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- [00:09]
A
I'm Sirutti.
- [00:10]
B
I'm Hannah.
- [00:10]
A
And welcome to Red Handed.
- [00:12]
B
Do you want to know a fact that I learned today? Always absolutely nothing to do with what we're about to talk about. Not at all. But I have to say it now or I'll forget. Our producer Alex came out to me. He was like, did you know that your constituency is one of four in the entirety of the United Kingdom that has a Pret but not a Greggs?
- [00:33]
A
Well, there you go. That is a great fact. Thanks for sharing.
- [00:38]
B
The pret's very new also.
- [00:39]
A
So we had neither for ages, deprived times. So, yes, as Hannah did say, that has nothing to do with. Literally nothing whatsoever.
- [00:47]
B
What does have something to do with? It is a joke I made the other day. I was writing Chernobyl and you were writing this.
- [00:53]
A
Yes.
- [00:53]
B
And we were on the phone and I was like, but what's worse, uranium or Iranians? It's when they've got both, which they kind of do.
- [01:03]
A
Thanks, Obama. So, yes, although this has nothing to do with Greggs or Pret, like kind of getting a new pret, it is very recent. Can I have that as my segue?
- [01:14]
B
Yes.
- [01:14]
A
Great. Because on the 19th of May 2024, Ibrahim Raisi, the Butcher of Tehran, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, second in command, and the protege and likely successor of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, himself, was involved in a helicopter crash. He went down with seven others, including his foreign secretary and members of the irgc, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Raci had been busy that day, meeting with the President of Azerbaijan. My favourite country in the world, to say the name of. That man's name, is Ilham Aliyev, and the pair had been meeting at the border of the two nations to inaugurate the Giz Galazi hydroelectric complex. As the group left the dam and started their journey to the next appointment of the day. The helicopter carrying racy, seemingly lost control over the dismal forest, crashing into the mountains below. There were no survivors.
- [02:18]
B
This incident comes at a critical time for Iran, as it continues ramping up its influence across the Middle east despite growing dissent on home soil. Civil unrest in Iran is nothing new, as we will find out all about in this episode, but it has been escalating to new levels for the past few years over a range of political, social and economic crises. Iran's clerical elite also face international pressure over Iran's disputed nuclear program, plus its deepening military ties with Russia. And of course, Iran's suspected role in the Hamas terror attack in Israel on 7 October 2023. And not to mention the missiles that Iran launched shortly after. Do you know Putin is in North Korea right now? Yes, this mammoth.
- [03:05]
A
The first time in over two decades. That's fun. So the question on a lot of people's lips after the helicopter crash was, was Raci the victim of murder at the hands of a foreign power? Was his death an inside hit job perhaps, or simply an accident? We'll come back to all of this later in this episode, because while the death of Ibrahim Raci did indeed inspire us to write this episode as quickly as humanly fucking possible, it is not the main focus of today. Instead, we're going to look at his many thousands of victims. How he gained himself the moniker the Butcher of Tehran, and how his actions contributed to the murder of 22 year old Marsha Amini in September 2022. A death that lit the spark for both inspiring protests and brutal state sponsored violence that spilled out all over Iran, challenging the nation's clerics like never before.
- [04:11]
B
But to understand all of this, we need to rewind all the way back to 1979, the Iranian Revolution. And you just can't understand anything about Iran without understanding the revolution first. It, it was the first step that set Iran on its path to becoming the isolated, theocratic, megalomaniac state that funds global terrorism that it is today. And it's going to have to be a very condensed, red handed rundown because we'll be here forever otherwise. So we're going to start off in the early 1960s. The Shah, the king of Iran at the time, was Mohammad Reza. Reza Shah had become a bit of an unpopular leader in Iran due to his ties to Britain and the U.S. also, when he came to power, succeeding his father, Reza Shah had promised to act as a constitutional secular monarch, so to allow the elected government to have ultimate power and to mainly act as a figurehead for the nation, like Charles. But in reality, Reza Shah often meddled in politics and he became seen by many as a weak leader, propped up by Western powers doing their bidding and, and crossing the line that he had promised to toe.
- [05:26]
A
So thinking that he could turn things around, the Shah launched the White revolution. And it was called the White Revolution because it wasn't red, that is communist, and it wasn't black, that is Islamist. Two key ideologies that were fighting it out in the Middle east at the time. This White revolution consisted of a rather broad government program that included pretty much everything from land reform, infrastructure development, voting rights for women and the reduction of illiteracy. And honestly, Reza Shah did do a lot to change things for the better in Iran. I think even people who were on his side would say maybe he just tried to do too much too quickly. And used, as we all go on, to see, quite brutal and authoritarian ways in which to bring those things about, which rarely works out very well. During his 16 years of rule, Reza Shah prioritized poverty. He undertook major developments such as large road construction projects and the trans Iranian railway was built. Modern education was introduced. Women and girls had more freedoms than ever before. And the University of Tehran, the first Iranian university, was also established.
