Mahsa Amini protests

Civil unrest and protests against the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran associated with the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini (Persian: مهسا امینی) began on 16 September 2022 and carried on into 2023, but by spring 2023, the protests had largely subsided, ultimately leaving the political leadership unchanged and firmly entrenched in power. The protests were described as "unlike any the country had seen before", the "biggest challenge" to the government, and "most widespread revolt" since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Amini was arrested by the Guidance Patrol on 13 September 2022 for allegedly violating Iran's mandatory hijab law by wearing her hijab "improperly" while visiting Tehran from Saqqez. According to eyewitnesses, she was severely beaten by Guidance Patrol officers (this was denied by Iranian authorities). She subsequently collapsed, was hospitalized and died three days later. As the protests spread from Amini's hometown of Saqqez to other cities in the Iranian Kurdistan and throughout Iran, the government responded with widespread Internet blackouts, nationwide restrictions on social media usage, tear gas and gunfire. Although the protests have not been as deadly as those in 2019 (when more than 1,500 were killed), they have been "nationwide, spread across social classes, universities, the streets [and] schools". At least 551 people, including 68 minors, had been killed as a result of the government's intervention in the protests, as of 15 September 2023. Before February 2023 when most were pardoned, an estimated 19,262 were arrested across at least 134 cities and towns and 132 universities. Female protesters, including schoolchildren, have played a key role in the demonstrations. In addition to demands for increased rights for women, the protests have demanded the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, setting them apart from previous major protest movements in Iran, which have focused on election results or economic woes. The government's response to the protests and its "brutal and disproportionate use of force against peaceful protesters and children" was widely condemned, but Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei dismissed the unrest as "riots" and part of a "hybrid war" against Iran created by foreign enemy states and dissidents abroad. On 2 February 2024, the UN Human Rights Council's Fact-Finding Mission released a report which found the Iranian regime committed systematic crimes against humanity. On 16 September 2026, Amnesty International reported that the Iranian regime instigated the killing, torture, and sexual abuse of protesters during the Mahsa Amini protests, adding that the subsequent suppression of the 2025–2026 Iranian protests exhibited similar characteristics, but on a larger scale.

Background

Condition of women and the Islamic Republic

Among the primary tenets of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution was the need to overthrow the (allegedly) anti-Islamic, oppressive and foreign power-controlled monarchy of Iran. The secular, modernizing Pahlavi dynasty, founded by Reza Shah in the early twentieth century (1925), had placed the improved treatment of women at the center of its project to modernize Iran. Reza banned the wearing of hijab in public and admitted women to universities. During the reign of his successor and son Mohammad Reza, restrictions on the wearing of hijab were lifted but women were granted suffrage, allowed to enter parliament, and "gained dramatically more rights in marriage". The Revolution rescinded the legal rights the Pahlavi Shahs granted women, removed restrictions on men's rights to polygamy and child marriage, and reversed Reza's ban on hijab to make the complete covering of women's hair in public compulsory. Enforcement of the unpopular law was eased during the 2013–2021 tenure of moderate President Rouhani, but intensified under Rouhani's successor, the hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi. At the same time as rights were taken away, some aspects of the lives of women and girls improved. Traditional pious Iranians—who had kept their daughters out of school during the Shah's era—now felt comfortable allowing their daughters to be schooled in an Islamic educational system. Enrollment of women in universities jumped from 3% in 1977 to 67% in 2015, according to the World Bank statistics. But many of the women who left home to study and developed new values and world views, struggled to secure jobs that matched their new competencies, and became less content with the Islamic Republic than their parents.

