Arash Azizi is deeply familiar with how important it is for a protest movement to channel public discontent into concrete and strategic steps. Azizi, a U.S.-based writer and historian, roots his political commentary and activism in hope for his native Iran’s future, while remaining grounded in organizational and institutional realities.

In September 2022, the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was violently arrested by the Iranian religious morality police for not complying with strict requirements for how to wear a hijab triggered massive protests across Iran. These protests became the largest uprising in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran and represented the most significant challenge to the regime since it came to power following the 1979 revolution.

The demonstrations, later dubbed “Woman, Life, Freedom” — a slogan initially used by Kurdish women during conflict between the Turkish government and Kurdish militants in the 1980s — evolved into a broader call for profound social and political change against systemic oppression and authoritarian rule, with women at the forefront.

Now, over two years since the protests erupted, the movement has lost momentum. Headlines about protests in Iran have largely disappeared from international media. Iran is now more frequently mentioned in the context of the war in Gaza and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed political party and paramilitary group based in Lebanon. More recently, tensions between Iran and Israel rose sharply following the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which has been attributed to Israel, and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, which targets Hezbollah forces. Iran and Israel have also exchanged direct military attacks in the more recent weeks.

Azizi, who is a contributing writer to the Atlantic and prolific political commentator in Western media, has covered various aspects of the revolution and its aftermath extensively. His book, “What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom,” published in January 2024, is the first comprehensive study of the latest uprising. The book, described as a “document of real optimism” by the Guardian, explores the intersectionality of the challenges Iranians face.

In May 2024, a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, his foreign minister and six other senior officials, crashed in northern Iran and killed all aboard. The government’s final inquiry attributed the crash to bad weather. This led to snap presidential elections held on June 28, 2024 — first round — and July 5, 2024 — second round — that resulted in an unexpected victory for Masoud Pezeshkian, seen as a reform candidate within the context of Iran’s political system.

K2.0 spoke with Azizi, who lives in New York, via video call about the situation in Iran after the presidential election, his insightful book on the revolution and the necessary conditions for advancing street protests to a political platform with real promise.

K2.0: Let’s start with the current situation in Iran. What’s going on now? Judging by reports in international media, there’s a perception that the situation with the protests has toned down.

Arash Azizi: The protests have obviously faded. There are no daily mass protests like there were at the top of the movement. Nevertheless, there is a lot of struggle. Iranian prisons are full, and they’re full of many people who have been very recently arrested: feminist activists, trade unionists, civil society activists, journalists.

There’s a lot of struggle going on, on a lot of levels. Women still engage in mass disobedience by refusing to wear the hijab, there’s still a lot of that. But obviously, the protests have subsided. The reality is that none of the conditions that led to the protests have been really solved. None of the problems that led to the protests have been solved. 

Iran remains in a very terrible state. It’s economically disastrous, politically repressive and internationally isolated. If you look at the presidential candidates, even though they’re all pro-regime candidates, all of them promised to change things — no one is saying “everything is great.” 

Even the most pro-regime candidates have to admit that the economy, especially, is doing very badly. They all have to promise that they’ll fix things, and they’ll make them better. That’s the summation of the situation in Iran right now. We’re in a very dire situation.

You mentioned the conditions that haven’t changed after the revolution, the latest uprising. What were those conditions? What were the key factors that laid the groundwork for the uprising?

Iran is in a sort of political impasse. Iranians have been fighting against certain things for a very long time.

There are a few of these conditions. One, it’s a situation of social repression. By social repression, I don’t mean political repression. It’s social repression. That means Iranians have to contend with tons of rules that limit the most ordinary things, especially if you’re a woman.

Everything is banned in Iran: you cannot wear what you want, you have to cover your hair, you cannot drink what you want; you cannot eat what you want, you cannot have the “wrong hairstyle,” even if you’re a man. 

There is a crusade against Western culture. You cannot consume Western products. Playing cards can be banned because they can be seen as gambling tools. You can be arrested in Iran if you are a young man and a young woman just walking together, even without holding hands. People were stopped and asked about their relationship, and if they were walking with someone they were not related to, they could have been arrested.

It is a very complicated regime of social repression, the likes of which don’t really exist anywhere else in the world; maybe Taliban’s Afghanistan is the only way to contend with it. So people are protesting against that because Iranians are a very diverse bunch — they have different habits, but they want to live a normal life.