- [06:43]
B
And his actions were welcomed by many Iranians. But there were also many Islamic leaders who were highly critical of what they saw as the rampant and forced Westernization of Iran. We've all seen the bikini photos. They didn't love the whole giving women more rights thing, but their main issue was actually land reform, which I was.
- [07:06]
A
Really interested to find out about. I think it they're pushing back against all these freedoms that Reza Shah is bringing in. But the very boring reality of land reform was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back usually is because follow the money.
- [07:22]
B
And they were so worried about it because of how the mullahs in Iran get their funding. We can't go into it here because again, we'll be here for the rest of our lives. But basically the reforms that the Shah brought in meant that the mullahs, as in the clerical elite, lost a lot of money that they would have got from the wealthy and middle class landowners.
- [07:41]
A
Yeah, these people would basically pay kind of like a Christian tithing to the mullahs. So when you then do land reform and you take some of their land away, they're going to say, well, I've got less to give now. And that means the mullahs get less, which never goes down particularly well. Now one very strong vocal critic of these changes was a Shia cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini. He started calling for the overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of an Islamic state, starting the black revolution. Now what we need to understand here is that during this time it wasn't just Iran. A lot of nations in the Middle east, particularly many Sunni Muslim countries, were going through this dilemma of modernizing versus traditionalism. And this made some, particularly the more religious types in Shia Iran want to double down. Now, Khomeini understood this and so he started evoking the idea of the Mahdi. The Mahdi to many Shia Muslims is the Messiah who will return to earth one day. And when he does, he'll bring justice and truth to the world and before the Day of Judgment. Now, again, we're not a religious scriptural podcast, but if you do go and research more about this, a lot of scholars do believe that they are essentially talking about Jesus Christ, but they wanted to separate themselves from that, so they started calling him the Mahdi. That's not important for our story. What we need to know is that for the Messiah to return to earth, the belief is that there needs to be an Islamic state for him to return to. So until an Islamic state is established, the Mahdi will not return. And Khomeini wanted this Islamic state to be in Iran. Now, essentially, what does it mean to create an Islamic state? Well, it means to form a government that follows Sharia law to the letter and fosters an environment that is more or less akin to the time of the Prophet Muhammad. And we're talking serious pasto stuff. We're talking seventh century.
- [09:55]
B
Yeah. Slavery, all of it.
- [09:57]
A
Yeah. So Khomeini painted the Shah, with all his modernizing, as a direct barrier to the return of the Mahdi himself.
- [10:14]
B
Eventually, in 1964, Khamenei was exiled. He moved to Iraq. But he didn't stop his Black Revolution from there. Khamenei kept himself busy by recording endless cassette tapes to stir up his supporters back in Iran.
- [10:30]
A
He's got the mixtapes, the Black Revolution mixtapes. They're not as fun as it sounds. They're basically just him being like anti Shah, anti modernization, telling everybody that, yeah, everything we've told you, if Iran continues down the path it's on, it's totally fucked. And there's going to be no Day of Judgment, there's going to be no redemption, there's going to be none of that good promised stuff of paradise, etcetera, for anybody. So listen to me.
- [10:54]
B
And all of those tapes were snuck in to Iran and distributed across the nation by his loyal followers.
- [11:02]
A
Meanwhile, Reza Shah continued to make incredibly divisive decisions. Crucially, what you need to understand is that Reza Shah saw himself first and foremost in as a Persian king. Now, this took a while for me to understand exactly what the big deal is here. The point is that Reza Shah wants to make sure everybody understands that he comes from a lineage, not specifically his dynasty. But this idea of a Persian monarchy predates Iran. It goes back to when Iran used to be Persia and it predates Islam itself. So he is saying I am part of a institution, an establishment that traces its roots back to pre Islamic Persia.
- [11:46]
B
So he, so he is Zoroastrianism, isn't he?
- [11:49]
A
Yes. So he's starting to basically hint at, or more than hint at, throw around the idea that his authority perhaps trumps that of Islam because he comes from a pre Islamic history to the region that is very, very important to understand. And so in 1971, Reza Shah had himself crowned as the Shah in shah in an extravagant celebration. And this was a big fat no, no. For many people. Shah in shah means king of kings. And it's a title for many people who are Islamic. Definitely the fervent religious types in Shia Iran, that is reserved specifically for God, for Allah, not for a mere man to be calling himself. And probably not too different to Christianity. Right. Isn't Jesus called King of Kings? Yeah. And then there was of course, the extravagance of the coronation itself. You can actually go and watch YouTube videos of this coronation and it is bonkers. There's wine flowing, there's gold everywhere. It is so over the top. And watching this, seeing this, people were furious in Iran at the excess and the arrogance of the Shah. So you're pissing off the religious types by calling yourself Shah and Shah and you're pissing off the others by this idea of excess, the money you're throwing into something that is so pointless according to the people. And there was growing anger across Iran.