Protest movements under the Islamic Republic

The Mahsa Amini protests were preceded by several other political/social/economic protest movements in Iran, in 1999, 2009, 2011–2012, 2019–2020, and protests against compulsory hijab in 2017–18. Most recently were a series of protests in 2019, "Bloody Aban" (Persian: آبان خونین, a month near November in the Iranian calendar), sparked by a 50–200% increase in fuel prices. Like the Mahsa Amini protests, these protests eventually called for the overthrow of the government of the Islamic Republic and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Mahsa Amini's arrest and death in custody

Mahsa Amini, also Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, was arrested by the Guidance Patrol on 14 September 2022 because of an "improper hijab." The police were accused of beating her and inflicting a fatal head injury, after a CT scan confirmed that Amini had sustained head injuries, a claim denied by Tehran police. She was pronounced dead on 16 September.

Protests

Protests started in Tehran as Mahsa Amini was being treated at a hospital there, and continued at her funeral in Saqqez, where hundreds of people reportedly gathered in defiance of official warnings and were fired upon when they shouted anti-regime slogans. Protests spread to the provincial capital. Internet service and mobile phone service were shut down, and the head of the Guidance Patrol was allegedly suspended. By 20 September there were unconfirmed social media videos showed anti-government protests in at least 16 of Iran's 31 provinces, and state media reported that three people had been killed in Kurdistan protests. Two weeks after the funeral, forty civilian were killed and many wounded in Zahedan in Sistan and Baluchestan province following Friday prayers, after protests sparked by reports of a police chief who had raped a 15-year-old girl in Chahbahar. A Mahsa Amini hashtag gained 52 million tweets. By early December 2022, a "vague" statement made by the attorney general was interpreted by some in the Western press to mean that the hijab law was under review and that the Guidance Patrol might be disbanded. The report was later attacked as a "diversion tactic" by the regime. The protests became more widespread than those of 2009, 2017, and 2019, encompassing even Islamic Republic power bases such as the holy cities of Mashhad and Qom, involving both urban middle classes and rural working areas. In addition, schoolgirls demonstrated in numbers for the first time. By February 2023, the regime stated it had arrested tens of thousands of protesters. According to France 24, by mid-March 2023 protests "had dwindled" across most of the country. On 13 March, the government claimed it had pardoned 22,000 citizens arrested for protesting.

=== Slogans and grievances === The signature slogan of the protests has been "Woman, Life, Freedom" which reflects the idea that "the rights of women are at the centre of life and liberty". The slogan was popularized during women's marches in Turkey in 2006 in the Kurdish Freedom Movement, and reflects the idea of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, that "a country can't be free unless the women are free."

Kurds emphasize the Kurdish origin of the slogan, and its connection to Mahsa Amini's Kurdish first name: Jina. In Kurdish, the word jin means "woman". Kurdish and minority rights are subjects of the protest—Kurds make up approximately 15% of Iran's population, are predominately Sunni Muslims (also a minority), the regions they live are among the most impoverished in the country, the use of their languages is restricted, they account for nearly half of all political prisoners in Iran, and have felt much of the brunt of anti-protest attacks by the government (which attacked predominantly Kurdish cities, like Sanandaj and Oshnavieh) who according to news reports, blamed the Kurds for the protest movement.

Other slogans collected by Iranwire early in the protests include comments against the Supreme Leader (“Death to the Dictator”, ”Khamenei is a Murderer, an Illegitimate Ruler”, “Death to Khamenei”), the Basij (“Undignified Basiji, You are Our ISIS”), the Islamic Republic (“We Don’t Want the Islamic Republic”); praise for Mahsa, and for the modernist monarch Reza; and comments of defiance (“Iranians Die but Will Not Be Suppressed”). As demonstrated by the slogans and banners of the demonstrators, protesters appear to be demanding a wholesale change in government rather than just incremental reforms. Grievances expressed in the protest go beyond those of many previous Iranian protests, and beyond protesting Amini's death, demanding an end to the mandatory hijab, an end to the morality police, the Supreme Leader, the theocratic regime, and to human rights violations perpetrated by Iran's Guidance Patrol.

