Unique Features of These Protests

• The protests analyzed in this report have unique characteristics that differentiate them from the protests of the last decade in Iran and at times even unprecedented in the life of the Islamic Republic.
• Contrary to most of the protests in recent years, the recent protest was not based on economic or environmental demands. Rather, political, and human rights demands were at the core of it.
• These protests were triggered by the death of a young, Kurdish and Sunni woman. Being female, Kurdish and Sunni are all grounds for gender, ethnic, and religious discrimination Yet, the Iranian public showed a united front and disregarded all these categories that tend to divide people and instead displayed that collectively they can take a positive step forward.
• The Iranian youth, whose average age was estimated at 15 years of age by the law enforcement officials, have played a key role in the protests.
• An unprecedented solidarity has been formed between Iranians inside Iran and those in the diaspora.
• These protests put almost all classes of Iranian society into one unified group of people in support of the protesters. The urban middle class alongside the lower or upper classes in small and large urban areas, different ethnic groups, religious minorities, sexual minorities, and trade groups including teachers, workers, students, professors, artists, and athletes were integral to this united front. In the protests, we witnessed different businesses showing solidarity with the protesters by going on strikes.
• In terms of continuity, these protests can be considered among the longest continuous protests since the inception of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• Because of the substantive and progressive demands of these protesters, the international community, especially celebrities in the fields of the arts, culture, and politics, became the voice of the Iranian people in an unprecedented way, and by disseminating information and taking various actions, they have attracted attention to what is going on in Iran.
• The demands of the protesters, which centered on the issue of women’s rights, have indicated that Iran has a progressive and assertive society.
• One of the distinguishing features of these protests from the previous ones was unarmed protesters routinely confronting the security forces. There have been many scenes of protestors showing unity as they came together to prevent people from being taken into custody or by standing in front of the police who were equipped with full anti-riot gear. Public anger over the operation of the Moral Security Police and decades of meddling by this force in the most personal areas of women’s lives was also a great motivating factor for the protestors to resist being subjugated by Iran’s security apparatus.
• In addition to the street protests, there was cyber warfare going on between the opponents and supporters of the status quo. Numerous government sites were hacked, and the global solidarity propelled Mahsa Amini’s hashtag, which became the first in the history of Twitter to record more than 284 million tweets.
• The government of Iran this time around gave more latitude to FARAJA (Iran’s main law enforcement agency) to spearhead the repression of the street protests. The government also adopted alternative methods regarding controlling the communications; for example, they reduced the speed of internet rather than cutting it off completely, and they filtered certain sites.
• The media close to Iran’s security apparatus tried to cover the protests in their own way by sending their reporters to the streets to present the news in a slanted way that is favorable to the government. More so these reporters have continuously given statistic on those that died during the protests, however most of these statistics were a lot lower than the actual numbers.
• The protests, which have lacked leadership and command-and-control, have shown that Iranian society, especially its younger generation, is determined to attain their basic human rights.
• Iran’s ethnic groups, especially Kurdish and Baloch citizens, who are mostly adherents of the Sunni branch of Islam, occupy a special place in these protests. They also witnessed the bloodiest crackdowns in these protests.