- [13:28]
B
Because the Shah had for years worked to keep oil prices high. And as a result, the economy had boomed and the expectations of ordinary people were sky high. The Shah kept pumping money into the economy with no planning at all. And naturally this led to explosive inflation and corruption, which is never far behind. And then oil prices crashed in 1974 and it was a catastrophe.
- [14:00]
A
He was absolutely operating on the premise that the oil price will never come down. We'll keep it artificially high, I'll take all that money, I'll pour it into the economy. What could possibly go wrong? But as it turns out, loads, loads of things can go wrong and it.
- [14:15]
B
Just keeps going wronger. Because the same year the Shah was also diagnosed with cancer, which of course he kept a secret, but it did push him to double down even further. He knew he was going to die and he needed to see through his modernisation. So he became even more authoritarian, making Iran a one party nation. Basically, he wanted to create a modern liberal state, but he used aggressive authoritarian tactics to try and achieve it. And he also ignored the enormous threat posed to him by the Black Revolution and the religious fundamentalists within his own nation.
- [14:55]
A
As the religious, cultural and Political discontent grew further. The Shah became more and more repressive, using his brutal secret police force, the Savak, to suppress any opposition to his rule. Then, in 1977, the Savak actually killed Khomeini's son in Iraq. It was a shocking turn of events and escalated the entire situation, of course, making it deeply personal. It also martyred Khomeini in the eyes of the people. They looked at him now and saw this man who had lost his own son trying to bring about his revolution. Naturally, this alienated yet more people and support for Khomeini actually grew, coupled with the public's growing rage against the cost of living and the failing economy. In 1978, anti Shah demonstrations broke out in many of Iran's major cities.
- [15:52]
B
On 8 September 1978, the Shah's security forces fired on a large group of demonstrators, killing hundreds and wounding thousands. Two months later, thousands took to the streets of Tehran, rioting and destroying symbols of Westernization, like banks and alcohol shops. Khomeini called for the Shah to be immediately overthrown. And on the 11th of December, a group of soldiers mutinied and attacked the Shah's security officers. With that, his regime collapsed and the Shah in Shah fled. Fourteen days later, Ayatollah Rubollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the Islamic revolution, returned after 15 years of exile and took control of Iran.
- [16:37]
A
And you can again on YouTube. A lot of this is very, very well documented. See his return back to Iran and he is met with jubilation. People are out on the streets, foreign news reporters are there and saying it was shocking almost. It was unbelievable to see a man who was so beloved. The problem is, not everybody realized who they had just let through the door and what was about to happen. They thought they had just gotten rid of this one brutal Shah who was using increasingly authoritarian methods in order to force modernisation, force Westernization upon them. Little did they know what was about to come next.
- [17:19]
B
So after he ran away, the Shah bounced around different countries for a bit before eventually entering the United States in October 1979 to treat his cancer. Just like motherfucking Theresa. She wasn't in her own clinics, was she? Stay tuned. In Tehran, Islamic militants responded by storming the US Embassy and taking the staff hostage. The militants, having been given the thumbs up by Khomeini, demanded the return of the Shah to Iran to stand trial for his crimes. Unsurprisingly, the United States refused to negotiate and 52American hostages were held for 444 days. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi eventually died in Egypt in July 1980, and by that point, Iran was well and truly in the grip of the new Ayatollah.
- [18:13]
A
So that is the 1979 Iranian Revolution in a very small, little, brief acorn of a nutshell. I know there is so much more we could have discussed. I know we have just sort of, like, flitted over the Iranian hostage crisis. But ultimately, what we need to understand is that it had been a war of ideologies between Reza Shah, the modernizer, and Khomeini, I guess as the traditionalist. But it's more than that. Khomeini was an apocalyptic figurehead who marked himself as the forerunner for the return of the Mahdi. He came to power fuelled by vengeance, motivated by religious fundamentalism, and claiming to remove the liberal excesses of the Shah and prepare Iran for the Mahdi. It was a war between two revolutionaries with two very different worldviews. And I think that's the thing that's interesting. Whoever had quote, unquote, won, whether it was the white revolution or the black revolution, it would have been a revolution for Iran because both of them were radical in their ways of thinking. So some people actually refer to the Iranian Revolution as a counter revolution because it was against what the Shah was trying to do. And in some ways, people think it took Iran backwards. So it really comes down to what your perception of it is. But what's important for us to know is that the ayatollah did win. 125 years of monarchy had been swept away and replaced with a theocratic, fascistic state bent on the creation of a global Islamic caliphate via their proxies, eventually of the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah. So, essentially, in removing a brutal and corrupt regime from power, the Shah, and there's no denying that he was those things, the revolution or counter revolution ended up instating an even more brutal and corrupt regime, because there's also no doubt about that this time it was just one that happened to be motivated by theocracy and religious extremism.
