Iranian police reportedly detained a younger girl who stripped to her underwear to protest the nation’s Islamic costume code. In keeping with the AFP, the unidentified girl had been harassed in Tehran’s Islamic Azad College by members of the Basij paramilitary drive who ripped her headband and garments.
Iranian information company IRNA reported that the college’s Public Relations Director, Amir Mahjoub issued a press release attributing the scholar’s act to her “being underneath psychological strain”.
This incident comes two days earlier than the forty fifth anniversary of the storming of the US embassy in Tehran. On November 4, 1979, militants in Iran overran the embassy and took dozens of Individuals hostage, holding them captive for over 14 months.
We clarify what unfolded on today in 1979 and the way this cemented the impression of the Islamic revolution on Iranian society.
How did the Islamic Revolution in 1979 simmer into widespread discontent towards the US?
In February 1979, the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was toppled by opposition forces aligned with the Shia cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The 1978-79 Islamic Revolution ended Iran’s monarchy and changed it with the Islamic Republic.
Whereas the Shah was praised within the West for his modernising reforms, he was blamed in Iran for utilizing autocratic strategies, and for not doing sufficient to cut back financial inequality.
Whereas Ayatollah Khomeini was stridently towards the US, anger towards America had simmered in Iran lengthy earlier than the Islamic Revolution. The CIA and the UK’s MI6 had collaborated to orchestrate the coup through which the favored Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, thought-about by many to face firmly for secular values and opposition to Western interference in Iranian affairs, was overthrown in 1953.
Mosaddegh was succeeded by the chief of the coup d’état (often known as the 28 Mordad coup), Basic Fazlollah Zahedi, a political change that strengthened the monarchical rule of the Shah.
The Shah fled Iran in January 1979 and travelled from nation to nation searching for protected haven. Khomeini returned from political exile on February 1.
Issues got here to a head in October when information reviews broke of the Shah present process therapy within the US with the help of President Jimmy Carter’s administration. All hell broke free in Iran.
The storming of the US embassy
On November 4, college students who had initially deliberate a sit-in on the embassy, compelled a takeover of the premises, taking 98 Individuals hostage. Just a few hostages managed to flee and had been in a position to go away Iran with the assistance of Canada’s ambassador. The scholars demanded the return of the deposed Shah, who was being handled at a New York hospital. They had been endorsed by Ayatollah Khomeini, who hoped to use the recognition of the takeover to increase his regime’s energy.
From November 4, 1979, the hostages remained in Iran for 444 days, till January 20, 1981.
Within the first week of their detention, the Iranian militants claimed that the US diplomatic personnel had been members of an “espionage unit”. In mid-November, Khomeini ordered the discharge of ladies and black hostages, in addition to some non-Individuals.
In April 1980, the US introduced that it had unsuccessfully tried to rescue the detainees in a navy operation. Iran displayed the stays of the useless American troopers on the embassy compound, a lot to international chagrin.
The remaining 52 hostages had been lastly launched on January 20, 1981, after an settlement was reached between Iran and the US. The announcement was made about 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as US President.
In keeping with some accounts, Reagan’s victory within the 1980 election was made doable by an alleged arms-for-hostages negotiation by his camp colluding with Iran to delay the discharge of the hostages till after the election concluded. Former Iran President, Abolhassan Banisadr, who presided over a lot of the hostage disaster, wrote in his e-book, ‘My Flip to Converse: Iran, the Revolution & Secret Offers with the U.S.’, that he had “proof of contacts between Khomeini and the supporters of Ronald Reagan as early because the spring of 1980”.
How did Iran’s panorama change after 1981?
Following the Islamic Revolution and the next political disaster, Iran underwent vital modifications that reshaped its social, political, and financial panorama. The brand new regime, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, carried out strict Islamic legal guidelines and rules, drastically altering the every day lives of Iranian residents. This included the enforcement of necessary hijab for ladies, restrictions on Western influences, and a shift in the direction of a extra conservative interpretation of Islamic ideas in governance and society.
The financial system was additionally restructured, with the federal government taking management of many industries and implementing insurance policies geared toward self-sufficiency. Worldwide relations had been severely impacted, notably with Western nations, resulting in many years of isolation and sanctions. These modifications had far-reaching penalties for Iran’s growth, its function in international politics, and the lives of its residents.
In recent times, Iran has seen country-wide protests for ladies’s rights. In 2022, there was a global outcry following the custodial demise of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for carrying her hijab ‘improperly’. The following Lady, Life, Freedom motion noticed girls eradicating their hijabs in public, chopping their hair, and demanding better freedoms.
The Iranian authorities’s response to those protests was extreme, leading to quite a few arrests, accidents, and reported deaths. Regardless of the crackdown, the motion has continued to resonate each inside Iran and internationally, drawing consideration to the continued battle for ladies’s rights within the nation.
That is an up to date model of an explainer revealed in 2019.