=== Iranian public opinion === In a November 2022 poll by Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN), almost three-quarters of Iranians opposed mandatory hijab; of this population, 84% prefer a secular Iranian state to theocracy, which GAMAAN characterized as an endorsement of regime change. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, economic hardship and poor living conditions contributed to the growth of the protests. The New York Times itemized Iranian grievances such as "soaring prices, high unemployment, corruption, (and) political repression", and identified the poor Iranian economy as a major driving force behind the protests. According to an Iranian report in August 2021, a third of Iranians live in poverty. Abdolreza Davari, a conservative analyst, quoted a statistic that 95 percent of Iranians are "worried about their livelihoods today and for their and their children's future." Only 15% of Iranians in the job market are women. Iran ranked 143rd out of 146 countries in the 2022 WEF Gender Gap Report, due in part to prohibitions on female membership in powerful government organizations.

Protest techniques

Protesters often stage small and quick, but numerous, "flash mob"-style gatherings. Drivers have blocked streets with their cars to slow down security forces. Roads have also been blocked by dumpster bins or even overturned police cars. Security forces on motorbikes cut through traffic, while firing on protesters. In some cases, security forces used paintballs to mark demonstrators. Some demonstrators packed extra clothes to replace painted clothes, wore masks to avoid identification, and dismantled public security cameras. Some protesters chanted from windows or rooftops. Symbolic protests include dyeing fountains blood-red, and women discarding and burning their hijabs or cutting their hair in public. Since turbans are viewed as a symbol of the regime, some Iranians engaged in turban throwing (knocking the turbans off of "privileged" Iranian clerics on the street and running away). Reformers such as Ahmad Zaidabadi criticized the trend as being unfair to Islamic scholars not involved with the regime.

=== Civil boycotts === Some university teachers and professors declared their support for the student movement by boycotting classes or resigning. They included Nasrollah Hekmat (Shahid Beheshti University), Ammar Ashoori (Islamic Azad University), Lili Galehdaran (Shiraz Art University), Gholamreza Shahbazi (Art and Soureh Universities), Alireza Bahraini, Shahram Khazaei, Encieh Erfani (Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences) and Azin Movahed (Sharif University of Technology, Tehran). On 5 to 7 December 2022, a general strike took place to put pressure on the regime. Protesters called for boycotts against goods manufactured by businesses reportedly tied to the regime, two examples being a major manufacturer of groceries and home goods as well as "Iran’s version of Amazon, Digikala".

=== Media Western coverage === Coverage of the protest was constrained by Iranian restrictions on speech, including internet shutdowns and arrests of journalists, such that "the vast majority" of Western media outlets had no presence in Iran (with the exception of NBC News) and had to obtain information from networks of contacts, human rights groups, and social media content. According to BBC News Persian Service, Iranian government disinformation contaminated social media as an information source, which must therefore be used with care. The Iranian government "have a cyber army and they massively produce social media videos, even fake interviews." When foreign media quote them, it would be charged by the Iranian government for "reporting fake news".

Casualties, government response

The government crackdown on the protests has been described as "intense" and "deadly".

=== Casualties === At least 551 people had been killed as of 15 September 2023, according to Iran Human Rights, including women and at least 68 minors. Death certificates obtained by Human Rights Activists in Iran, HRANA, confirm that many died from live bullets. The Norway-based group, Iran Human Rights, stated that with the current Internet blackouts, it was difficult to get accurate and up-to-date figures. In addition to Amini herself, the death of several women protesters, including Nika Shakarami, Hadis Najafi and Sarina Esmailzadeh, were widely reported by the media. According to the families of deceased protesters, Iranian authorities have covered up killings of protesters by pressuring the families of victims, and by fabricating reports of suicides or car accidents.

==== Government casualties ==== The Islamic Republican government has emphasized the loss of life from the government security forces (such as the Basij paramilitary volunteers and Revolutionary Guards), reporting that by 6 January 2023, 68 security force members had been killed in the unrest. However, according to BBC Persian service, these figures may not be reliable as some of those reported by state media to be loyalist Basij militiamen killed by the "rioters" were actually protesters killed by security forces. Security forces (using state media to put out this story) had pressured the families of the deceased to go along with the false reporting, allegedly threatening them with death if they failed to cooperate.

