If the demonstrations have one theme, it seems to be sheer hatred of the regime.
“After Mahsa, everything is hanging by a hair.”
Those words, spray-painted in red on a Tehran wall last week, sum up the atmosphere of rage and defiance that has consumed Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died in police custody in mid-September after being arrested for failing to properly veil her hair.
Rallies have turned progressively more violent. Videos captured on cellphone cameras show nightly scenes of terrifying bravery: women tearing off their veils and screaming at advancing lines of riot police. Dozens of protesters have been killed, and in some cities they have struck back, burning down police stations and killing the paramilitary thugs sent to suppress them.
The Islamic Republic is not about to fall. But something is different this time. In 2009, I reported on the protests that shook the country after the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Back then, reform was the ostensible goal. Demonstrators flooded the streets in support of a presidential candidate—Mir-Hossein Mousavi—who was himself a product of the Iranian system.
This time, raw fury is in the air, a sense that protesters are girding themselves for war rather than liberation. Their chants suggest a new spirit of intransigence: “We will fight, we will die, we will get Iran back.” The protesters don’t seem to have illusions about their country blooming into democracy; this is not an Iranian spring. They are not inclined toward politics as a vehicle for change, and that in itself is a troubling sign. If the protests have one theme, it seems to be sheer hatred of the Iranian regime.
The protests may be remembered as a defining experience for Iran’s Generation Z. One Iranian journalist friend told me he saw teenagers fighting armed Basij militias using methods learned from Clash of Clans, a popular video game. (The government blocked the game’s website soon afterward, he said.) “When you talk to middle-aged people, they tell you that these protests have changed their view of the generation born after 2000,” the journalist said.
