
On September 17, mass protests began in Iran, which threaten for the first time in many years to develop into something more than another surge of discontent caused by economic and political reasons traditional for Iran. Protests in Iran are, if not commonplace, certainly not rare. In some cases, they subsided on their own, in some cases the state used special means, but since the beginning of the 2000s, not a single such speech could claim the status of a trigger for fundamental changes. However, if a few days ago the protests could have simply been added to the next list of internal troubles, today it is already clear that Iran is faced with something more serious and requiring a non-standard reaction.
At the exit from the metro in the capital of the Republic of Tehran, caring informants of the so-called. "vice police" or "edification patrol" - a distant analogue of our "department for preventive work", noticed a girl who was walking in a "carelessly wearing hijab." Casually put on, just thrown over the head, meant that he was not tied up and did not cover his neck well and showed his hair. Not that this is some kind of egregious crime, but in Iran there is a somewhat peculiar attitude towards the dress code.
A woman, for example, can wear trousers, but the back of her must be covered with a cape at least to the middle of the thigh, the ankles and wrists are covered, as are the neck and chest. The face is left open. For a minor violation, the same “edification patrol” can conduct an educational conversation and issue a fine. In more complex cases, which would seem to our reader as innocent pranks: “hugging” in a park or in a car, kissing in public, the perpetrators are already at risk of receiving not only a fine, but also measures of a very specific physical “edification”.
It is unlikely that a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from the city of Sekkez (prov. Kurdistan) Mahsa Amini suspected what a casually worn headdress could turn into, especially since in her province there is traditionally no such strict dress code, Kurdish women mostly wear scarves tied around their heads and with an open neck, hijabs are rare among them. But the fact is that on July 5, the President of Iran signed the law "On Hijab and Chastity for Women" to tighten the dress code for women in public places. But not everyone, even in the capital, could get used to such innovations. The law is, to put it mildly, harsh: improperly dressed women cannot travel in transport, use banking services, enter government offices, etc.
It is not known what exactly happened in the "edification patrol" department, but M. Amini was taken to a medical facility already at death. In the official conclusion, the cause of death was called a "heart attack" and it is possible that everything would have ended there if it were not for her brother and witnesses who began to claim that the girl was beaten with sticks in the department. Sticks, by the way, are not rubber, but wooden. Further, the versions doubled and tripled: that they beat their heads against a car, and beat them in a car, and beat them before the police, and in the police, etc.
Two hours later, in the city of Sekkez, the population took to the streets, by the end of the day, protests went throughout the province of Kurdistan, especially its capital, Mahabad. The fact is that the Kurds and the Iranian ruling elite have a rather specific relationship. Tehran is wary of the province, whose population is generally loyal to the separatist ideas and views of A. Ocalan's Workers' Party (PKK). Demonstrative executions of Kurds for anti-state activities are not uncommon. Therefore, the news at once stirred up all past problems. Generally, with historical point of view, there is even something symbolic in the fact that it was the Kurdish headscarf that gave rise to the largest unrest in Iran in a decade and a half.
But everything was not limited to Kurdistan, and the next day the Persian Mashhad in the east, the Caspian Rasht in the north and Hamadan in the center blazed. Women went out into the street en masse, tore off their headscarves and hijabs, burned them, chanting hard-hitting slogans. The problem is that as soon as law enforcement forces began to detain, they naturally received a serious rebuff from the male population. A day later, shots fired by unknown people sounded, which already resembled a definite and familiar scheme from other regions. The protests, of course, were supported in the West both officially and through various NGOs, which today are making remarkable efforts to manage the protest and channel it.
If in the past the Iranians generally rejected such “help”, being outraged by it, today the peculiarity of the protests is such that a significant part of the Iranians may well agree with Western support, especially since all these specific structures of influence on Iran in Europe consist of representatives of the Iranian emigration and descendants of those who left during the Islamic Revolution. It may seem strange to us that when it came to solving economic and social problems, Western representatives almost never managed to lead and channel the Iranian protest, and in the situation with the headscarf, albeit tragic, such an opportunity arose, but this is a view from the outside.
