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Iran’s leaders are asking for trouble
It’s impossible to predict when and where a wildfire will begin, but it’s easy to know when the ground is dry. In today’s Iran, the ground is ominously dry.
On the surface, social tensions have subsided since the height of nationwide protests over last autumn’s death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for violating rules governing the hijab, or headscarf, which Iranian women are required to wear in public. A combination of mass arrests and executions, some of them public, have moved most protesters off the streets in recent weeks.
But Iran’s conservative government now sees that it’s much easier to use tried-and-true methods to beat back demonstrators than to force all women and girls to wear the hijab in public. After all, many are simply ignoring the rules.
So, authorities have authored a new law and are using new tactics. Women who flout the state’s dress code can be kept out of school and denied services. Businesses that welcome them can be fined or shut down. Last month, cameras were installed in many city streets to boost enforcement. The next ugly confrontation ending in violence and public fury is all but inevitable.
Public frustration in Iran extends well beyond a repressive dress code. Adding fuel to the Mahsa Amini protests is an economy in terrible shape, thanks in part to Western sanctions and partly to Iran’s own policy incompetence. Inflation is probably still running well above 40%, though Iran’s government stopped publishing inflation stats two months ago. Iran’s currency is now at a record low against the dollar. The unemployment rate tops 10%. A return to the nuclear deal could slowly lift US and European sanctions, but Iran’s willingness to supply Russia’s military with drones used to attack Ukraine signals its government’s determination to reject Western terms.
If you live in Iran, it’s natural to wonder whether change is even possible. The economy has limped along for decades. The cycle of protest and repression continues. The choices available to Iran’s voters narrow further at each election.
Yet, with each passing year, the percentage of Iranians old enough to remember the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the forces that inspired it grows smaller. And each passing year brings Iran closer to the day when current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an 84-year-old cancer survivor sometimes rumored to be in poor health, will die. Only once has supreme power passed from one set of hands to another in the Islamic Republic’s history – and that was 34 years ago. Everyone with access to power and wealth within the regime must wonder what succession means for their futures and their families, and they must live with uncertainty.
With all these anxieties in mind, further disruption appears unavoidable.Open defiance will again meet determined repression. The Islamic Republic’s elite don’t want to back down on headscarves, and they fear, perhaps rightly, that concessions in one area would only ignite public demand for more. But the ground in Iran is dry, and the striking of matches there should have the world’s attention.The suspected Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina.
What We're Watching: US-China balloon fallout, Iranian "amnesty"
As US shoots down Chinese spy balloon, China cries foul
If we'd told you a week ago that the recent US-China thaw would be upended by X, you'd have probably guessed X had something to do with Taiwan, US semiconductor export controls, or perhaps China's covert profiteering from Russia's war in Ukraine. Nope. It was all over ... a balloon.
On Sunday, Beijing issued a strongly worded statement a day after US fighter jets shot down a Chinese spy balloon that entered American airspace last week. President Joe Biden waited until the balloon was over water just off the South Carolina coast to authorize the operation – officially to avoid putting US civilians and infrastructure at risk and perhaps to respond to pressure from Republicans who'd chided him for not shooting it down earlier.
The discovery of the snoop balloon made US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancel his weekend trip to Beijing, which would have been the first by a top US diplomat in five years. And Biden’s decision to shoot it down throws a wrench into a US-China rapprochement that had been in the works since Biden and Xi Jinping had a nicer-than-expected chat at the G-20 summit in Bali last November. While certainly weird, this doesn't seem like a crisis that can't be overcome.
Why? For one thing, it's not in China's interest to escalate further over such a bizarre incident, which was, if we believe Beijing’s official explanation, accidental as the balloon veered off course due to strong winds. For another, if Xi was testing the US president to see how he’d respond, now he knows.