- [20:13]
B
So where does Raci fit into all of this? Well, in 1988, just in his 20s, Raci was made Deputy Prosecutor General on a commission called for by the Ayatollah. The job of this commission was to look into whether they could execute thousands of political prisoners being held in Iran. The commission focused on Evin Prison, a hellhole built on the outskirts of Tehran that came to represent the brutal and total power of the regime. In 1984, the prison had been handed over to a Man called Ali Hussein Montezeri, not to be confused with posh nurseries.
- [20:54]
A
That's all I kept thinking when I was writing this. Montesseri. Montesseri, not Montessori.
- [21:00]
B
Montessori was a cleric, but he was also a moderate and had actually himself been a prisoner in Evan before the revolution. So he's been on both sides of the wall. So naturally, he was a bit more sympathetic to the plight of the inmates. He let many go free. He vastly improved the conditions and he told the remaining prisoners, repent at your trial and I will release you.
- [21:26]
A
So who are we talking about? Who were these prisoners who were in Evin prison? Well, at the time, the majority of them were Mujahideen, who, let's not forget.
- [21:34]
B
Rambo 3 is dedicated to. Yes.
- [21:36]
A
Now, these Mujahideen had sided with Iraq and therefore against the Ayatollah in the Iran Iraq war, which had raged between 1980 and 1988. And so they were seen as traitors. Again, we don't have time to get into the Iran Iraq war, but it's basically when Saddam Hussein in Iraq, compelled by Western forces, invaded Iran in order to bring down the Ayatollah, it completely backfired. It galvanised the Ayatollah's power even more. And anybody who supported Saddam Hussein's invasion and basically did want to get rid of the Ayatollah, some of those were part of the Mujahideen and they were the ones who were in this prison.
- [22:16]
B
And now Salman Rushdie has one eye.
- [22:18]
A
Yes, the Ayatollah wanted all of them killed, but Montessori was not on board and he made his feelings very clear. He was, of course, swiftly sacked and placed under house arrest. And he would remain there until his death years later. To be honest, I can't believe he wasn't just immediately murdered.
- [22:38]
B
Mm.
- [22:39]
A
But that's what happened. So after this, enter Raci and the commission under whom the torture and executions at Evon began. Raci would hand out questionnaires to the prisoners to assess their levels of rehabilitation. And surprise, surprise, he concluded that just as the Ayatollah had wanted, the execution of pretty much all of these political prisoners was totally justifiable.
- [23:04]
B
Guards from Evan would later testify to the UN that under Raci, the prison became an execution factory.
- [23:10]
A
This is honestly just so disturbing. It made me feel so sick even to just write these next words, because.
- [23:18]
B
It feels so industrialised, so industrialized. They actually had forklifts to raise prisoners up to six cranes that were stationed in the car park from these Cranes hung nooses, allowing the guards to kill 66 prisoners every six single hour, a cycle that continued every day from 7.30am until 5pm the total number of those killed in Evan prison is hard to know for sure, but estimates range from 3,000 to 30,000. And through this barbarity, Ibrahim Raisi gained the nickname the Butcher of Tehran. He also cemented his position in Iran's political hierarchy, having proven himself to be a man who would follow orders no matter what, someone who would do anything to maintain the Iranian status quo.
- [24:13]
A
And so he was promoted to Chief justice of Iran. And I think the interesting thing to point out about Raisi or to discuss about Raisi is that he is, of course, like an interesting character. Ibrahim Raisi was a bad, bad guy, there's no doubt about that. But he isn't really that interesting in terms of, like, his villainy. Abraham Raci is, from the research that I've done, kind of like the personification of the banality of evil.
- [24:41]
B
Yeah. Gabby Gabbles.