"Moderation of morals"
And from the inside, this very “moderation of morals” in Persian is a kind of Iranian Achilles' heel. That attic, where unspent public discontent has been stored for years, and today its reserves can bring down ceilings, pulling a tangle of traditional problems with it. Guardians of public morality in Iran not only vigilantly watch that the young do not walk holding hands, they are also closely associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which gained weight every year, and eventually turned into not just a corporation, and into a separate quasi-state with its own budget, norms, in fact, direct subordination to the supreme spiritual leader of Iran, weak control from civil society.
The IRGC is not only a separate army, but includes divisions according to functions that resemble a cross between the Russian Guard and the people's combatants - the Basij. In fact, it is an army within an army and a police force within a police force. Basij is popular as a kind of career lift in one part of society, the religious, and at the same time very unpopular in another part - let's call it a moderate civilian.
The IRGC, constantly carrying out foreign policy operations in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, has practically taken over the sphere of foreign trade and, which is very important in the Middle East, cross-border channels of foreign exchange earnings, including cash. A situation has arisen where products in the inland provinces, especially agricultural, cost literally a penny, but at border terminals and hubs they are already resold many times higher, the margin goes to one economy - the military, and a penny to another - civil.
At the same time, it is not so easy to obtain foreign currency for transactions in Iran - you need to get permission, go through an auction, buy out a lot, wait. That's just the question, but having received it, how to pay off a counterparty from another state? Indeed, for this (Iran is disconnected from SWIFT), one must have a very non-trivial system of payments. Where to go, to whom? To the military. The circle is closed. About cross-border cash transactions, probably, everything is also clear. At the same time, only the lazy will not tell you about the rest of the children of the military elite in resorts like Fr. Kish.
And against this background, vice agents wandering the streets, buses with video cameras, video control in the subway and on the streets, inspections of cars, moralizing, albeit far from such a sad outcome, all this led to the fact that almost half of Iranian society, especially young people, their own special social model of behavior has developed. Probably, a marker of such a “strict society” could be called analogues of our “musical apartment dwellers” of the 80s. Here in Iran, everything happens in such apartments, where not only young people do what they are supposed to do by age, but quite adult people can get together, sit and drink in swimsuits. There is a whole system of tours to Turkey, Europe, Belarus, where they go in large companies with the goal of "just spending a week without these cuttlefish."
The peculiarity of Iran is that the vast majority of these young people, unlike domestic white-tape office hamsters with a glass of latte, are not some kind of fifth column, do not bow to Western culture, and in general look at the West itself extremely critically. That is, this is a rather patriotic society, and with any criticism, even the same Basijs will look at you and say: “You don’t understand anything, I’m a Persian,” and it will be said in such a way that all questions will disappear. This is indeed a modernist part of society, but not dependent on the direct influence of conventional Western narratives. Due to this circumstance, the United States for a long time did not manage to settle down there in order to exert an influence similar to what we have in our country, not to mention Ukraine, but this very circumstance is the reason why such a “handkerchief protest” is a very tangible threat to the Iranian system.
But how did Iran cope before?
How has Iran dealt with this cultural dichotomy in the past? And he coped with the fact that the regime was able to find a balance between military hawks and civilian liberals. Thus, for a long time the liberal wing was represented by former President H. Rouhani, well-known in Russia. He knew how to approach the supreme leader. Supreme Ayatollah A. Khamenei, on the one hand, elevated the shadowy cardinal of the Middle East, the head of the IRGC, K. Soleimani, almost to a pedestal, but when the IRGC demanded that the Hamadan air base be allocated to Russia, somewhat loosely approaching constitutional norms, then K. himself. Soleimani was opposed by civilian liberals and the generals of the "ordinary" army. As a result, A. Khamenei agreed with the arguments of the "civilians", K. Soleimani had to back out, and the Russian planes turned around.
Under H. Rouhani, the construction of port terminals began, which included representatives of civil administrations and persons affiliated with them, large foreign trade transactions began to be more often concluded by civilian traders, not from the military economy. That is, he knew how to punch holes in the all-round defense of the "second economy of Iran." H. Rouhani went under the slogans of opening European markets and attracting European investments, many enterprises began to pack goods not just anyhow, but according to international standards, etc. In general, under him, the range of Iranian export goods greatly expanded. At the same time, he managed to reduce the budget in such a way that the colossal economic assistance to Syria did not critically affect Iran itself for a long time, and even during protests under the slogans: “Not Syria, not Lebanon - Iran is our home,” H. Rouhani was able to gently extinguish the indignation. But his presidency also had a water crisis with a drought. But H. Rouhani did not pin any fundamental hopes on integration with the EAEU, for him the nuclear deal and the European market were primary.
