Mass protests in Iran in the autumn of 2022. Factors, dynamics, reaction of the authorities

Abstract

The protests in the autumn of 2022 began after the death of the Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, for which the opposition blamed the Islamic regime’s morality police. The initial demands for the abolition of the morality police very quickly gave way to radical demands for the elimination of the Islamic regime and the resignation ofthe Supreme Leader. The protests quickly spread to hundreds of cities and villages in all provinces of the country. Up to 2 million people took part in them. The protests were emphatically secular in nature, and the main slogan of the protesters was the slogan “Woman, life, freedom”. By and large, the mass protests in the autumn of 2022 proved to be the most intense, radical and bloody since the Islamic revolution, as the regime officials themselves admit. Despite the fact that the regime was able hold on, there are the risks of recurrence of similar mass actions in the coming years. If Iran manages to reach an agreement with the United States to lift sanctions, it will have a positive impact on economic development, but political reasons for discontent will remain. Therefore, Iran needs serious domestic political and economic reforms. The protest movement in Iran is in many ways similar to the mass protests in the Arab East during the Arab Spring, which indicates similar socio-political issues.