- [24:42]
A
Yep. He was a bureaucrat through and through who only got to the top by following the rules and basically doing whatever the Ayatollah that he served wanted done. Even look at the fact of how he goes around and assesses these prisoners. He gives them all questionnaires and he's like, oh, well, no rehabilitation. We can kill them all. Don't worry. He is a total bureaucrat. But as popular as he might have been with the Supreme Leader, because he followed all of his orders, Raisi was not well liked by the people of Iran. However, despite this, he continued to climb the ranks. And in 2021, he was selected to be Iran's president. And note, we say selected and not elected, because, yes, Iran has elections, but not in any sense that we could actually describe as being democratic, since whoever the Supreme Leader wants to win any given election is who always wins. After all, ultimate power, according to Iran's constitution, lies not with the people, but with God, via the Supreme Leader. And so in that 2021 presidential election, the Ayatollah removed any candidates who'd looked like they could beat Raisi. And unsurprisingly, voter turnout was the lowest in decades.
- [25:59]
B
After Raisi became president in 2021, the civil unrest in Iran got even worse. People raged against the cost of living, crisis, levels of unemployment, rampant corruption, and demanded that Iran reduce its military activity in Yemen and Syria. But Raisi, determined to hold on to power, doubled down. Because it's not the people who are going to keep him there, is it? And in the three years of his presidency, executions in Iran rose by 80%, 8 0%, as Raisi oversaw the deaths of over 2,000 political prisoners. He also ramped up the spending on security, surveillance, censorship, all of those sorts of things in an effort to stabilise the country and stamp out any form of dissent. And crucially, to control the tension bubbling across the country. Raci also emboldened the morality police, handing them more powers than they'd ever had before to strictly enforce state sanctioned dress and behaviour ideals determined by Iran's ruling class of prison, predominantly Persian Shia clerics. A move that was the total opposite of what most of the Iranian public actually wanted, and a decision that would prove to be disastrous.
- [27:20]
A
But before we get into what happened next, let's have a quick look at the morality police themselves. The enforcement of a public moral code in Iran began soon after the 1979 revolution, when the new Islamic Republic sought to assert its Islamist ideology and principles on the general public. As Hannah said, we've all seen the bikini photos. Pre revolution, Iran was a very different place. You wouldn't be out of the ordinary to see women walking around in miniskirts. It all changed after 1979, and initially, this enforcement was carried out by vigilante groups who took it upon themselves to control people, ensuring that they were acting in a moral way. But as the regime stabilized, it gradually institutionalised its moral code into law. Then, in 2005, under the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Gashti Ashad, or morality police, were officially created as a wing of law enforcement. Now, although the morality police do monitor the behaviour of both men and women, its key concern over the years has absolutely been with how women dress, particularly when it comes to enforcing Iran's veiling or compulsory hijab laws. What's really interesting, actually is again to show you that comparison of how the Shahs saw themselves way, way back before another shah had, from a different dynasty to Reza Shah, had actually banned the hijab. So it was really this fight between, like a weird sense of wanting to become more Western for some shahs, wanting to really stamp down on this Persian identity rather than an Islamic identity. And then here you have the Gashtiya Shah doing the exact opposite.
- [29:10]
B
The Gashtiya Shahd have been around for about two decades, but successive governments tend to intensify their powers during times of social instability. And that is exactly what Raisi did in 2022, when he was confronted with mass public unrest as the people of Iran revolted after years of severe austerity measures. So Raci used the morality police as an instrument of social control, ordering strict patrols to help quash the dissent. But this backfired particularly spectacularly in September 2022, when a young woman, Gina Marcia Amini, died whilst in the custody of the Ghasti Yad. So what happened?
- [30:00]
A
On 13th September 2022, Marsha and her younger brother Kiara arrived in Tehran to visit their aunt. As they left the train station that evening, the Gharshi Ashad stopped and arrested Marsha for improper clothing. Now, just to be really, really clear, Marsha was wearing a hijab that day, but a few strands of her hair were visible and that was enough for the morality police to seize her. Under the new powers granted to them by President Raisi, the Iranian morality police, by this point in 2022 were routinely and arbitrarily detaining women who did not comply 100% with the country's medieval compulsory veiling laws.
- [30:42]
B
Marsha and her brother pleaded with the police, saying that they had just arrived in Tehran from saqez, a town 600 kilometres away, and they didn't know about the new enforcement guidelines. But their pleas fell on deaf ears as the officers beat Kiras and took Marcia, telling the Aminis that Marcia was to be taken to the Vazara detention centre for a corrective class aimed at reforming her behaviour. Like she's got a speeding ticket or something. Three days later, Marsha was dead. She was just 22 years old.
- [31:16]
A
But who was Marcia Amini? Well, her actual name, or the name by which she was known to her family was in fact Jinnah, the Kurdish word for life. But because in Iran names that are not Persian or Islamic are banned, her family registered her with the Persian name Masha. She was born on 21st September 1999 and lived in Saqez, the Kurdistan Province of northwest Iran.
