For more than three weeks, protests have continued across Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who had been detained by the country’s morality police for allegedly violating rules requiring women to cover their hair and dress according to standards enforced by the Islamic Republic. Iranian authorities have denied that Amini was beaten and have attributed her death to medical causes, while her family has challenged that account. Her death on 16 September triggered demonstrations that have now spread across numerous cities, universities and increasingly schools, despite arrests, internet restrictions and a violent security response.
The protests began with a specific event, but they no longer appear to concern only one death or even only compulsory hijab. Demonstrators have chanted against Iran’s political leadership, women have publicly removed or burned headscarves, university students have confronted security forces, and videos have shown schoolgirls participating in acts of defiance. The Kurdish slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” has become one of the movement’s central expressions. What began as outrage over the treatment of one woman has developed into a much broader argument over how much authority the Iranian state should possess over private life and whether citizens still accept the ideological basis through which that authority is justified.
That transformation raises a question that applies far beyond Iran: how can governments know whether citizens genuinely support a political system when openly opposing that system is dangerous?
In democracies, dissatisfaction becomes visible constantly. Governments lose elections. Opposition parties publish criticism. Journalists investigate officials. Pollsters ask citizens whether they approve of the president. People demonstrate without necessarily expecting imprisonment. None of these mechanisms perfectly measures public opinion, but together they provide political leaders with enormous quantities of information about what citizens actually think.
Authoritarian systems suppress many of those signals.
That can make them look more stable.
It can also make them less informed.
If criticising the government carries significant personal risk, rational citizens may conceal their preferences. Someone who dislikes compulsory hijab may still comply publicly. Someone who dislikes the supreme leader may avoid saying so at work. Someone who would participate in a protest may stay home because they believe only a small minority shares their anger and therefore expect the demonstration to fail.
Visible obedience can therefore coexist with private opposition.
Political scientists sometimes describe this as preference falsification. People publicly express or perform one preference while privately holding another because revealing the true preference is costly.
The concept helps explain why authoritarian political systems can appear remarkably stable immediately before they become unstable.
Imagine a society containing one hundred people. Sixty privately dislike the government, but each believes only ten others agree. Nobody wants to be one of eleven protesters confronting the security forces, so almost everyone stays silent. The government observes silence and concludes that the population broadly supports it.
Then something happens.
A highly visible event causes twenty people to protest simultaneously. Other citizens suddenly learn something they did not previously know: opposition is not isolated.
Another twenty join.
The information changes before the underlying preferences do.
The protest therefore appears to create opposition when it may partly be revealing opposition that already existed.
This is one reason seemingly small events can trigger enormous political movements. The event itself may not be proportionate to the eventual scale of the mobilisation because it functions as a coordination device for grievances accumulated over years.
Amini’s death appears to be performing something like that role.
Mandatory hijab rules are not new. Iran’s morality police are not new. Restrictions on political opposition are not new. Economic frustration is not new. Tensions between younger Iranians and the conservative political establishment are not new.
What changed was the focal point.
One event concentrated several grievances into a single story understandable across different parts of society.
A young woman.
A morality-police detention.
A death.
A disputed official explanation.
Each element reinforced a broader perception among protesters that the state exercises intrusive authority without sufficient accountability.
This is where symbolic events become politically powerful. They transform abstract institutional criticism into something concrete.
“Authoritarianism” is a concept.
A photograph of Mahsa Amini is a person.
People mobilise more easily around stories than institutional diagrams.
The same mechanism appeared during the Arab Spring. Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia did not create unemployment, corruption or authoritarianism. Those conditions existed already. His death provided a focal event around which accumulated frustration could coordinate.
This does not mean Iran is necessarily approaching another Arab Spring or revolution. Historical analogy becomes dangerous when similar mechanisms are treated as identical outcomes.
Iran possesses a different state, different security institutions, different opposition structures and a different geopolitical environment. The Islamic Republic has survived enormous challenges since 1979, including war, sanctions, mass protests and internal political conflict.
The point is narrower.
Catalysts and causes are different things.
Amini’s death catalysed the current protests.
The causes of their persistence are broader.
That distinction matters because governments frequently respond to protests as though removing the catalyst will remove the movement. Arrest organisers. Restrict the internet. Prevent demonstrations around universities. Insist that the original incident was misunderstood.
Those measures may reduce mobilisation.
They do not necessarily address the grievances that made mobilisation possible.
Iranian authorities have increasingly described the unrest as being encouraged or manipulated by foreign enemies. Given Iran’s history and geopolitical position, the possibility of foreign governments attempting to exploit internal instability should not be dismissed automatically. The United States and Iran have been adversaries for decades. Israel openly views the Iranian government as a major security threat. Foreign media and diaspora networks undoubtedly shape information around the protests.