Still, the aerial drama does raise the stakes for future misunderstandings, miscalculations, and overreactions coming from both sides. As China expert Michael Hirson explains in this Twitter thread, it’s “simultaneously amusing and worrying because that’s the stage of the US-China relationship we’ve entered: absurd and also dangerous. Dr. Strangelove isn't here yet, but he's knocking."
Khamenei's (non) amnesty for Iranian protesters
To mark the 44th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution on Sunday, Iran’s supreme leader reportedly pardoned and reduced the sentences of "tens of thousands" of people — including some arrested in ongoing anti-government protests that started last September. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for the first time acknowledged the scale of the demonstrations against the regime, perhaps the largest since the mullahs came to power. But just as there were big caveats to the supposed review of the country’s headscarf law two months ago, the same is true with the regime's "clemency": It excludes all dual nationals, Iranians convicted of the most serious offenses, and those accused of lesser crimes who refuse to admit and express regret. So most detainees will continue languishing in jail as they await trial. (Human rights groups say some 20,000 people have been arrested so far, four have been executed by hanging, and around 100 are on death row.) With his announcement, Khamenei is showing anything but mercy to those calling for the end of the regime.The high price of isolation
Think it’s good to be the king? Consider for a moment the predicaments facing the small group of men (virtually all of them are men) who rule Russia, China, and Iran. Vladimir Putin and his accomplices, Xi Jinping and his functionaries, and those who make rules in the Islamic Republic all contend with a basic set of problems that obstruct vital flows of information within their respective countries. That creates serious problems for them — and for the rest of us.
Rulers in Russia, China, and Iran can’t know what their people really think. There are no reliable polls to help them measure the frustrations and fears that led, for example, to hundreds of thousands of young men fleeing Russia to avoid military service in Ukraine. Likewise, Beijing couldn’t predict the large numbers of Chinese who took to the streets last autumn to directly challenge China’s zero-COVID policy, and Iranian leaders have been surprised by how many have challenged the right of police and the government to control their personal behavior and appearance.
These rulers can’t know whom to trust. In authoritarian systems, those hoping to earn and protect their privileges know that pleasing their betters is the shortest path to success. The good news that subordinates provide — we will win the war, everyone loves you, and the situation is fully under control — can never be fully trusted.
They can’t know whether their orders have been carried out. Powerful leaders often take actions that create new sets of winners and losers within the state bureaucracy. Losers within the chain of command may not pass along all of their superiors’ directives and may not invest all the money where it was intended to go (see the Russian military). They have no independent sources of information, whether from a free press or genuine opposition parties, to provide accurate information about what is and isn’t happening.
Their people don’t trust the information they receive. Many Russians, Chinese, and Iranians know their governments are not accurate sources of information. Putin says there is no new plan to conscript more soldiers, but he also said there would be no war and that the “special military operation” in Ukraine was going to plan. Many Chinese are aware that their government's actual COVID containment actions don’t match the official message. Many Iranians know that Israelis, Americans, and Europeans are not the source of their largest problems and that Iran’s government either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what the country’s young people want. In all three countries, dangerous rumors can fill the vacuum created by the state’s lack of credibility.
The rest of the world can’t trust these governments in a crisis. The daily barrage of transparently false information from Russia’s government makes it much harder to contemplate peace talks with Moscow. Why should Ukraine (or anyone else) believe any Kremlin pledge made during negotiations? Official Chinese secrecy over the impact of COVID inside China makes it much more difficult for scientists and other governments to correctly assess global risks from the virus.
Their problems can quickly become our problems. Putin’s total inability to accurately predict responses in Ukraine and the West began a war with impacts on food and fuel prices that are inflicting pain all over the world. The Chinese Communist Party’s compulsion to control flows of information within the country’s borders may well have triggered the entire pandemic and could allow for the emergence of new COVID variants that again cross borders. Iran’s rulers could spark conflict in the Middle East if secrecy around its nuclear program triggers confrontation with Israel, the US, or any of its neighbors.