Arrests and death sentences

According to Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA), 19,262 Iranians across at least 134 cities and towns and 132 universities, were arrested as of 6 January 2023. In February 2023, Iran state media reported that in honour of the anniversary of the 1979 Iranian Islamic revolution, "tens of thousands" of Iranians arrested in connection with the Mahsa Amini protests had been pardoned. This did not include all protesters and some journalists arrested. The pardon had been requested by the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, who asserted that, “during recent events, a number of people, especially young people, committed wrong actions and crimes as a result of the indoctrination and propaganda of the enemy. Since the foreign enemies and anti-revolutionary currents’ plans have been foiled, many of these youth now regret their actions.” Prior to the release, hundreds of women have been detained and abused by the authorities who used torture and ill-treatment to obtain false confessions from them and from men who had also been arrested. Some of those arrested were subjected to “sham trials designed to intimidate those participating in the popular uprising that has rocked Iran”, according to Amnesty International. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least forty journalists have been detained by mid-October 2022. Anonymous sources cited by CBS News have stated that many protesters decline to seek medical assistance due to a reasonable fear of imprisonment. It was reported on 1 November 2022 that Iran had charged about a thousand people in Tehran for their alleged involvement in the protests and was holding public trials against the accused. A contradictory report from the state aligned news agency ISNA claimed that only 315 people were indicted in Tehran with more than 700 others indicted in other provinces. An informal network of activists inside Iran, known as the Volunteer Committee for Monitoring the Situation of Detainees, has alleged that as of 30 October, intelligence agencies reported the arrest of 130 human rights defenders, 38 women's rights advocates, 36 political activists, 19 lawyers and 38 journalists along with citizen protesters. An additional count of 308 university students and 44 minors that had been arrested by Iranian forces was also released by the Volunteer Committee. On 23 November 2022, Farideh Moradkhani, niece of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was arrested in Tehran after calling on foreign governments to cut ties with Iran following the government's protest crackdowns.

Executions

As of Spring 2023, seven individuals have been executed in connection with the protests. In November 2022, a Revolutionary Court in Tehran issued its first death sentence for one of the protesters on the charges of moharebeh ("enmity against God"), "corruption on Earth" and "setting fire to a government centre, disturbing public order and collusion for committing crimes against national security". The first execution of the Mahsa Amini protests took place on 8 December 2022, when 23-year-old Mohsen Shekari was hanged on charges of moharebeh for allegedly blocking a road and using a machete to wound a police officer. Iran Human Rights director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam called Shekari's trial a "show trial without any due process". On 12 December 2022, Iran publicly hanged a second protester, Majidreza Rahnavard. Two additional individuals, Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini, were hanged on 7 January 2023, in connection with the alleged killing of a Basij paramilitary member during the protests. On 19 May 2023, three others, namely, Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi, and Saeed Yaqoubi, were executed in connection with the protests.

Suspected poisonings

==== University students ==== More than 1,200 Iranian university students at six universities were reportedly poisoned, displaying symptoms of vomiting, hallucinations, and severe body aches before they were due to attend anti-regime protests across the country. Videos posted online showed students dumping their canteen food onto the streets in protest. The Iranian science ministry blamed the illnesses on food poisoning, but the student union claimed that past experiences at Isfahan university and the sudden lack of electrolytes at university clinics suggested that the occurrence was the deliberate work of the regime aimed at thwarting the protests. Iranians called for a three-day period of national strikes and protests to begin on 7 December 2022.

Schoolgirls

Starting in November 2022 and over the course of months, thousands of schoolgirls were hospitalized, in circumstances suspected to arise from mass toxic gas poisoning attacks. Some eyewitnesses reported signs of toxic gas attack. There were allegations that the poisonings were acts of retaliations by pro-regime actors against young women for their role in the protests against the mandatory hijab. According to one secondary schoolgirl from Tehran quoted by The New Yorker magazine, “It’s revenge for the disturbances we made. Not a single person disagrees.” The Islamic Republic regime arrested more than 100 people who claimed responsibility for the alleged poisonings. According to Nature magazine, an independent investigation would be required, including access to hospital test results and interviews with patients, in order to draw any firm conclusions about whether some or all of the incidents were real poisonings, or whether the entire epidemic could instead be attributed to mass psychogenic illness. The Guardian and others criticized Iran for its slow, opaque, and contradictory responses to the epidemic.

