{"id":442,"date":"2026-03-04T08:25:47","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T08:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gold-tapir-911468.hostingersite.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/04\/revolution-theocracy-and-the-price-to-pay-for-women-the-age-of-khamenei-and-its-reckoning\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T13:38:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T13:38:41","slug":"revolution-theocracy-and-the-price-to-pay-for-women-the-age-of-khamenei-and-its-reckoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/04\/revolution-theocracy-and-the-price-to-pay-for-women-the-age-of-khamenei-and-its-reckoning\/","title":{"rendered":"Revolution, Theocracy and the Price to Pay for Women: The Age of Khamenei and Its Reckoning"},"content":{"rendered":"

The politics of the Islamic Republic were not abstract when I visited Iran in 2014.They were part of the fabric of daily life.<\/p>\n

We strolled through the streets of Tehran and Isfahan with vodka quietly tipped into water bottles, an act of muted normalcy in a country where alcohol is outlawed and moral policing formally enshrined. Around us, women glided enshrouded in veils and lightly bound hijabs. But underneath those coverings were surely independent, educated, articulate women speaking differently, carefully but unmistakably of their desire for freedom.<\/p>\n

The morality police were everywhere in Tehran, watching clothing, posture and movement a constant reminder that the public sphere was patrolled as much for safety as to ensure compliance with the state\u2019s moral code.<\/p>\n

I was kicked out of a museum once for wearing red, which was inappropriate in public. And one time, while I was sitting inside a restaurant in Tehran, it was shut down on the spot after a woman refused to put her hijab back on. These were not headline-grabbing moments. They were routine enforcement actions.<\/p>\n

The control was constant, sometimes subtle and sometimes savage. They dictated how women walked, socialised, dressed, laughed and took up space. Autonomy was qualified, and visibility closely controlled.<\/p>\n

Those experiences demonstrated that in Iran, religion and politics are interwoven, even where they should be separate. What was enforced wasn\u2019t belief, but authority over women\u2019s bodies.<\/p>\n

When the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran in February 1979, he did not arrive following a standard democratic transition. He arrived at the peak of a revolutionary surge that had overthrown the US-backed Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in an explosion of dissatisfaction with authoritarian rule, corruption, inequality and repression. Many felt they were fighting for political freedom and dignity.<\/p>\n

What they got instead was a theocratic state.<\/p>\n

If the revolution was collective, the state that emerged from it bore Khomeini\u2019s ideological stamp.<\/p>\n

Fundamentalism as State Doctrine<\/h2>\n

Khomeini was not merely conservative or religious; he was a religious fundamentalist who wanted to recast the state around clerical authority. The Islamic Republic\u2019s constitution was not just an encapsulation of Islamic values; it enshrined unelected religious oversight over elected institutions.<\/p>\n

Although the Islamic Republic would hold an elected president and parliament, ultimate constitutional authority lay with an unelected Supreme Leader who wielded sweeping control over the armed forces, the judiciary, state media, as well as critical appointments and strategic decisions. Proposed legislation could be vetoed if found to contravene Islamic principles, and candidates standing for election were adjudged by clerical organisations.<\/p>\n

Sovereignty was shared, but there were clear dominances: The Supreme Leader became the final arbiter of political life. Elected officials could seem to govern, only within boundaries that clerical oversight would define. Over time, this design limited political pluralism and diffused accountability, undermining pathways of peaceful reform while embedding causal mechanisms against change.<\/p>\n

This remained the model long after Khomeini\u2019s death in 1989, when Ali Khamenei took over and further entrenched the security state that governed Iran for more than three decades.<\/p>\n

To most Iranians alive today, the system cannot be disentangled from Khamenei\u2019s rule.<\/p>\n

On dissent and repression<\/h2>\n

Under Khamenei, that fusion of clerical authority and coercive force matured into a security apparatus deeply enmeshed within the fabric of national life. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had grown into a political and economic powerhouse, extending its influence beyond the military to become a leading player in industry, infrastructure and strategic policy.<\/p>\n

Elections continued to serve a limited political choice of candidates, as electoral competition narrowed over time by way of candidate vetting and barring more reformist and moderate individuals [in the wake] of the exclusionary policies put in place by the Guardian Council without formally taking elections away. Reformist openings did emerge from time to time, but were very tightly confined within an ideological framework.<\/p>\n

Repression ensued whenever public murmurs spilled past institutional threshold. Like the 2009 Green Movement protests, which erupted over disputed presidential election results, they were met with mass arrests, media blackouts and violent crackdowns.<\/p>\n

A decade later, in 2019, protests over fuel prices led to security forces reportedly killing hundreds within days. And the most recent uprising of December 2025 January 2026 was suppressed in a brutal fashion, with thousands reportedly killed. Each episode hit home the same point: dissent might erupt, but it could not truly change the system.<\/p>\n

These were not foreign conspiracy. They were native-born expressions of exasperation with economic hardship, political exclusion and social control. But the constitutional architecture of the Islamic Republic allows little institutional room for dissent to become structural reform.<\/p>\n

Protest again and again has run up against repression.<\/p>\n

Khamenei didn\u2019t create the system. But for 36 years, he kept it and strengthened it.<\/p>\n