The bottom line: Yes, democratic governments lie every day. Those who lead them have no monopoly on honesty and virtue. But the presence in these countries of independent media, of genuine opposition parties, and of laws that protect the rights of citizens to speak their mind all provide hope that the harm these governments and their lies can impose on others might be much more easily exposed and contained than in places where a few powerful people call almost all the shots.
Masih Alinejad lives in Brooklyn. Iran wants to kill her.
Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad has long been in Tehran's crosshairs, accused of being an agent of the United States.
She denies it. "I'm not an American agent. I have agency," Alinejad tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
But the regime has continued to look for ways to target her, even from her home in Brooklyn.
"In front of the eyes of free world, the Islamic Republic sent people here in New York to kill you, to assassinate you, to kidnap you. This is scary," she says. Alinejad has been living in safe houses, here in New York, for months.
"It seems that even America is not safe."
Watch the GZERO World episode: Iran v. the Islamic Republic: Fighting Iran’s gender apartheid regime
Iran v. the Islamic Republic: Fighting Iran’s gender apartheid regime
Woman, life, freedom. Those three words have filled the streets of Iran since the ongoing women-led protests against the regime, the biggest since 2009, began last September.
How did Iranian women get here? How has the theocracy responded so far? And what might come next?
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, a sworn enemy of the Supreme Leader; it's widely believed that Iranian spies have tried to kidnap and assassinate her here in New York.
From Alinejad's perspective, the regime is afraid like never before because the protests have achieved unity among Iranians for the first time. And many even cheered the national soccer team's elimination at the World Cup because some players were seen as puppets of the regime.
Her message to the West: If you want to help, don't go back to the 2015 nuclear deal and let Iranians bring about regime change on their own.
- Iran nuclear deal is dead ›
- Great Satan on the pitch, big troubles at home — Iran's World Cup dilemma ›
- What We're Watching: Iran protests spread, Putin mobilizes, NY sues Trumps, China faces slow growth ›
- Why Iran’s protests are different this time ›
- Podcast: After Mahsa Amini: Iran’s fight for freedom, with Masih Alinejad ›
Podcast: After Mahsa Amini: Iran’s fight for freedom, with Masih Alinejad
Listen: Iran is being rocked by its most significant protests since the Green Movement of 2009. Since September, hundreds of thousands of young and mostly female demonstrators have filled the streets of nearly every major city from Tehran to Tabriz, many discarding their headscarves at great personal risk to protest draconian societal rules and restrictions. The backlash from security forces has been brutal, though (except in the Kurdish region) the government has yet to send in the Revolutionary Guard.
Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World podcast to discuss. Where will these protests lead, and what are the geopolitical implications for the region, and for the West? Alinejad shares her views on the unprecedented unity among the Iranian protesters, her personal experience being targeted by the Iranian government even after moving to the United States, and why the Iranian men's World Cup team does not deserve sympathy.
Iran's morality police: not disbanded
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. There's plenty to talk about around the world but I wanted to focus a little bit on Iran. We've had over two months of demonstrations across the entire country, grassroots, mostly young people, led by women in opposition to the morality police and the incredibly oppressive treatment that women in particular have in that country, not least of which, the forced wearing of the hijab under penalty of arrest.
Now, it's very interesting that over the course of the weekend, there was all sorts of headlines put out that the Iranian government announced that they were abolishing the morality police, and if that were true, it would be a big deal. Remember, Iran, for over two months, the only response to the demonstrations has been repression, and the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, came out just a week ago and said that he would not listen to the voice of the people. He absolutely rejected that, and instead, what we've seen is more arrests and increasingly, we're seeing harsh sentences being put against those people that have been involved in demonstrations. In some cases, even the death sentence.
If the morality police were actually abolished, that would be a big deal and there were major headlines in the New York Times and the BBC and Reuters and others that indeed made that announcement. Unfortunately, that's not what actually is happening. This was one government official who said that it was closed in response to a press conference question, the morality police, as opposed to suspended or abolished. And in that regard, it doesn't mean that it was disbanded.
