Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has approved pardons for “tens of thousands” of prisoners, including members of recent anti-government protests, after receiving a letter from judiciary head Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei calling for “a number of convicts jailed following the recent riots” to be pardoned on the basis of being “deceived into wrongdoing under the influence of the enemy’s propaganda campaign,” the country’s official Islamic Republic News Agency reports. To qualify for a pardon, inmates must compose a formal statement of regret for their actions. Imprisoned dual-nationals and those accused of “spying for foreign agencies” and “corruption on earth” are barred from receiving “pardon or commute.”

Under article 110 of the Iranian Constitution, the supreme leader may enact pardons based on recommendations from the judiciary. Khamenei announced his approval ahead of February 11^th, 2023 – the 44th anniversary of the “victory” of the 1979 revolution. The date traditionally corresponds to a sizeable pardon granted by the supreme leader.

What appears to be a success on paper is exemplary of the unrealized calls for change in Iran. Jasmin Ramsey, deputy director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (C.H.R.I.), told C.N.N. that Iran has a “documented history of making lofty declarations about releasing political prisoners and not following through.” Of the 20,000 people whom Human Rights Activists News Agency estimates were arrested in connection with protests ignited in September after the death of Mahsa Amini, many have already been sequentially executed after what critics have called “hasty sham trials.” The pardon, C.H.R.I. says, is a “PR stunt” with “no grounding in reality.”

The political play appears fain to appeasement for the sake of the well-being of Iranian citizens supposedly “corrupted” by Western forces. “Since the foreign enemies and anti-revolutionary currents’ plans have been foiled, many of these youth now regret their actions,” Ejei said. But September’s agitation was a response to the 22-year-old Amini’s suspicious death three days after she was arrested in Tehran for a dress code violation. The protests spreading across Iran were women-led, highlighting the injustices of the nation’s morality police, unfair and unjust criminal trials, and repressive, out-of-touch leadership. The call for pardon, based in the claim that the demonstrations are an example of the United Kingdom’s “destructive role” in Iranian domestic conflict, attempts to frame unrest as unfounded, unprompted, and inspired by unwanted Western ideals. Rather than acknowledging the widespread outcry against the repression Iran has perpetrated, the government is rationalizing the demonstrations by shifting blame to Western nations, especially Britain.

Ultimately, the ongoing (if diminishing) protests are emblematic of an Iranian dissent that has grown since 1979: the Islamic revolution in which Ruhollah Khomeini usurped Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last Persian shah. The revolution, completed in February of 1979, was not demarcated by traditionally revolutionary circumstances, says Iranian-American scholar Saïd Amir Arjomand. Rather, economic reforms, political corruption, and a concentration on religious rules culminated in a transition that “still baffles most Western observers.” The transition of power occurred so swiftly that it is said to have taken its victors by surprise; “Victory had come before we were ready to manage it,” U.S. senior diplomats quoted then-provisional Deputy Prime Minister Sadeq Tabatabaei. The “rainbow” coalition of “Marxist-atheist, liberal agnostics, nonpracticing Moslems… [progressive Islamic students and professionals,] disgruntled job seekers, small businessmen, new industrialists, urban workers, and idle hangers-on” which led, supported, and participated in the revolution was a key factor of the shah’s defeat, says Jahangir Amouzegar, an economist, academic, and politician who served as Minister of Commerce and Minister of Finance of Iran.

But the coalition of power which enacted the change erupted into fissures after Pahlavi was ousted. 1979 did not give way to progressive, inclusive growth for Iran’s women; ultimately, the Shiite clergy were the group emboldened and empowered enough to unify and consolidate power in the chaos. New head of state Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his fellow clerics established a hegemony rooted in “traditional legitimacy” and a religious “social network.” For the first time, Shiite theology ruled a state ahead of any political leader, and for Khomeini, feminism was never on the agenda.

“Some people say the Islamic revolution is a regressive movement, but accepting [my – a woman’s – interview] shows the Islamic revolution is a progressive movement,” said Nooshabeh Amiri, former political editor of Kayhan and the only woman to have interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini. (The interview would later be published under the title “In Islamic Government, There is No Dictatorship,” the Washington Institute says. In March 2021, Amiri confessed that she faced heavy censorship, admitting to IranWire, “For the first time in my professional life I was introduced to the concept of fear and a situation whereby the interviewee tells you what to write.”) “We didn’t ask you to come,” Khomeini replied. “Islam doesn’t need to be progressive. Progress is not what you think.”

While a change was needed to end corruption, widespread state executions, and the Savak secret police force, the past four decades have revealed that the new ruling elite gave rise to its own repressive forces. Obvious examples include the nation’s modesty laws, wherein women are made to obey a subjectively enforced, ultraconservative dress code to in order to cement clergymen’s vision of Islamic family and society. A survey published by the Iranian parliament in 2018 revealed that between 60 to 70% of Iranian women do not strictly follow “the Islamic dress code” in public. This leaves the decision of enforcement up to the morality police, who prosecute an estimated 16,000 women annually for dress-code violations under vague, punitive laws. The imbalance of power is glaring.

This Shiite clergy’s vision of Islamic life has become an unfortunate reality. Religious restrictions go beyond clothes; even how people socialize and what foods they consume have been regulated. Women lack individual freedoms, opportunities for self-expression, and equity with their male counterparts, and rather than listening to female citizens, Iran has engaged in a slew of human rights violations to squash protests, re-inforce hardline Islamic philosophy, and censor free speech.

The Iranian regime may shortly come to regret shutting these women’s voices out. In 2017, the Carnegie Endowment identified Iran as “midway through a favorable demographic window in which its working-age population greatly outnumbers young and elderly dependents” – a demographic change which could be capitalized on, or could induce “pressure to reform the country’s broken social insurance system and prepare its healthcare system for a future, just twenty-five years away when one in five Iranian adults are projected to be over sixty-five years old.”

Alongside a massive change in age demographic, Iran has also seen a vast increase in its female educated population. According to the Iran Primer, female adult literacy more than tripled from 24% in 1976 to 81% in 2016. Additionally, the percentage of women in higher education (tertiary) increased by nearly 20 times, from 3% in 1978 to 59% in 2018.

With more women given the tools to be educated but deprived of the opportunity to put their knowledge to use, the Iranian regime is fueling a civilian-led course correction. The women of Iran deserve to be heard.

To build trust between officials and ordinary citizens, the regime must acknowledge the harm done at the hand of its administrators. Excessive force, beatings, executions, and unfounded arrests need to end. Officials should acknowledge the protests, and the calls of the protestors, and open their minds to what their people have to say. Elected leaders should reframe their allegiance to their constituents rather than absolute power.

International communities need to recognize and acknowledge the protests in Iran to put human rights violations into the light. Iran cannot use its religion as a curtain to hide behind. The world and the Iranian people should hold Iran’s government accountable for the blatant abuse of power that they once claimed to have removed.