- [31:44]
B
Mahsa was known to be a quiet girl, but she was ambitious and had actually been registered to start university the month that she died. And it's really important to note here that Marcia was just an ordinary 22 year old woman. She wasn't an activist, she wasn't someone out there that day trying to make a political statement about the hijab. She was just a normal woman who fell into the hands of the Iranian regime's brutal morality police for nothing more than a few strands of her hair being on show.
- [32:13]
A
It truly is like reading the Handmaid's Tale or something. It feels so completely unimaginable and I think to Western ears it may even sound hyperbolic. That we're saying, oh, there was just a few strands of her hair showing. It can be hard for us to wrap our heads around this, but that is what happened. And listen to the activists and the dissidents talking about the plight of women not just in Iran, but Afghanistan, Pakistan and all over the Middle East. We'll come back to one such dissident who Hannah and I actually went to see speak earlier this year, later in the episode. But for now, let's stick with Marcia.
- [32:51]
B
What exactly happened to Marcia after she was taken by the morality police is not completely clear. But within hours of her arrest, eyewitnesses in the form of other women who had also been detained by the morality police that day began reporting that Marsha had been subjected to a violent beating in the van because she had resisted her arrest. Marsha was taken to hospital within just 30 minutes of having arrived at the detention centre where she fell into a coma and then died. On 16 September 2022, the Iranian government.
- [33:22]
A
Released bits and pieces of CCTV footage showing Marsha on the day of her arrest at the detention centre. She's seen speaking to a female officer before suddenly collapsing again. You can go and look at that footage on YouTube. It is available, but it is obviously very, very specifically cut to show one moment in time. The Amini family was initially told that Marcia had suffered a heart attack and a stroke, with government coroner citing her death as having been a result of multiple organ failure caused by cerebral hypoxia. And on discovering that Marcia had had brain surgery before, these officials then stated that she had died due to complications related to this procedure. But this surgery had taken place more than a decade before Marcia died and her family were adamant that there had been no issues since. However, there wasn't much Marcia's family could do to refute these claims as they weren't even allowed to see her body.
- [34:24]
B
It was only in 2024, two years after Marcia died, that the UN, who had managed to get their hands on some evidence, including photos and videos of Marcia taken at the hospital, released the results of a fact finding mission into the death of Marsha Amini. They stated that there were clear indications of Marcia having suffered a significant trauma to her head and that Marcia had died, quote, as a result of beatings inflicted while in the custody of the morality police and that they were responsible for her death.
- [34:58]
A
But the women of Iran did not need to wait two years to hear what the UN had to say to know what had happened to Marsha. As soon as news broke about Marsha's death. The anger was palpable on the day she died. So Friday 16th September, 2022, dozens of people gathered outside Kashra Hospital in Tehran to show their rage.
- [35:22]
B
The next day, at Masha's funeral in her hometown of Saqz, women began removing their headscarves and chanting, jin jian azadi. Woman, life, freedom. This chant had been heard for years in the Kurdistan Province of Iran, where the people have battled against the plight of Kurdish women, in particular at the hands of the oppressive Iranian regime. So, of course, the death of Marsha, a woman of Kurdish descent, threw yet more fuel on that fire. But this fire spread out of the Kurdistan Province quickly, and soon this chant of woman, life, freedom would be adopted by thousands of people who would take to the streets of Iran and is now actually the name of the movement itself.
- [36:10]
A
And this rage spread because once the women at Marsha's funeral began to unveil themselves, things quickly escalated and security forces clashed with the crowds. Images of this violence tore through social media across Iran, and so did the anger and the protests. Soon, people all over the country were demonstrating, demanding that women have better treatment under the law, calling for the removal of the mandatory hijab rule, and in general, for more religious freedoms. This was totally new for the Ayatollah. In the past few decades, protests had been to do with economic issues, and the crowds had been pacified by reducing the cost of food or fuel. But now the protests were against the regime's religious fundamentalism and against the leaders themselves. And they were led ferociously, for the first time, by women and girls.
- [37:07]
B
Over the next six weeks, the protests exploded and spread from city to city. Footage of men and women walking together, calling for an end to gender apartheid and denouncing the violent suppression of women was going viral on a daily basis. Online rallies were held simultaneously at schools and universities in every corner of Iran. Even regions that had always been in lockstep with the regime were now revolting. Even the female inmates of Evin prison staged a protest in an effort to.
- [37:36]
A
Stamp down the government, began disrupting Internet services across Iran. But it was too late. People were out in the streets chanting, death to the Ayatollah. And we have to understand that these words, for them to previously have been said was completely unthinkable to have even been uttered in public, let alone to be screamed by girls in school uniforms. It totally rocked Iran.