Indeed, when this what they call guidance force, that's the literal term of the morality police, became a part of the law enforcement force under then President Ahmadinejad, you remember the Member's Only jacket guy with the beard, it was then renamed as a police force for social security. So for all we know, the statements that were made could literally be made that they don't have guidance police/morality police anymore because they've already used that name change. In other words, there's nothing thus far that shows that there is any change in actual policy or enforcement on the ground in Iran, and certainly just even today, we've seen more harsh repression against demonstrations. There's no reason to believe that.
Now, I pointed that out to the New York Times yesterday and asked them to clarify or take down their headline. They have thus far refused to do so. It feels too cute by half. It makes it seem as if the Iranian government is responding to the demands of the demonstrators, that the demonstrators are winning. That's not at all the case on the ground. I wish it were but we need the major newspapers and media outlets in the world to be honest, and when they make a mistake, admit that they make a mistake.
And I'm quite disturbed actually that this has been handled this way, especially because there are all sorts of bad actors and political actors that are willing to take a mistake like this and run with it and say that these media organizations are no good at anything. And of course, the mainstream media across the board, whether it tilts left like the New York Times or it tilts right like Fox or the Wall Street Journal, have been losing a lot of credibility over the course of the last years, especially given the preponderance of social media actors, and so this doesn't help, doesn't help at all. So we don't know about what's happened, if anything, to these police.
There is an open question as to whether or not there will be any shift as to behaviors that are tolerated, specifically the hijab. And as of right now, harassing women on the streets is an important way, a critical way that the theocratic regime in Iran exhibits its power and I think giving that up permanently will be incredibly difficult for the Iranian government to do. Now, if they were to do that, that would be a big deal. That would be an enormous win. It would weaken the theocracy significantly and it would create much more capacity for rank and file Iranians, especially women, to live their lives in a normal way, but I personally doubt it, especially in a systematic way.
I think the question of the hijab goes well beyond the morality police and it's actually turned into a barometer, a quick way of understanding who is a believer, an insider, and who is a nonbeliever, an outsider. It's a tool through which the citizen's willingness to submit to the practices that it finds oppressive and abhorrent is tested every day and imposed, from getting a driver's license to a passport to entering government buildings, women have to practice the ritual of a correctly donned hijab, and I think that that level of imposed ritual is incredibly important to the perceived legitimacy and power of the theocracy.
It is the core of what they are fighting over right now, even if that's not what they're saying on the streets, and as a consequence, I will be enormously impressed, you'll hear it from me, I'll be very happy and the outpouring of emotion that we see around the world in sympathy and alignment with these women on the streets that are taking their lives in their own hands by yelling and screaming for freedom and taking off their hijab, I think it's a huge deal. But so far, no reason to believe that the Iranian government is changing its behavior and I will believe it when I see it.
So that is where we are right now on the Iranian situation on the ground. We'll do our best to continue to get you everything we know and analyze those things we're not certain of, and we'll talk to y'all real soon. Thanks and be good.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wields the gavel as she presides over the first impeachment of President Donald Trump.
What We’re Watching: Pelosi’s farewell, #RIPTwitter, Malaysian vote, Iranian rage, UK austerity
Pelosi takes a final bow
Nancy Pelosi is standing down as leader of the Democratic Party in the US House, but she’ll remain in Congress as a representative of San Francisco. She was both the first woman to serve in the ultra-powerful role of House Speaker and a hate figure for many on the right. Pelosi’s personal toughness, Herculean fundraising prowess, and ability to hold together the typically fractious Democratic Party in the House will remain her legacy for Democrats. For Republicans, seeing her pass the gavel to one of their own in January will mark a moment of triumph in an otherwise disappointing midterm performance. In announcing her plans, Pelosi noted that “the hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus.” At a moment when both parties are led by politicians of advancing age, that’s a big step – and a trend we’ll be watching closely as a new Congress takes shape and the next race for the White House begins. Eurasia Group US Managing Director Jon Lieber says his bet is on 52-year-old Hakeem Jeffries taking the Democratic reins. If Jeffries gets the job, he'll make history as the first Black politician to lead a party in Congress.