But foreign interest in a protest does not prove foreign creation of the protest.
That distinction is essential.
Governments facing domestic opposition often have strong incentives to externalise it. If protesters are ordinary citizens with legitimate grievances, the government may need to change policy. If protesters are agents of foreign powers, repression becomes national defence.
The second narrative is politically much more convenient.
This does not mean foreign interference never happens.
It means governments should provide evidence proportionate to the allegation rather than treating external sympathy as proof of external control.
The protesters themselves are Iranian.
The compulsory-hijab rules are Iranian law.
The morality police are Iranian institutions.
Whatever foreign governments say afterwards cannot explain those underlying facts away.
The gender dimension also makes these demonstrations distinctive. Women are not merely participating in a broader protest movement; control over women’s bodies and clothing is one of the central political issues generating the movement.
This makes compulsory hijab different from an ordinary dress regulation because the rule embodies a larger relationship between individual autonomy and the ideological state.
Supporters of Iran’s Islamic system can argue that public dress standards reflect religious and social values that the state has a responsibility to preserve. Many societies regulate behaviour according to collective moral norms, even if the specific norms differ.
The liberal response is that the state should require an unusually strong justification before coercing individuals over personal choices that do not directly harm others.
That is fundamentally a debate over the boundary between public morality and private autonomy.
Every political system draws such boundaries somewhere.
France restricts certain religious clothing in particular public contexts in the name of secular republicanism.
Iran requires particular religious clothing in the name of Islamic morality.
The ideological justification is almost opposite, yet both demonstrate that states can regulate clothing because clothing carries political and cultural meaning beyond fabric.
The relevant liberal principle should therefore be applied consistently: governments need compelling reasons when coercing citizens’ personal expression, particularly when enforcement falls disproportionately on one gender or religious group.
Iran’s morality-police system goes much further because the dress requirement forms part of a broader structure limiting women’s autonomy in several areas of life.
This helps explain why removing headscarves publicly has become such a powerful act of protest.
The action is simultaneously personal and political.
A woman removes something from her own head.
The state interprets that action as a challenge to public order.
That tells us how deeply political authority has entered the private sphere.
Authoritarian systems frequently become vulnerable when ordinary personal behaviour acquires political meaning. Once clothing, music, university life or social interaction becomes a test of ideological loyalty, the government creates enormous numbers of opportunities for citizens to experience the state coercively.
Every encounter with enforcement can generate another grievance.
This creates a state-capacity problem as well.
Rules are useful only if governments can enforce them at acceptable cost.
Suppose millions of Iranian women simply stopped complying with compulsory hijab rules simultaneously. The state would face an enforcement dilemma. Arresting everyone would be impossible and enormously destabilising. Ignoring violations would weaken the credibility of the rule.
Mass non-compliance can therefore alter political power without requiring protesters to seize government buildings.
This is one reason civil disobedience can be effective.
The government possesses far more coercive capacity than any individual citizen.
It possesses much less capacity relative to millions of citizens refusing simultaneously.
Again, coordination changes the balance.
The Iranian government understands this, which helps explain why apparently symbolic acts receive serious enforcement attention. If one woman violates the rule without consequence, another may follow. Enforcement therefore protects not only the specific regulation but expectations about whether regulations remain enforceable.
The state and protesters are both engaged in a battle over expectations.
The government wants citizens to believe resistance is costly and unlikely to succeed.
Protesters want citizens to believe resistance is widespread enough that participation is no longer futile.
Information becomes part of the conflict.
That is why internet restrictions matter politically. Governments can restrict communication not merely to prevent organisers from planning demonstrations but to prevent citizens from observing how many other people are demonstrating.
A protest video from another city contains information.
It tells viewers: people elsewhere are doing this too.
That can reduce perceived isolation.
Social media therefore changes authoritarian politics by reducing some of the informational advantages governments historically possessed.
It does not eliminate repression. Digital surveillance can make repression more effective too. Governments can identify organisers, track communications and spread their own narratives.
Technology empowers both coordination and control.
This is another reason simplistic claims that the internet would automatically democratise authoritarian societies have aged badly.
Technology changes capabilities.
Institutions determine how those capabilities are used.
Iran’s demographic structure may also matter. A large share of the population was born long after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Younger Iranians did not experience the monarchy, revolution or Iran-Iraq War in the same way as the generation that constructed the Islamic Republic.
Political legitimacy built around revolutionary history can therefore depreciate over time.
The founding generation says: this system represents liberation from dictatorship and foreign domination.
A teenager asks: why does that history determine what I am allowed to wear today?