- [38:06]
B
So leadership did the only thing they knew how to. Their regime upped their crackdown. Violent clashes with protesters became a daily occurrence. But on the 24th of September, residents of the small city of Oshnavia actually managed to drive the security forces out of the area, signalling to everyone watching that the regime was losing control. Then six days later, on 30 September, the authorities in the city of Zahedan would go on an all out assault. And in a day now referred to as Bloody Friday, they would carry out a massacre, killing nearly 100, mainly young protesters and injuring 300 more.
- [38:53]
A
It seemed like the Iranian government had learned nothing from their own past, because the more violence they used against their population, the more people who came out to protest. And over the following two weeks, the demonstrations only got larger and more heated. On Monday 3rd October, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made his first public comments on the situation, saying that security forces had his full backing. This, as you can imagine, went down like a cup of cold sick. And when he sent Raisi to Al Zahra University a week later, female students openly shouted in Ibrahim Raisi, the President of Iran's face, screaming, raisi, get lost. Mullahs, get lost.
- [39:40]
B
The government was being humiliated and the regime just couldn't have that. So security forces shut down schools and universities and arrested children, throwing them in detention centres. But this did nothing to calm things down and by mid October, workers from oil refineries in the nation joined the strike. So it was now looking like the situation would spiral from one of social and religious unrest to an all out economic crisis for Iran.
- [40:09]
A
Yeah, it's not hard to imagine what happens when you start throwing people's children in detention centres.
- [40:15]
B
Yeah, and that's, you know, protest all you want. If you really want to hurt them, stop going to work.
- [40:20]
A
Then, just as things were Looking bad, on the 15th of October, a fire broke out at Evan Prison. Now it's hard to know exactly what happened because of course reports vary massively. The prison blamed the inmates, claiming that it was caused by some sort of bomb that was part of a premeditated escape plan. Some claimed that it had been started by outsiders throwing Molotov cocktails at the prison, trying to free the detainees, while others said it was just an accident and that the sewing workshop in the prison had caught a light. But the prisoners say it was down to the guards who were retaliating because the inmates had been rioting for days, all the while chanting Death Khomeini. Whatever had happened, eight people died in the fire and at least 60 more were injured. And again, it really made the regime look like it was losing control because now you have as we said at the start of the show, the symbol for the regime's power, this huge prison on the outskirts of Tehran on fire. Like it was kind of a perfect analogy for what was going on.
- [41:27]
B
The violence on the street continued with daily gatherings with screams and chants of protesters drowning out calls to prayer. And every day they were met with brute force from a government now more determined than ever not to tolerate any form of dissent. It would take a year for the protests to die down, and in that time, the horrific acts carried out by the Iranian regime are almost too nightmarish to believe. By the end of the year, about 20,000 protesters had been arrested and at least 500 others, including children, had been killed when authorities had turned shotguns, assault rifles and submachine guns against their own citizens. But countless more had been brutalised by the regime's security forces as well. Protesters, including many young women, had been shot intentionally in the eye in order to brand them permanently as troublemakers and dissidents. Like the Mark of Cain, I suppose.
- [42:29]
A
Yeah, well, it screams of, you know, Sharia law, you steal, we cut your hand off, you protest, we shoot you in the eye so everyone knows what you are. But that was far from the worst of it. These protests, as we've said, drew in support from all sorts of Iranians. But the charge was led by women, mainly young women in the streets. They were removing their hijabs and acting in outright defiance of a regime whose fundamentalist religious ideology sought to keep them silent and unseen. This is literally the regime's worst nightmare. Can you imagine empowered women in the streets, in public, in front of the world, ripping off their hijabs and screaming death to Khomeini, and demanding a tearing down of the religious dogma through which the state holds absolute power. So this act of rebellion by these women led to the Iranian security forces characterizing these women's demands for equality, change and modernization as itself an immoral act. Their removal of their veils was twisted into a willingness to get naked and therefore allowed these men to justify using abhorrent sexual violence against these women, perversely claiming that this was the freedom they wanted.
- [43:51]
B
The UN fact finding report we mentioned earlier stated that some of the detainees arrested for protesting faced sexual violence, including rape, rape with an object, threats of rape, electrocution to the genitalia, forced nudity, groping, touching and other forms of sexual violence. And that is a quote. If you read the report, it's filled with example after example of stories of women being brutalized in the most vicious ways by officers and guards. Despite all of this, the protest continued, and for months, there was hope for meaningful change. Women and girls started living their lives in public without headscarves, and the Ghazti Yershad patrols had all but vanished from the streets. But it seems that this actually might have just been the regime lulling the population into a false sense of security. Because as the unrest began to die down in the beginning of 2023, the government suddenly doubled down.
