S05E10: Azadeh Moaveni on the Ongo­ing Iran­ian Demon­stra­tions Fueled and Led by Women

The ongo­ing protests in the past months have rocked Iran to its core. What began as a wave of street demon­stra­tions and protests has by now turned into a ver­i­ta­ble rev­o­lu­tion led by coura­geous and defi­ant women. What is the broad­er his­tor­i­cal con­text regard­ing these cur­rent events? How has the oppres­sive patri­ar­chal regime of the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran para­dox­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed forms of pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion, col­lec­tive action, and mobi­liza­tion, which have empow­ered women? What is the role of the media and of pat­terns of sol­i­dar­i­ty emerg­ing in these protests and could these poten­tial­ly lead to a trans­for­ma­tion of the regime, or, in fact, to its end?

Guests fea­tured in this episode:

Azadeh Moaveni, the Iran­ian-Amer­i­can writer and jour­nal­ist who has been cov­er­ing the Mid­dle East for more than two decades. A renowned expert on Iran, the Islam­ic State, as well as Mid­dle East Pol­i­tics and Islam­ic soci­ety in gen­er­al, she has focused her work on how women are impact­ed by polit­i­cal con­flicts, and how their social and polit­i­cal rights are affect­ed by mil­i­tarism and Islamism. 

 In 2005, she pub­lished the inter­na­tion­al best­seller Lip­stick Jihad, a mem­oir recount­ing her expe­ri­ence of the Iran­ian reform and women’s rights move­ments. The fol­low­ing year saw the pub­li­ca­tion of Iran Awak­en­ing: A Mem­oir of Rev­o­lu­tion and Hope, co-authored with the Nobel Peace Lau­re­ate Shirin Ebadi.