There is, of course, political repression that’s also usual in other countries in the Middle East. Obviously if you criticize the Supreme Leader Khamenei in any way, or if you criticize other officials of the regime, you can be arrested. 

But a third one that is perhaps the most important one, the determining factor, is the terrible economy. The Iranian economy is in free fall. Look — it’s not as bad as, let’s say, Venezuela; people don’t lack basic things, but there is no future. Iranians were hoping Iran would become the next South Korea, not that it would be like the next North Korea. It’s not what people really expected. There’s a gap between expectation and the current economic conditions.

These conditions as a whole, social and political repression, international isolation leading to economic destruction, have made a lot of Iranians severely unhappy, and they’ve come out time and time again to try to change these conditions. They did so in massive street protests in 2009, 2018, 2019, 2020 and in 2022 and 2023. These are the problems that lead to Iranians being unhappy and them trying to take extraordinary political action to make things better for themselves.

It was curious to me that you started writing the book around the time the protests erupted, or shortly after. Usually, historians and researchers prefer to wait for some time to pass to gain more clarity and historical distance, which allows for a more all-encompassing approach. Why did you choose to write the book so quickly, and what was the process behind it? 

I like this question. This is a very vivid topic with a different reception, so if you ask me this question two months or a year from now I would have a different explanation.

First of all — I wanted a political manifesto. I wanted to write it in the midst of a movement, in the heat of the movement, and I wanted for Iranians to be able to speak out in their own voices to the world because this is a political document. It’s not a book of history. Even though I’m a historian, I’m also a political activist. This is really a political manifesto; it is not a sort of dispassionate study of a movement many years after it has finished, although I’m not dispassionate in my history writings anyway. As I see it, we are at a turning point in our history, and I wanted to write from the standpoint of this moment.

Reviewers have noted your book’s “real optimism.” Although the movement now faces uncertainty, how optimistic are you about the future?

Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci liked to say that we should have an optimism of the will and a pessimism of analysis, and I adopt the same approach. Those of us who want to make a better Iran and want to make a better world need to always be optimistic that it is possible and put our best to it. There is nothing else we can do.

But, if one is to also be clear-eyed, if you will, and not self-deluding, the reality is that Iranian civic, progressive and democratic movements have failed to build the political organization and leadership that is necessary to bring about a democratic change. Am I optimistic that we’ve learned from this failure, at least? Unfortunately, no.

How do you progress from that kind of uprising movement to a political platform?

What we need is a democratic movement with political leaders that build political vehicles, political organizations, and we don’t have that, unfortunately. In this regard we are worse than we were 15 years ago, in every way.

For example, there was an attempt to build an opposition political coalition that failed quickly and miserably. I’ve been talking about a book I recently read, by Vincent Bevins, called “If We Burn.” It’s about what he calls the decade of mass protests in the 2010s, a decade in which there were tons of protests around the world, most of which haven’t led anywhere. In some cases things have gotten even worse. 

The lessons that come out of that book are clear — that happens because the protesters are not able to build organizations that are representative, that can bring their goals into fruition. This is especially true for a democratic movement. If you want to fight a dictatorship like the Islamic Republic [of Iran] you need to have organization, clear ideas and unity around certain principles. Unfortunately, that’s not the moment. In this sense, I’m not very optimistic about Iran.

But what is optimistic in my analysis is that the Islamic Republic and its ideology have failed, and they belong to the past. This is not just wishful thinking, I really think it’s true. [Supreme Leader] Ayatollah Khamenei is a devout revolutionary, but he has failed to build the next generation of true loyalists to his regime. If you look at the presidential candidates [from the most recent election], someone like [Mohammad Bagher] Ghalibaf, who was the frontrunner, doesn’t have an ideological bone in his body. He’s a technocrat.

How scared or how vulnerable was the regime during this uprising? 

I think it was very scared and it was very vulnerable. The vulnerability comes from the fact that they know people don’t like it. The vast majority of the people don’t like the regime, and this is very important. Many people don’t have a good reason to support it and they want to get rid of it.

Also, most of the neighbors of Iran and the international community are not super happy with it. It’s a hated government on so many levels. So I think they definitely panicked. 