=== Statements by officials === On 3 October 2022, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ali Khamenei, commented for the first time on Amini's death and said that "[her] death deeply broke my heart" and called it a "bitter incident", while giving his full support to security forces against protesters. Khamenei dismissed the widespread unrest as "riots" caused by foreign states and dissidents abroad. On 10 October, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani called on foreigners to "respect our laws" and noted that Iran had arrested nine citizens of the European Union for supporting the protests. On 2 November, Khamenei described the events of the past few weeks as "an hybrid war" and said that "the young people who came to the streets are our own children". In April 2023, he further said that "rejecting hijab was religiously and politically forbidden" and that women who do this open up to foreign intelligence. The IRI foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, tweeted that the “various security services, Israel and some Western politicians who have made plans for civil war, destruction and the disintegration of Iran, should know that Iran is not Libya or Sudan.” In the week before 15 November 2022, 227 of Iran's 290 parliamentarians signed a statement declaring that protesters “waging war against God” should be dealt with in a way that would “teach an example.” Because "waging war on God" (engaging in moharebeh) is punishable by death in Iran, this statement led to widespread erroneous reporting that 15,000 protesters (the approximate number of those arrested) had been sentenced to death.

=== Government strategy and tactics === The Islamic Republican government has worked to prevent the protesters from coordinating and from coming together under a unified leadership. To enforce domestic order against protesters, the IRI prefers to rely on its paramilitary militia, the Basij as in the past, revolts have turned into revolutions when professional militaries disobeyed orders to attack their own people (for example, during the 1991 Soviet coup attempt and the Iranian Revolution itself). During unrest, the IRI has maintained the capability to shut down Internet and cellphone services (with technological support from China and Russia), ensuring news of protest and communication between protesters is unavailable. If protesters bring phones and neglect to disable tracking, the government attempts to track and identify protesters through the phones' GPS. Some observers report that Iran deployed foreign militias, such as Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi and Afghan Shia militias aligned with the IRGC, to assist its domestic forces in suppressing the protests. Human rights violations used by the IRI to intimidate and discourage protesters reportedly include use of "shotguns, assault rifles, and handguns against protesters in largely peaceful and often crowded settings", resulting in the killing and injuring of hundreds (Human Rights Watch, based on videos, interviews with witnesses and a security force member); forced confessions, threats to uninvolved family members, and torture, including electric shocks, controlled drowning, and mock execution (based on CNN interviews); sexual violence (according to testimony and social media videos, and several such accounts corroborated by a CNN investigation, including the case of a political dissident being brutally raped in custody), “systematic" attempts using projectiles such as "pellets, teargas canisters, paintball bullets" "to blind protesters by shooting at their eyes" (activist media group IranWire documented at least 580 cases). Under the guise of rushing injured civilians to receive emergency medical attention, ambulances were used to transport security forces and kidnapped protesters. While this may seem brutal and inhumane to some, “in the mind of the regime, nothing is off limits because we’re doing God’s work,” according to scholar Borzou Daragahi.