Neither perspective is historically meaningless.
They operate through different reference points.
This is the generational problem revolutionary regimes eventually face.
A revolution derives legitimacy from having overthrown an old order.
Future generations judge it increasingly according to the order it created.
Historical achievement cannot permanently substitute for contemporary performance.
The Rajapaksas discovered a version of this in Sri Lanka. Ending the civil war created enormous political legitimacy, but economic collapse eventually overwhelmed it.
Iran’s revolutionary leadership faces the same structural principle over a much longer time horizon.
The Islamic Republic cannot indefinitely ask citizens to evaluate 2022 primarily through 1979.
This does not mean young Iranians uniformly reject the system. Iran is a large, politically diverse country. Conservative and religious constituencies remain substantial. Many citizens may oppose compulsory hijab enforcement while fearing revolutionary instability. Others may want reform rather than regime change. Some support the political system strongly.
Again, protesters are visible.
People staying home are not.
We should therefore avoid the opposite information error: just as authoritarian governments can mistake silence for consent, outside observers can mistake visible protest for unanimous national opposition.
Neither inference is justified.
This is especially important because Western commentary has repeatedly predicted the imminent collapse of the Iranian government during previous protest movements.
The Green Movement in 2009, demonstrations in 2017–18 and major protests in 2019 all challenged the state without removing it.
Iran possesses powerful security institutions, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij, as well as networks of political and economic interests invested in regime survival.
State coercive capacity matters.
Revolutions do not occur simply because protesters are courageous or grievances are legitimate.
Governments collapse when several mechanisms interact: mass mobilisation, elite division, security-force defections, economic crisis, organisational capacity and loss of administrative control.
As of tonight, we do not know whether anything approaching that threshold exists.
The intellectually responsible position is therefore to resist predicting the regime’s collapse.
What we can say is that the protests reveal a legitimacy problem the government cannot solve merely by demonstrating that it retains coercive power.
This distinction between regime survival and regime legitimacy matters.
A government can survive while becoming less legitimate.
It can suppress protests without persuading protesters.
It can restore order while increasing the amount of force required to maintain that order.
That may create long-term fragility even if the immediate movement fails.
Coercion and legitimacy are substitutes only up to a point.
The less willingly people comply, the more enforcement becomes necessary.
Enforcement is expensive.
Not only financially, but politically.
Every arrest can produce another family with a grievance.
Every death can create another symbol.
Every internet shutdown disrupts ordinary economic activity.
Repression therefore has diminishing returns and potential feedback effects.
Yet governments still use it because the short-term alternative may appear worse. Conceding under pressure can encourage additional mobilisation by demonstrating that protest works.
This creates another credibility trap.
The protesters want the government to believe continued repression is more expensive than reform.
The government wants protesters to believe continued resistance is more expensive than compliance.
Each side therefore has incentives to demonstrate willingness to absorb costs.
That can make compromise increasingly difficult.
Mandatory hijab could theoretically be reformed without overthrowing Iran’s entire political system.
But once protests become associated with slogans challenging the regime itself, conservative leaders may fear that concession on one issue will be interpreted as weakness across all issues.
Protesters, meanwhile, may conclude that partial reform is inadequate after people have already been killed or arrested.
Conflict changes the bargaining space.
A dispute that began over one institution can become an argument over the legitimacy of the state.
This is why early responsiveness matters in political systems.
Governments with functioning feedback mechanisms can identify dissatisfaction before every grievance becomes existential.
An unpopular law can be changed.
A minister can resign.
An election can replace the government.
Authoritarian systems deliberately weaken those mechanisms because leaders fear they will reduce control.
The paradox is that weaker feedback can make eventual crises larger because dissatisfaction accumulates without ordinary outlets.
Democracies look noisy partly because dissatisfaction is constantly visible.
Authoritarian systems look quiet partly because the noise is suppressed.
Quiet is therefore an ambiguous political indicator.
It can mean consent.
It can mean fear.
Iran looked relatively stable before September.
The protests do not prove that stability was fake.
They demonstrate that visible stability contained more unresolved conflict than the surface suggested.
Perhaps that is the most important lesson from the last three weeks.
Political order is not simply the absence of protest.
A prison can be orderly.
The relevant question is why people comply.
Because they believe the rules are legitimate?
Because they consider resistance pointless?
Because they fear punishment?
Most political systems contain some mixture of all three.
Durable legitimacy means needing less of the third.
Iran’s government retains enormous coercive capacity.
The protesters are testing how much political authority exists underneath it.
We do not yet know the answer.
But every woman removing her headscarf in public is asking the question in a form the state can no longer pretend not to hear.