Frankly, Ayatollah Khamenei has learned something very well, which is not to compromise in moments of crisis. He could have fired five people, could have changed the president even, but he doesn’t do stuff like that because he’s worried that that will only embolden people to come out. It seems to be a correct calculation, frankly, because he doesn’t give in an inch and he’s able to win. 

He’s able to win because of two factors. First, the sheer brutality of the security forces, which are, after all, considerable and organized and not easy to crack. The second is the absolute inability, ineptitude and uselessness of the opposition. Despite having very favorable conditions, it just hasn’t been able to build even a semblance of an alternative to the regime or offer even a semblance of a strategy.

Because of these factors, even though he’s been very threatened, Khamenei has been able to keep his rule.

One of the things that impressed me about your book is that you use many examples of the challenges Iranians face in their everyday lives. These challenges are often overlooked in books about revolutions, which typically focus on political battles and power struggles between the government and the opposition. Your book is more colorful; you highlight labor union strikes, animal preservation efforts and more. What led you to take this approach?

I wanted the book to be a manifesto to answer the question: what is it that Iranians want? Why are they coming out? Usually the analysis has a negative tone. Even now, I’m giving you a sort of a negative answer, concentrating on the things about the government that we don’t like. In the book I try to do it in a more positive approach. I try to explain the visions of Iranians who’ve been fighting for a very long time to get these things. In a way, the book is a history of the last quarter of the century of Iranians struggling for a different Iran.

Feminists want a country with gender equality. Trade unions want better workers’ rights and workers’ control of their industries; more public ownership and public control which is under threat of privatization. There is a struggle against what it is called the commercialization of education. Environmentalists are worried about the destruction of Iran’s environment, which is very much linked to the regime’s corruption. So as you said, yes, I tried to give a colorful picture so that people understand that this is not a struggle only for raw power.

It’s not just about “we want Mr. A instead of Mr. B,” but we want them to have an expansive social, political, gender agenda for freedom and equality.

I’ve noticed that you’re also an activist and you don’t limit yourself only to your research and writings. How hard is it to juggle activism and the necessity of being objective in your writings and publications?

I don’t think it’s hard at all, I think everybody has a perspective. It’s a sort of particular mode and positionality that matters. As a historian, I’ve always seen myself within the grand tradition of historians whose work always contains politics within. And I believe everybody’s work has politics. Not everybody is a political activist, but everybody’s work is political. Sometimes it’s acknowledged, sometimes not.

I don’t see it as a particular problem. I come from a Marxist tradition — Marx strongly believed that you should study the world as it is, an element at the center of materialism. In a way, it’s all  about not lying to yourself. Marx, Engels, Lenin or Rosa Luxembourg — they love quoting many people. They don’t just quote leftists in their writings. They usually cite a lot of different books written by right-wingers or capitalists because they care about the world as it is.

Unfortunately, there’s a tradition on the left today where people just sort of lie to themselves or when a question is inconvenient, they put it aside.

If you look at, for example, my first book about [General Qasem] Soleimani, I wrote it as someone who’s not a big fan of Soleimani. But I know for a fact that there are people who like Soleimani and who have read the book. Perhaps at some point during reading they start not liking it, but I think if they maintain a bit of an open mind, they’ll admit that I’m not trying to be didactic, I’m not trying to force my politics down someone’s throat, but I’m trying to genuinely tell a story about who Soleimani was and help us understand him and forces around him.

My politics dictates or helps determine the sort of questions I ask and the way I look at the world. As I said, I think that’s true with everybody, it’s just that some of us are more explicit about it.

What is your relationship with Iran currently? When’s the last time you were there?

Like most people who are critical of the government, I cannot go to Iran. I haven’t been to Iran since 2008.

Masoud Pezeshkian won, somewhat surprisingly, in the latest presidential elections. What were your first thoughts?

The first fact about Pezeshkian is that the establishment led by Ayatollah Khamenei allowed him to run, which shows that there’s a tendency amongst them to give a little bit of power back to the centrists of the regime, to the reformists. They understood that hardliner domination of all branches of the government had narrowed the base of the regime too much and put it on the path of more confrontation with the West.

