What is behind the Death of Mahsa Amini and the protests in Iran?

When we talk about the tragic death of Mahsa Amini, we have to talk about two perspectives. The perspective of women in Iran, but also the geopolitical behind the media outcries around the topic.

Women continued to be systematically discriminated against, both by law and in daily life, especially in divorce and inheritance matters, in access to the labour market and to political office, and in the application of criminal law.

Acts of violence against women and girls, such as domestic violence and early and forced marriages, were widespread and went unpunished. Gender-based violence was still not punishable. A corresponding bill had been pending since 2012. The legal age of marriage for girls was still 13. Fathers and grandfathers could obtain permission from the court if they wanted to marry girls even earlier.

Due to the legal obligation to wear a headscarf (hijab), women were targeted by police and paramilitary forces. They were harassed and arrested when they wore heavy make-up or tight-fitting clothing. Women who campaigned against compulsory headscarves were victims of state-sponsored smear campaigns.

Still, since the 1979 revolution, the status of women in Iran has improved significantly in the fields of education and literacy, the labor force and lifespan. The number of women in parliament has quadrupled. But the gains are uneven. Women, for example, are still a distinct minority in top government positions and management jobs. 

If we now analyze why the protests broke out in this way, then the two main reasons are resentment and disinformation. To date, despite media reporting otherwise, there is no evidence of the mistreatment of Mahsa Amini. The resulting ignorance was fodder for disinformation and external destabilization campaigns. Because the fact that women and men do not obey religious laws on a large scale, even publicly, is a well-known fact, against which the Iranian government is in truth no longer worthwhile. They tolerate it.

Nevertheless, the protests have degenerated because, despite the many "freedoms" of recent years, they still reflect the pain of the lack of rights. They are a picture of resentment and oppression that still exist despite loosening.

But there is also another perspective that plays a big role.

A few days after the outbreak of the protests and Uprisings in Iran revealed to the Washington Post(WP) that the Pentagon had launched a comprehensive review of all its online psychological warfare activities. The WP reported on the extent to which US institutions - including the armed forces' CENTCOM, which is responsible for the Middle East - had exerted covert influence on opinion formation in several countries, especially Iran, via social media by spreading fake news. CNN recently reported that out of 108,000 accounts in a sample with the hashtag #OpIran - another hashtag related to the recent unrest in Iran - about 13,000 were created in September, while the average number of accounts created per month in the sample was only 500. "Most of the September accounts were set up within about ten days of Amini's death."

Looking at the social media coverage of the protests in Iran in recent weeks, the impression was created that the country was in a "state of emergency". The recent unrest there is basically part of NATO's large-scale hybrid warfare against increasing Asian integration.

In doing so, NATO will weaken not only Iran, but also Russia in its military operation in Ukraine. Iranian combat drones are currently successfully deployed in Ukraine to destroy NATO supplies. The US is aiming to create unrest in Iran, with Washington dreaming of "Syriaizing" the country. The White House apparently has no plan B to contain Iran right now. Joe Biden recently expressed his solidarity with participants in the "mass protests" in Iran and indicated that the US would ensure that the protests continue.

In this respect, the dismemberment of Iran through the staging of the protests is on the agenda.

The death of Mahsa seems convenient for Western leaders in order to put more pressure on Iran. Since the Ukraine war, the West has been doing everything it can to destabilize Iran through a controlled color revolution and to weaken the anti-Western front on a geopolitical level. Above all, the global West has panicked because of the new developments: At the recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Iran was accepted as a new full member. The SCO is seen as a counterweight to Western-dominated organizations such as NATO. At the same time, Tehran has effectively given up its neutrality in the Ukraine war and delivered drones to Russia. The Iranian leadership is beginning to believe that NATO would advance to Iran's border in the North Caucasus if Russia were to lose the war in Ukraine. NATO fears that Iranian drones could become a "game changer" in day-to-day operations at the front.

The media campaign in the West for Mahsa's death is not about supporting women's rights, but about weakening Iran. To prove this, suffice it to point to another recent incident that exposes the West's double standards: A 15-year-old girl named Zainab Essam Al Khazali was shot dead by the US military in a suburb of Baghdad during a military exercise on September 20, but not even a single Western media outlet reported the death. For the West, there is an enormous difference between the death of Mahsa and that of Zainab. The first incident can maintain US hegemony, even if Western opinion makers, in their coverage of Mahsa's death, cite a source from a country that promotes reactionary ideology such as Wahhabism.