Why Iran Fears Its Women

Ilan Berman

Security, Middle East

Vida Movahed is spearheading a broader movement that both unifies and amplifies the disparate strains of dissent now percolating within Iran.

In late July, Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, the conservative head of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, announced publicly that the Iranian regime had identified a new “hostile government” with whom interaction was henceforth banned, punishable by up to a decade in prison. That entity wasn’t the Trump administration, which has launched an escalating campaign of economic pressure against the Islamic Republic over the past year. That entity wasn’t Israel, which Iranian officials have blamed over the years for everything from promoting global homosexuality to using pigeons as nuclear spies. Rather, the target of the blacklisting was a petite forty-two-year-old Iranian-American activist named Masih Alinejad.

At first glance, Alinejad may not seem like a particularly formidable political adversary. Slight and demure, she is unfailingly polite in person and easygoing in demeanor—at least when she isn’t speaking about the Iranian regime. A former reporter who worked for reformist news outlets before becoming fundamentally disenchanted with clerical rule, her personal story is similar to that of many others who have chosen—or been forced—to flee Iran in the four decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

But when it comes to social media, Alinejad is a bona fide powerhouse. Since 2014, her online movement, “My Stealthy Freedom,” has become a clearinghouse for photos, videos, messages and communiques from thousands of Iranian activists (mostly women, but also a growing number of men) protesting the Islamic Republic’s religious strictures. Through this campaign, Alinejad has turned into the most visible champion of a particular strain of grassroots activism that has taken root in Iran over the past two years.