Communications blackouts

Beginning on 19 September, the Iranian government has blocked access to specific Internet services and repeatedly shut down the Internet and cellphone partly and networks entirely, in order to prevent images and video of the protests from reaching a worldwide audience, and to hinder protesters from organizing effectively. According to Internet monitoring group NetBlocks, these are "the most severe Internet restrictions since the November 2019 massacre", when during the 2019–2020 protests the Internet was completely shut down for a week, and 1,500 protesters were killed by government forces. Outages during the current protests have been shorter and less widespread than the 2019 blackout, and are highly disruptive, but widely circumvented. Iranians have been hopping between services depending on what currently works. Despite the nationwide Internet blackouts, some videos of the events were distributed internationally. A small group of people from both inside and outside of Iran run the 1500tasvir Instagram account, which, as of October 2022, had over 450,000 followers. The group stated that on typical days they received more than 1,000 videos and published dozens. They posted video to their Twitter accounts. One member of the 1500tasvir team described the impact of Internet shutdowns as "extraordinary", and negatively impacting protests, saying that "When you [can] ... see other people feel the same way, you get more brave" but "When the Internet is cut off ... you feel alone". IranWire and Radio Zamaneh, exiled journalistic outlets, collect information from Iran and have had drastically increased Iranian online audiences since the protests began; they also broadcast by satellite. Prior to the protests, access to the Internet was already heavily restricted, in what NetBlocks calls a "filternet". Over five million websites were blocked. Many Internet domains were blocked. Social media were especially restricted: Facebook, Telegram, TikTok, and Twitter were all previously blocked after the 2009 post-election protests. These blocks are not entirely effective; Twitter is still widely used by Iranians, and Telegram is also used. Instagram and WhatsApp had been allowed and were popular in Iran (reportedly, 2 million Iranian businesses were on Instagram, and 70% of Iranian adults used WhatsApp), and early in the protests, they were only blocked regionally, being blocked only in Saqqez and Sanandaj for a few days beginning on 19 September. Beginning on 21 September, Instagram and WhatsApp were also blocked nationwide. Iranian state media has said the imposed restrictions are due to "national security" concerns. The blocking of WhatsApp was fairly effective, but Instagram remained very widely used despite the block. As of 24 September, access to Skype has reportedly been blocked. As of 29 September, the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store, and LinkedIn have also been blocked. According to Foreign Policy magazine, Iran's National Information Network (NIN) ("the most important weapon in the Islamic Republic’s communications arsenal" and modeled on Russia's and China's intranet systems), gives the state "the ability to control what people see, how they communicate, and the choices they make", and has improved its capabilities from 2012 to 2023, with each round of protest. Many Iranians have used VPNs to bypass Internet filtering, hopping from one to another as they are blocked. VPNs are illegal in Iran, so providers act as a mafia with government connections. VPN service has been progressively downgraded. Tor Browser is also used. Psiphon is popular. It has also been reported that text messages are being filtered, and communications which mention Amini's name are blocked from delivery to the intended recipient. People began using end-to-end-encrypted instant messaging clients instead. WhatsApp stated that they are working to keep Iranian users connected and would not block Iranian phone numbers; it has successfully been blocked for much of the protests. Telegram is widely used, especially by activists and journalists, as is Signal. Signal asked the tech community and international volunteers to run proxy servers (to circumvent blocks on the Signal servers). Signal also published support documents in Persian. However, Signal has been hampered by Iranian blocking of SMS validation text codes that Signal attempts to send to its users. In addition to selectively blocking websites, the entire network has repeatedly been shut down and cut off from the world outside Iran. This is expensive; the cost was estimated at $37 million US a day. Multiple monitoring groups have documented rolling connectivity blackouts, affecting Iran's largest mobile carriers, with a "curfew-style pattern of disruptions" that lasts for 12 hours at a time. Internet speeds have also been throttled at times when people are on the streets, probably to prevent them from uploading videos. With the spread of demonstrations to over 80 cities across the country, the government repeatedly shut down mobile networks. As the protests wore on, increasingly only the 4G cellphone masts covering the areas of the protests were shut down, so that mobile data was not available to protesters. Satellite and direct peer-to-peer communications bypass blocked wire, fiber, and cellphone network hardware entirely. Satellite news broadcasts, such as London-based Farsi-language Iran International, provided updates on planned demonstrations. Jamming by the Iranian government was partially successful in blocking foreign satellite TV in parts of Iran. On 7 October, Eutelsat accused Iran of jamming two Persian-language broadcast satellites, in contravention of ITU rules. Toosheh is a satelltite data broadcast which uses satellite TV receiving equipment common in Iran. It can be used to download files, which are then sometimes sneakernetted, but it cannot be used to upload content. Starlink satellite uplinks require 30-pound (14 kg) ground stations, and a large clear space to place the antenna in, which makes them hard to import and hide. They are also difficult to set up. Iranians use mesh networks, including mobile ad-hoc networks, in which consumer computers and cellphones transmit data between one another directly (by radio: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth). However, the physical devices have to be close enough (within ~10 metres (33 ft)) to relay the data from one to another, so this is not useful for talking to the world outside Iran. Some activists distributed paper leaflets detailing planned protests.