The Erosion of Women\u2019s Rights<\/h2>\n

Women\u2019s rights had started eroding in 1979, and the trend continued under Khamenei.<\/p>\n

Before the revolution, Iranian women enjoyed expanded rights in family law, education and employment – unevenly spread but legally enshrined.<\/p>\n

After the revolution, the mandatory hijab was instituted, the Family Protection Law was dismantled, the legal marriage age for girls was lowered, testimony and inheritance rights were codified as inequitable and gender segregation was institutionalised in public life.<\/p>\n

Women protested forced veiling as early as March 1979. These people were derided as Westernised or counter-revolutionary.<\/p>\n

The need for legislation to comply with clerical reading has regularly put constitutional ceilings on reform. For its part, the morality-policing apparatus became a day-to-day tool of ideological enforcement, as my own experience makes clear.<\/p>\n

That enforcement became a name and a face when, in September 2022, it was one that came to have its own article. A 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died after being arrested by the morality police in Tehran for allegedly not wearing her hijab correctly.<\/p>\n

Her death sparked widespread protests under the banner \u201cWoman, Life, Freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Protests quickly spread to cities and universities, as women publicly pulled off and burned their hijabs, cut their hair in defiance and demanded not just changes to dress but a change of system. The demonstrations quickly expanded from mandatory veiling to also include political repression and economic hardship, as well as the entire structure of clerical rule itself.<\/p>\n

The state responded with wholesale arrests, internet blackouts, and deadly repressions. Hundreds were said to have been killed, thousands detained. But the protests came in one of the most sustained and openly feminist upheavals in the history of an Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n

The origins of that defiance date to 1979.<\/p>\n

Is this the end of Theocracy?<\/h2>\n

Khamenei’s death in US attacks actually breaks the political balance, but it definitely does not destroy the system he kept running. As per the design, the Islamic Republic’s structure was made for long-term continuation. The system was built regarding maintaining stability over time.<\/p>\n

As per Iran’s constitution, the Supreme Leader is selected by the Assembly of Experts, and regarding these members, they must pass through many levels of religious checking. Also, we are seeing that choosing the next leader is not only about following the constitution but also needs agreement from top religious leaders and the Revolutionary Guard, which is one of the most powerful groups in Iran.<\/p>\n

Mojtaba Khamenei, who is only the second son of Ali Khamenei, has now come forward as the next leader. For many years, people believed he had strong power working secretly with his father’s close group. Moreover, he kept peace with important leaders in the Revolutionary Guard and traditional religious networks.held many official government positions. Moreover, his ties to this strict faction remain strong despite his limited formal political roles.<\/p>\n

His political thinking only follows the same ideas that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini started and his father kept alive. Experts and old officials are linking Mojtaba to how conservative leaders only made their power stronger during the 2009 election problems, when the government used force to stop the Green Movement protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning again. Basically, critics said his influence back then showed he was aligned with the same hardline security people who never compromise.<\/p>\n

As per earlier discussions, other people were talked about regarding who could take over the position. Ebrahim Raisi was the former president who people thought would become the next important leader before he died in 2024. Further, senior religious leaders like Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani and Ayatollah Alireza Arafi were further mentioned as acceptable figures to both the religious establishment itself and the security forces.<\/p>\n

The system itself was not made for one person, and further it works for many people together.<\/p>\n

As per current conditions, leadership regarding the organisation may change.<\/p>\n

Religious government systems was built for endurance.<\/p>\n

Leadership may change. Theocratic governance does not just evaporate.<\/p>\n

On War and Foreign Intervention<\/b><\/strong><\/h2>\n

It is important to be clear that opposing repression does not equate to supporting war.<\/p>\n

Opposition to authoritarian governance and opposition to military escalation are not mutually exclusive positions; they can and must exist together.<\/p>\n

Military escalation risks civilian harm, regional destabilisation, and long-term humanitarian consequences. It can entrench hardline factions supported by nationalist narratives, permitting regimes to recast internal dissent as foreign interference.<\/p>\n

History is replete with examples of external aggression galvanising the most intransigent forces within such authoritarian systems and closing, not opening, space for reform.<\/p>\n

In addition, externally induced political transformation rarely results in sustainable democratic institutions. Only sustainable change comes from internal civic agency and social movement development, together with structuring reform – not saturation.<\/p>\n

Airstrikes cannot guarantee the Iranian people\u2019s aspirations for dignity, equality and accountability. They demand political reform, institutional restructuring and civil society empowerment.<\/p>\n

And to confuse solidarity with military intervention is to misunderstand both.<\/p>\n

The Real Reckoning<\/h2>\n

Khomeini turned a popular movement into a clerical state that subordinated women\u2019s rights, limited political pluralism and enshrined repression in constitutions. Khamenei upheld that structure for over three decades.<\/p>\n

For many Iranian women, including those I met strolling under enforced modesty while fighting to maintain independence in quiet ways, the struggle was never about one man.<\/p>\n

A revolution is not judged by how loudly it declares freedom, but by how broadly it distributes it.<\/p>\n

Iranian women are still waiting.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Ritu Mahendru PhD\u200b\u200b<\/a><\/h3>\n

Founder and Editor in Chief, The Secularist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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