“A country can’t be free unless all women are free,” is one of the central messages of Jonathan Harounoff’s new book ‘Unveiled: Inside Iran’s #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt’ in which the British-Iranian journalist, now serving as Israel’s international spokesperson to the United Nations, explores the life of Iranian citizens – particularly women – under the Islamic Republic.
Harounoff spoke to The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday about his book, which will be released in September.
Harounoff’s grandparents are Persian Jews from Mashhad who left the country, like tens of thousands of others, before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Nearly five decades later, Iran’s Jewish population has diminished from 80,000 then to around 10,000, nevertheless (and somewhat remarkably) making it still the second largest Jewish population in the Middle East after Israel.
While he explains this in his preface, Harounoff’s book tackles the issues faced by the Iranian population as a whole, not just the nation’s Jews.
The personal attachment to the issue was key, but he also brings his professional interest and experience to the book, having been a full-time journalist covering Iran for about seven years. Then came the Mahsa Amini protests of 2022, which form the backbone of the book and its exposition of the life of the oppressed people of Iran.
“I wanted to raise awareness of the Iranian people’s struggles. The world focuses so much on what the Islamic Republic does externally, but very little interest is in what is going on with the people of Iran, what they have endured, how similar they are to people elsewhere in the world.”
Harounoff wanted to spend a “considerable amount of time writing about this one instance in modern Iranian history [2022 protests], but the book also speaks to broader Iranian history and how its people have had to rise time and time again against the regime,” Harounoff told the Post.
The Amini protests were as “close as we ever came to a current regime change,” Harounoff continued, adding that just “one spark” can change everything.
Nevertheless, he disagrees somewhat with the frequent rhetoric that “the regime is on the verge of collapse,” telling the Post that we “shouldn’t underestimate the regime.”
“It’s survived every challenge, partly because it has no problem with executing its own, with oppressing its people.”
The book notes that “Iran boasts the second-highest rate of executions in the world. On top of executing dissidents linked to the Mahsa Amini protests, 2023 saw Iran’s government embark on a vicious execution spree, with at least 853 people executed across the country, a 48 percent increase from 2022 and the highest number since 2015.”
The oppression of women
Above all, it is the oppression of women that has been fundamental to the regime in its 46-year history.
In the book, Harounoff explains “Khomeini’s words in the early days of his revolution hint at why the Mahsa Amini protests are particularly sensitive to the system he helped establish: ‘Every time a female body brushes up against a male body on a bus, a tremor shakes the edifice of our revolution.’ In other words, women were uniquely threatening to the Islamic Republic.”
So why is this?
“One of the foundational pillars of the Islamic Republic is the subjugation of women and ensuring that they always come second to men, and ensuring that women have certain obligations that would not be incumbent on men,” Harounoff told the Post.
He added that this such subjugation derived from Khomenei’s “vociferous anti-western, anti-israel approach” along with “very strict, uncompromising interpretation of Islam.”
As such, the harsh treatment of women is “so ingrained in the regime’s origins”; “It’s not the mere presence of women that is threatening, it’s the defiance of women that the Islamic Republic sees as un-Islamic, almost tantamount to treason.”
“Any deviation on this front [such as the tearing off of the hijab] would be seen as existentially threatening to the regime,” he added.
‘Unveiled’ gives the example of 16-year old Iranian vlogger Sarina
Esmailzadeh who chronicled her life in Iran, including the mundane things such as making pizza and putting on makeup and the struggles, such as conforming to the country’s strict hijab laws.
To her 20,000 subscribers, Esmailzadeh’s videos “challenge[d] some of the most deep-rooted conventions in the Islamic Republic, whether it be appearing without a headscarf, singing in public, praising Western culture, disagreeing with conventional wisdom or socializing freely with people of the opposite gender.”
In her final YouTube vlog, published on July 12, 2022, Esmailzadeh signed off with: “If I don’t see you…bye!”
“On September 23, Iranian security forces in Karaj beat Esmailzadeh to death with baton strikes to the head. Esmailzadeh’s badly beaten body was not handed back to her family for over a week [and] when authorities finally returned Esmailzadeh to her family, her body was battered beyond recognition. Security forces continued to taunt Esmailzadeh’s family until her mother, unable to cope with the murder of her daughter, hanged herself.”
Given recent reports of intense crackdowns in the country – especially amidst and in the aftermath of Israeli strikes on the country – the Post queried Harounoff as to whether the regime is becoming more oppressive.
He explained that the regime faces a dilemma during “these heightened times of tension,” whereby the regime’s leaders can either “double down or make concessions.”
“Concessions can be seen as weakness, but doubling down can run the risk of galvanising protests.”
“If recent history is any indication, the regime has been tightening control because it is weakened militarily. Since they can’t do anything on that front, they take it out on their own people.”
This has included arbitrary arrests, targeting of minorities, reports of executions and attempts to deport 4.5 million Afghans from Iran (Iran ordered Afghan refugees to leave the country by July 6).
Yet, despite the brutal oppression of its own people as described in the book, Western public support for the regime remains somewhat high. In recent weeks, there have been mass pro-regime protests abroad. In June, 15,000 took to the streets of central London holding posters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the words “Choose the right side of history,” and “hands off Iran” chants. In New York’s Times Square? “Iran, Iran makes us proud! Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!”
How come there is a complete whitewashing of the regime’s crimes?
“In these [Western] protests, waving flags of terror organizations and state sponsors of terror organizations is common,” Harounoff said. “Unfortunately, it’s trendy to support anything that’s anti-Israel.”
In other words, with Israel seen as the aggressor in its war against Hamas, it must, by the same equation, be the aggressor against Iran.
The ideological element is one thing, but Harounoff added that Iranian foreign influence is also a key factor: “Iran isn’t confined to its own borders, it has agents abroad, it has attempted to assassinate people abroad, and succeeded.”
Having such foreign influence enables Iran to also infiltrate public protests and thus opinion.
One of the biggest shames, he added, of the regime’s last 46 years is the “massive brain drain.”
“So many of these Iranians in the diaspora are brilliant people with all this potential and achievements who fled Iran. Just think of how Iran could be if these people hadn’t left?”
Nevertheless, Iranians in Iran are highly educated people. The country’s universities remain.
This has partly allowed for what Harounoff describes as “a healthy dose of scepticism” among the population, which is also why university students (both men and women) and even high school students formed such a large part of the freedom protests in 2022.
That being said, there are consequences to protesting. For example, as the book states, two weeks after Amini’s death, on September 30, 2022, came one of the deadliest days in the protest movement’s history. Known as “Bloody Friday,” more than ninety-five people, including women and children, were killed, and hundreds more wounded after security forces opened fire on people protesting the rape of a fifteen-year old Baluchi girl by a police officer.
“Forty-six years into its rule, the Islamic Republic has been unforgiving in brutally squashing protest movements.”
Israel and Iran
Harounoff’s conversation with the Post came not long after the war between Israel and Iran, during which the Jewish State carried out hundreds of targeted strikes on the regime’s nuclear facilities, top nuclear scientists, and high profile members of the IRGC.
Israel’s actions gave hope to many Iranians in the diaspora that there would be a regime change, or that the weakening of the regime’s military infrastructure and the culling of their top brass could lead to a popular uprising.
Harounoff, however, emphasized that “Israel’s objective was not to bring about a regime change – it was to eliminate an immediate existential threat [as posed by Iran’s nuclear facilities.]
“If the Iranian people want a regime change, Israel stands with them,” he said.
However, “the only change will come from the people of Iran and not externally.”