Why the Mahsa Movement Did Not Lead to Overthrow Part Two

Why the Mahsa Movement Didn’t Lead to Overthrow

According to Iran Gate, most experts believe that the extensive differences among various opposition factions caused the protesters within the country to become disheartened about the success of the Mahsa movement and leave the streets.

Recently, Iranian citizens marked the first anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death while in the custody of the Tehran morality police. Despite expectations, no serious gatherings against the Islamic Republic took shape, and apart from scattered and limited protests, nothing significant occurred. Many believe that the performance of protesters abroad and their inability to create a comprehensive and united front led to deep and heavy discouragement among domestic protesters. However, some also believe that the heavy repression of protesters by the Islamic Republic was the main reason for the decline of protests on the first anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of the Tehran morality police.

Iran Gate has examined the reasons for the Mahsa movement’s failure to lead to an overthrow in a two-part report. The first part focused on the analysis of the movement and the roots of the connection between domestic and international protesters. The present report investigates the key reasons for the failure of the overthrow advocates to complete the process of overthrowing the Islamic Republic.

A Revolution Without a Leader

After the failure of the Green Movement in the late 2000s, many opponents of the Islamic Republic emphasized the need for protests not to rely on a specific and unified leadership, as the house arrest of Mir Hossein Mousavi, Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karroubi marked the beginning of the decline of Green Movement presence in the streets of Tehran and other major cities. Therefore, analysts and theorists of the overthrow movement stressed the necessity of leaderless protests in the following years.

Such protests include those of December 2017, summer 2018, November 2019, spring 2021, spring 2022, and the fall and winter of 2022, which emerged without specific leadership within the country. However, the most important and largest of these protest movements occurred in the fall and winter of 2022, known as the Mahsa movement, which, as mentioned, continued without internal leadership until it gradually subsided in the winter of 2022.

Many analysts believe that the lack of a charismatic and influential leader was indeed a weakness of this movement. They point to the high dispersion of gatherings across the country, which led to confusion among domestic protesters. On the other hand, some claimed that Reza Pahlavi could have been recognized as the leader of the Mahsa movement, but the lack of a positive response from protesters to his calls indicates that the son of Iran’s last Shah does not hold the special and unique position among Iranian protesters that was imagined.

Separatists Are Also Present

Many experts believe that another deterrent factor for the continuation of protests against the Islamic Republic was the prominent presence of separatist parties and figures in the overthrow coalitions abroad. The emergence and prominence of these movements, which were not previously recognized, led these separatist movements and parties to portray themselves as legitimate.

The Georgetown University meeting and protest gatherings in cities like Toronto, Cologne, London, and Frankfurt are examples where the presence of separatists was very prominent. Even many domestic protesters, mostly young people unfamiliar with these movements, suddenly encountered strange symbols of separatist parties that were being used for promotional maneuvers abroad.

This point led the Islamic Republic’s broadcasting service to extensively highlight the prominent presence of separatists among foreign protesters. On the other hand, nationalist slogans such as ‘From Kurdistan to Sistan, my life for Iran’ became widespread in reaction to these events. However, as the movement continued, separatists continued their activities among various figures and coalitions, although they tactically adopted the guise of federalism to avoid being labeled as separatists.

However, events like the statement from the Mahsa coalition, comprising Reza Pahlavi, Abdullah Mohtadi, Hamed Esmaeilion, Masih Alinejad, and Nazanin Boniadi, caused serious doubts among domestic protesters about the positions of this coalition. Particularly, the use of terms like ‘territorial integrity’ instead of ‘territorial entirety,’ ‘people of Iran’ instead of ‘nation of Iran,’ and ‘ethnic groups of Iran’ instead of ‘Iranian ethnicities’ led to disillusionment among protesters regarding this coalition.

At certain points, we even witnessed strong reactions from protesters to the formation of such coalitions, indicating the importance of territorial integrity for young domestic protesters. This became apparent to analysts, despite the belief that Generation Z had little sensitivity to concepts like nation and territorial integrity.

The third part of this report will address the impact of the Mahsa coalition’s collapse on creating discouragement among domestic protesters.

Why the Mahsa Movement Didn’t Lead to Overthrow – Part One