The fate of an endangered bluebird
Are these possibly the final hours for Twitter? Will the social media company, recently purchased and immediately upended by Elon Musk, survive longer than the proverbial head of lettuce? No one really knows now, after the company announced late Thursday that its offices would be closed until Monday as it deals with mass resignations. The wave of departures was triggered by Musk’s hardass demand earlier this week that employees agree to a “hardcore” work environment or take three months of severance and be gone. Hundreds, if not thousands, evidently took option two. Taken alongside an earlier wave of Musk’s planned layoffs, some estimates say as many as three-quarters of the company’s workers could be gone now. Will Musk take the L and backtrack on his “hardcore” demand, or will he double down and try to run the company with a skeleton crew? Regardless, just weeks into the era of Musk, Twitter is looking less like the free speech “town square” that he envisioned and more like the town circus.
Malaysia’s election head-scratcher
Malaysians go to the polls Sunday to vote in their first national election since 2018, when the opposition Patakan Harapan Party ended the Barisan Nasional coalition's 60-year stranglehold on power after then-PM Najib Razak got busted in the billion-dollar 1MDB corruption scandal. Since then, though, Patakan has lost its mojo due to infighting and defections to Najib's own UMNO party, which — we kid you not — is now part of the coalition government. Further complicating things is that Patakan's new leader is Najib's old mentor, former PM Mahathir Mohamad, who's running for a seat in parliament — and perhaps the premiership for the third time — at the ripe young age of ... 97. Meanwhile, Najib is behind bars. Malaysian politics take complicated to a whole new level, but the gist of it is this: It's unlikely any party will get an outright majority, so the most likely outcome is a hung parliament that'll result in another shaky coalition or a fresh election.
Rage fuels Iran protests
“We’ll fight! We’ll die! We’ll take back Iran!” protesters are chanting in Tehran these days. And indeed, many have fought and died. At least 15 were reportedly killed on Wednesday night, including a 9-year-old boy, amid widespread demonstrations against Iran’s repressive regime and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The country has been rocked by protests since mid-September, when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by cops for wearing her hijab “improperly.” The last couple of days have seen commemorative demonstrations to mark the deadly Nov. 2019 protests that erupted over fuel prices. The Islamic Republic is reportedly growing concerned by the increasing violence involved in demonstrations, with government rhetoric referring to “armed” protesters as “separatists” and even “terrorists.” Thousands have been arrested, and at least four protesters have been sentenced to death. We’ll be watching this weekend with concern for how heated and deadly things get.
Britain braces for economic hardship
2022 has been tough for Brits — and the next 18 months will be even worse. On Thursday, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt finally unveiled his much-awaited fiscal plan, the first under PM Rishi Sunak, warning families that their living standards could fall by as much as 7% until at least mid-2024. Nixing almost all of the tax-cutting yet free-spending "mini-budget" that cost Liz Truss her premiership a month ago, Hunt confirmed big tax hikes and spending cuts that Downing St. cannot avoid in order to keep the UK's finances in check amid a deep economic crisis and energy crunch. The chancellor's message was dark: Brits will need to tighten their belts to get through this rough patch. Still, how the people cope with austerity could determine Sunak’s political fate. The newly minted PM is not required to call a new election until the end of 2024, but he might not have a choice if voters blame him for their dire straits. And that's just what the opposition Labour Party — now leading the polls by more than 40 points, its biggest margin ever — is waiting for.This was featured in Signal, the daily politics newsletter of GZERO Media. For smart coverage of global affairs that normal people can understand, subscribe here.