After the death of K. Suleimani and taking into account the almost zero chances for the implementation of the nuclear deal, Supreme Ayatollah A. Khamenei did not consider it necessary to support civil liberals in the elections, arguing that in subsequent geopolitical battles the country should be led by a “hawk”. And not a military expert, but a hawk in terms of ideological and religious, which eventually became the current Iranian President I. Raisi, a longtime rival of H. Rouhani and a critic of "Westernism."
He became one despite the often very sharp criticism from the “civilian sector”, since it was obvious that I. Raisi did not tolerate “liberal freedoms”, and, importantly, did not see serious prospects for economic cooperation in this area with Europe . At the same time, everyone notes his tilt towards the “letter of theology”, exact observance of prescriptions and norms, and high personal moral character. However, I. Raisi is not without a certain ambition, at one time calling himself the title of "ayatollah". And there was an incident when it turned out that it was not assigned to him.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the Basij and those same “edification patrols” received additional powers, benefits and budgets under him. But against the backdrop of global economic upheavals and the objectively understandable curtailment from the policy of economic cooperation with the European Union, such a “moral imperative” was not very appreciated by civil society. Even during the elections in Iran, it was often said that for all the moral virtues, there are fears that the new president will go too far in the field of public morality. Actually, this is what happened.
For Russia, the problem is that, by coincidence, and this is indeed a tragic accident, the death of M. Amini occurred at the time of serious health problems of the supreme leader of Iran. A. Khamenei underwent a serious operation, and the public quickly spread rumors about his death. And here we can definitely say that they were dispersed in society from the outside. The rumors turned out to be premature, and on September 21, Iran's supreme leader held several meetings and spoke publicly, but did not say a word about the protests.
Meanwhile, their participants, from general accusations of government inaction, translated slogans specifically to A. Khamenei, and this can already be considered the beginning of the fact that the protest is gradually beginning to be saturated with the narratives of Western curators. Otherwise, the Protestants would have demanded a "debriefing". The resistance of the Iranians in the mass to these narratives is traditionally high, but the sign is no longer very healthy. Today, on the streets of Mashhad, the second largest city in Iran, crowds of women are running not only without headscarves, but often in underwear. Many pogroms, skirmishes with the Basij with a fatal outcome.
In addition to active participation in the SCO mechanisms and programs, Iran today is one of the few countries that is directly aimed at deep cooperation with Russia. It was the moralist I. Raisi who said that he intended to bring Iran into the EAEU and deepen the North-South corridor. The author has already written that the North-South corridor is now practically a one-way road in favor of Iranian exports, the possibilities of the EAEU open up even more prospects for Iran in the context of broken ties with Europe. In the current situation for Russia, of all the alternatives, opening markets to Iran in exchange for a southern geopolitical shield seems to be a reasonable exchange and the least of the evils, although from the point of view of the trade balance, this is a disparity in favor of the southern neighbor. However, in this case, Iran will balance Kazakhstan very well, which claims economic and political leadership in Central Asia from next year. True, the Kazakhs themselves, for the same reason, will most likely slow down such a version of the “expanded EAEU”.
The problem is also that with each round of civil confrontation I. Raisi is becoming more and more difficult to stop the intensity of emotions - tragic cases are multiplying, and giving the "second army" the will to suppress demonstrators in the conditions of illness of the supreme leader means for society a claim to dictatorship - a taboo in modern Iran. The generation of the first ayatollahs of the Islamic revolution is also gradually leaving, and with them a part of the moral authority of the first of them - R. Khomeini.
The president of Iran is also not able to give up sharply, since his main support is the second army and the economy, without which the geopolitics of Iran is impossible in principle. A realistic chance for Tehran is to show the public that the protest has begun to be controlled from the outside and to demonstrate clearly, even deliberately, this will traditionally take a break to form a “compensation package” for civil society, if this does not work out, then there is already the option of a tough cleansing of the protesters.
Information