The mullahs lost from day one, from the day women took off their veils, from the first throw of turbans, from the moment the portraits of Khomeini and Khamenei were burned, from the first middle finger of high school girls , from the first body of a woman who swirled around the fire before throwing her veil there to the applause of a liberated crowd after forty-three years of political lead and moral hypocrisy.
Yet they are still there, the turbaned and their military auxiliaries, pasdaran and bassidjis, they are there in repression, in death sentences, in hangings. Four men have already been executed, before the first early morning prayer, without telling the family the better to torture them, to hear them howl their pain in front of the grave; middle-class young men and working-class men, for “enmity towards God”, “corruption on earth” and other nonsense of outdated mullahs wanting to set examples in all social classes, from the young international karate player to the chicken farmer.
But the mullahs have lost their power. They no longer raise the hope of a possible reform. In July 2015, when the nuclear agreement was finally signed after thirteen years of negotiations, Iranians took to the streets, they danced, they sang their hopes for an improved daily life, a secure future for their children. No woman had then thought to remove her veil, no slogan hostile to “mollahrchie” had been sung. The Iranians thought they would continue to respect the deal: the public space for the mullahs and their puritanical rules, with bowed heads, with covered bodies, the private space for parties, alcohol, American films, joy, the real life. Paradoxically, the Iranian Islamic regime is the most closed to the West compared to Sunni countries, which negotiate, trade, wage war with the American Great Satan and his allies, but its population is as westernized as possible.
Iranians no longer want to live their lives in the closed place of the private
We saw this during the Qatar World Cup, where fans from Sunni countries, in particular the signatories of the Abraham Accords with Little Satan Israel, displayed the Palestinian flag and bluntly refused to answer Israeli journalists, while the Iranian supporters fraternized with them and claimed to be Iranian before being Muslim. What has been happening for four months in Iran is also the great decompression: the Iranians, a particularly young population, who have only ever known the Islamic Republic, no longer want, can no longer live their lives only inside, they have overflowed outside, colonized the outside – with no possibility of turning back.
The mullahs have lost, but the Iranians need help. More pressure is needed from the West, which seems not to have learned the lessons of Ukraine. We must recall the ambassadors, bombard the mullahs with sanctions, prevent them from continuing to oxygenate themselves thanks to the Russians and the Chinese. It is time to asphyxiate the mullahs, while sending the population enough to finance the general strike. The indignation with clean hands, the actresses who cut the tips of their hair in front of the camera, the covers of the song Baraye by children, personalities, warm conferences, policies sold to Islamists who refuse to amalgamate the veil and oppression are only useful for the self-segregation of a good conscience. It’s time to step up a gear.
Charlie Hebdo did it. His cartoons circulated in Iran before being published in France! Banners with the drawings were hung on the walls of the cities. Charlie Hebdo understood before the politicians what the Iranians needed: recognition. Let the world recognize their revolution for what it is: a definitive rejection of Islamism, murderous bigots and suffocating puritanism.
The mullahs lost, just as the absolute monarchy lost at Easter 1739 when Louis XV refused to confess and take communion. By refusing to play the game of the sacred, he desacralized his office and opened the floodgates of transgression. The libertines rushed into the breach and, with blows of satyrs, caricatures, libels, they brought down the kings so that the republic was born. The only difference is a matter of speed: the mullahs will fall faster than the kings of the 18th century. Come on, one more effort to be free!