Two years after Mahsa Amini’s death: What has changed, what hasn’t in Iran?

Persecuting kin who have experienced loss. Criminals face no consequences. Rampant executions and infighting among the opposition.

Two years after the beginning of a protest movement that supporters thought would mark a sea change in the Islamic Republic’s 45-year existence, opponents of Iran’s religious authorities are faced with a dire picture.

Exiles and activists continue to believe that Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurd arrested on September 16, 2022, for allegedly violating the women’s dress code, left a lasting impression on Iran and that her terrible death at the age of 22 was not in vain.

The aftermath of protests

Following her death, women-led rallies rattled Iran’s leadership during the autumn and winter of 2022–2023, threatening not only the regime’s fundamental tenet of the mandatory headscarf but also the system’s very existence.

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However, Amnesty International claims that during a crackdown, security personnel used assault weapons and shotguns against protestors, crushing and defeating them.

According to human rights organisations, at least 551 people died.

The UN said that thousands more people had been taken into custody.

Ten men have been executed by Iran in connection with the protests; the most recent of these was Gholamreza Rasaei, who was hung in August after being found guilty of killing a Revolutionary Guard.

His confession was allegedly forced upon him, say activists.

“Countless people in Iran are still reeling from the consequences of the authorities’ brutal crackdown,” said Amnesty’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, Diana Eltahawy.

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To mark the two-year anniversary, the foundation of Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, jailed in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, said 34 women prisoners there went on a hunger strike “in solidarity with the protesting people of Iran, against the government’s oppressive policies.”

‘Brutalising twice over’

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports that relatives of scores of protestors who were slain, put to death, or imprisoned were intimidated, threatened, or arrested on false pretences.

“Iranian authorities are brutalising people twice over: executing or killing a family member and then arresting their loved ones for demanding accountability,” said HRW’s acting Iran researcher, Nahid Naghshbandi.

Among those jailed is Mashallah Karami, father of Mohammad Mehdi Karami, who was executed in January 2023, aged just 22, in a case related to the protests.

Karami, who had campaigned for his son’s memory, was sentenced to six years in jail in May and then in August to another term of almost nine years.

‘Increased’ repression of women

Additionally, the government is strictly enforcing the headscarf requirement.

One of the main demands of the demonstrators was its elimination, and at first, the government had given reason to believe that their policy would be more lax.

According to Amnesty International, security personnel are enforcing the rule through the so-called “Nour” (“Light”) strategy, which includes a “visible increase of security patrols on foot, motorbikes, cars, and police vans in public spaces”.

Iranian women have always considered their cars to be secure havens, but rights organisations claim that over time, they have been targeted more frequently in their cars— often using facial recognition software.

Impounding cars is one way to punish people.

Iran has “intensified” the repression of women, according to UN experts, and has also started “beating, kicking, and slapping women and girls”.

Amnesty has highlighted the case of 31-year-old Arezou Badri, who it says was left paralysed after police shot her in her car in northern Iran in July, in an incident related to the dress code.

Even though a UN fact-finding mission in March found that many of the violations in the crackdown amount to crimes against humanity, not one official has been brought to account.

‘Not going back’

Yet observers outside Iran insist that while the crackdown has allowed the clerical authorities under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to restore order, Iranian society has changed forever.

“Many young women remain defiant,” said a co-founder of the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, Roya Boroumand.

“Two years after the protests, the Islamic Republic’s leadership has neither restored the status quo ante nor regained its lost legitimacy.

“Rights groups said August’s execution of Gholamreza Rasaei showed no let-up in Iran’s use of the death penalty under new President Masoud Pezeshkian, elected in July after his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash.

The Amini protests have exposed deep divisions within the opposition, with no unified group emerging to champion the protesters’ demands.

Abroad, attempts at finding harmony between disparate groups of monarchists, nationalists and liberals have collapsed amid acrimony.

The protest movement “shook the Iranian regime to the core and further affirmed just how deeply disillusioned Iranians have been with the status quo”, said Arash Azizi, visiting fellow at Boston University and author of a book titled What Iranians Want.

“But the movement also showed the absolute bankruptcy of the opposition alternatives to the regime.”

He added: “I still believe Iran is not going back to pre-2022 and, within the next few years, the Islamic Republic will likely see some fundamental shifts.”

With inputs from AFP