=== Response by regime supporters === Aside from security forces, the regime is assisted by civilian hardline supporters of the Islamic Republic government who make up a minority of the population. A 2017 speech by Supreme Leader Khamenei is widely believed to have given his supporters/regime supporters "extrajudicial powers" referred to as atash be-ekhtiyar, or permission to "fire at will" against regime enemies. Civilian hardliners are valuable to the regime because they “will turn out on the street" when the regime needs them and is willing to do unpopular or illegal deeds "that the state doesn’t want to do” in attacking government opponents, giving the state "plausible deniability". But as an ideological group it is not totally obedient to the regime and must be "catered to", limiting the regime's ability to compromise. These supporters held counter-protests across several cities in Iran in response to the protests, which the Iranian government referred to as "spontaneous". The pro-government counter protesters called for the Mahsa Amini protesters to be executed, and referred to them as "Israel's soldiers" whilst shouting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel", reflecting Iran's clerical rulers' usual narrative that dissatisfaction with its rule is the result of foreign conspiracy not its own doing. As of mid-2023, vigilantism by the core of regime supporters was said to be "on the rise" with reports of "armed men on motorbikes roamed the streets" in the city of Rasht, ordering unveiled women to cover up.

=== Government campaign for public opinion === According to some sources (such as Vali Nasr), the government pitched a campaign to convince traditional supporters of the regime whose support was now wavering, propagandizing that the “'women, life, freedom' movement was part of a coördinated campaign to destabilize Iran". “There was an amazing amount of sympathy among more conservative and regime-affiliated women for these girls and the arguments they were making,” according to Nasr. One effective piece messaging was “For the Girl Next Door”, an online video that tied together video clips of "two decades of Afghan women’s suffering" with that of U.S. presidents touting their success in combatting the Taliban and speculating how the U.S. might “free” Iran, all set to the anthem of the protests, “Baraye,” by the Iranian musician Shervin Hajipour.

The lyrics warned the girls of Iran not to let themselves be similarly victimized by the West: “For you, the girl next door / don’t let your home get ruined like ours / don’t let your dreams become like our stories / don’t let war happen in your country.” Eventually, for the most part, the traditional supporters returned "home", and abandoned sympathy for the protests.

== Aftermath == As of September 2023, Iranians are saying things like, "the women of Iran have crossed the threshold of fear," and Iranian "society won't go back to the pre-Mahsa time" (film-maker Mojgan Ilanlou); but also that the government has "dug its heels in", (Jasmin Ramsey, deputy director of the New York-based NGO The Center for Human Rights in Iran). Others (Holly Dagres) insist the protests have continued but not been given the publicity they deserve.

=== Lack of head covering === According to the BBC News Caroline Hawley, behavior unthinkable before the death of Mahsa Amini is now commonplace as of August 2023 in at least Tehran:

A young woman walks down a street in Tehran, her hair uncovered, her jeans ripped, a bit of midriff exposed to the hot Iranian sun. An unmarried couple walk hand in hand. A woman holds her head high when asked by Iran's once-feared morality police to put a hijab on, and tells them: "Screw you!" 20% of women in Iran are now going out on to the streets without the veil, according to the estimate of a Western diplomat in Tehran. Another source states the rebellion is "a generational thing much more than a geographical thing" and not limited to Tehran. "It's not just your bright educated people, it's basically any young person with a smartphone … so that's what takes you right out into the villages, and all over."