The people of Iran mostly didn’t vote in the elections. As you know, 60% boycotted the first round, 50% boycotted the second round. The 10-point difference tells us that the people of Iran are disillusioned with this system, but at the same time, they wanted to prevent [Said] Jalili’s victory and say no to hardliners, advocating for a path of more reconciliation with the West, which is central to the Iranian economy. Even Khamenei himself has acknowledged that the economy is of central priority for the government. 

Pezeshkian represents those among Iranian people who want less confrontation with the West, more reconciliation and a priority to economic development, acknowledging the Iranian economy has been rather battered.

What are your expectations of the new presidency?

Pezeshkian wants to reconcile with the West. He wants a deal, something like what Iran had in 2015 with the Western countries over its nuclear program [The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between Iran and China, France, Russia, U.K., U.S. and EU in 2015. The U.S. withdrew from the deal in 2018 under President Donald Trump]. 

The architects of that deal are all back in power under Pezeshkian. Javad Zarif, who was foreign minister, effectively ran as Pezeshkian’s running mate. He is now vice president for strategic affairs. And Zarif’s main deputies in those talks under [former President Hassan] Rouhani in 2013 and 2015 are all back in government.

The contradiction of the Islamic Republic is that it wants a deal with the West because it understands that it needs sanctions lifted in order to economically progress, but the core policies of the regime are of confrontation with the West through support for militias and a new confrontation with Israel.

How much has the latest uprising influenced the last presidential elections? 

That’s a good question. I’m not sure if it has influenced it much. It’s a tough question. There are a few ways to think about this. 

Presidential elections in Iran are not free or fair, they’re very limited to certain programs. There are a lot of candidates and there is a body of clerics and jurists called the Guardian Council that decide who gets to run.

The opposition leadership abroad failed to really bring about change or to lead a movement, and this might have given a new life to the reformists inside, because reformists looked useless before, and they look useless today, too. There’s some sort of a competition, if you will, between reformists within Iran and the opposition abroad.

The reformists say: “Look, the opposition abroad couldn’t do anything for you, they couldn’t even put together five people, they couldn’t even bring a coalition, so maybe you should just come out and vote for us now that there’s an opportunity for someone like Pezeshkian.” 

This is the kind of argument they’re likely to make in the near future. The failure of the opposition movement and the failure of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement to bring change will have made a difference. This is one of the ways in which I think the movement has affected Iranian politics and elections.

I am more interested in this. What is the opposition abroad and how did they fail to lead the movement?

There are different sorts of groups and personalities that constitute the Iranian opposition abroad. Around the time of the Womaen Life Freedom movement, there was a moment where they could have tried to galvanize a political alternative and give a sort of leadership to people, but they were not able to do that.

Most of the people in Iran oppose the regime. They don’t want a war with Israel, or a confrontation with the U.S.. They don’t want these policies, but they’re not organized. In politics, it’s not public opinion that matters. Public opinion doesn’t mean shit if you’re not organized. That’s just a fact of the matter.

The Iranians’ opponents to the regime are not organized. And the job of the opposition would be to get them leadership, get them an organization, and it has failed to do that. 

Another aspect is the possibility of a war between Iran and Israel will test the opposition figures in new ways. The more Iran and Israel fight, different parts of the Iranian opposition will be put within difficult conditions. This is true all the time — if you’re in opposition to a government and your country goes into a war. it’s going to be hard for you to navigate. What do you do? Do you support the foreign invasion of your country? Do you try to take a neutral position? Do you support your regime?

As far as an organized political force, Iranian opposition is mostly nonexistent. It cannot influence the events in a meaningful way, it exists mostly as a bunch of political personalities like myself, or some people who talk and have a platform, but you know it’s not the same thing as an organized political force. 

What’s the expectation in Iran for the U.S. elections?

Many in Iran are freaked out about the possibility of Trump’s return. Trump became a topic in Iranian campaign debates. They’re scared because Trump’s return means [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu will have a firmer ally in the White House.

If you look at right-wing groups in the U.S. who favor a more muscular approach to Iran, they’re all pro-Trump. So it’s clear that Iranians and the regime are afraid of someone like him coming back to power. 

I do believe that no matter who is in power in January 2025 in the U.S., Iran will try to make a deal; of course now there’s a lot that can happen before then, a lot more will happen by then, which will complicate and shape whatever the next phase of Iran decision-making is going to be. 

Feature image courtesy of Arash Azizi.

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