- [44:53]
A
In January, even harsher sentencing for violators of the dress code were announced. And by March, the government began using surveillance cameras to monitor public spaces. And in July 2023, the Garshi Ashad were back in full force, with the official claim from the government being that it was based on popular demand to take action against the growing hijab negligence. Since then, women in Iran who have insisted on showing their hair have been punished by fines. They've had their driver's licenses taken away. They've even been debanked, kicked off public transport and lost access to the Internet and other essential services. The Iranian government now even threatens sanctions against businesses that allow women to go onto their premises without hijabs on. And again, you just really need to understand why they're trying so hard to shut these women down. Because Iran has its involvement in so many different conflicts within the Middle East. Their ideology is very much around bringing about this global Islamic caliphate. If you are going to be the leader of that, how can you tell other people to be conforming to that ideology when your house isn't in order itself? You've got women and girls protesting in the streets, taking their hijabs off. How can you possibly have any authority?
- [46:15]
B
Still, though the women of Iran are not taking this lying down, many are more committed now than ever not to reform, but to a total overthrow of the government and the system. Though this continued fight back is not without its victims, women who violate the hijab laws are still being punished. We found examples of one woman who was sentenced to a month washing corpses before they were buried.
- [46:40]
A
It's such a bizarre set of things that they're now forcing these women to do because they realise the violence isn't enough to shut them up.
- [46:48]
B
Even female Iranian celebrities like Afsana Baigan, Azadehmadi and Leila Bolukat were all sentenced to compulsory psychotherapy courses for, quote, disturbing the public mind because they were seen in public without their veils.
- [47:06]
A
But it doesn't end there, because just a year after Marcia Amini's murder in October 2023, a Kurdish schoolgirl named Amrita Garavand, aged just 17 years old, fell into the hands of the morality police because of the hijab laws. Like with Marsha, it's not clear exactly what happened, but Amrita was in a coma for nearly four weeks as a direct result of an injury she sustained while in custody. And like Marsha and Amrita's stories, there are countless more. In a 2021 report, Amnesty International documented at least 72 deaths having taken place while in custody in Iran between 2010 and 2021. And that's just the official record, as far as they could tell.
- [47:53]
B
And while we haven't gone into detail on more cases, just know that these grim incidents are far from isolated in Iran. And of course, nothing is going to be done about it. In Iran, authorities have not only refused to conduct any thorough, independent, or impartial investigations into the killings. Instead, they applaud the security forces for suppressing the unrest.
- [48:16]
A
So what hope is there for the women of Iran? It's there in dissidents like Mahsih Alinejad, to name just one. Masih was a journalist, born and raised in Iran, a country that she loved. But when she started making waves, she. She landed herself on the government's radar. Never a good place to be in Iran. The mullahs began to focus on Masi, and she was forced to flee Iran. Fourteen years ago, she moved to the US and settled in Brooklyn. And from halfway across the world, where she could have led a quiet life. Having escaped, Masi continued to lead the charge in the women life freedom movement. She encouraged women who were going out without their hijabs on to take pictures and videos of themselves and send them to her so that she could share those images with her millions of followers. She even told them, you don't have to include your faces if you don't want to. But these women told her, no, we will. Masi started the campaign. Mycameraismyweapon.
- [49:18]
B
And this caught the attention yet again of Iran's leaders, and they were not happy. They saw Marcy's behavior as seditious. And soon the FBI were in touch, telling Marci that she was on a hit list. The FBI had evidence that the Iranian regime had employed various hitmen to attempt to kidnap Marcy and take her to Venezuela and then back to Iran, where there would be a show trial and then Marcy would be executed. Over the past few years, the FBI has confirmed that there have been over 30 attempts on Marcy's life while she's been in the US including a man who had been given an AK47 and her address. At least three men so far have been arrested plotting to kidnap or even kill Marcy.
- [50:09]
A
You can actually watch interviews with her where they play the ring doorbell footage from her house in Brooklyn of the man who's got the gun trying to get into her house.
- [50:20]
B
And Marcy hasn't seen her family since she left Iran all of those years ago. And of course, they have been punished brutally because of her descent. And that's a pain that she lives with every day. It's totally unimaginable. She also plants trees in her garden after her family members and talks to them.
- [50:39]
A
What's also unimaginable is that while unsurprisingly, Marci has become a target for the Iranian regime, some in the west also seek to undermine and cancel her. Marci is now an American citizen, yet she finds herself being criticized and called Islamophobic by the likes of Ilhan omar, an elected U.S. congresswoman. This self described feminist has dismissed Masih and made claims that she's stirring up Islamophobia in the west by criticizing Islamic and Iran. And I don't know about everybody else, but to me, it's just the most despicable thing I can imagine. The idea that a woman would flee for her life from a despotic, theocratic nation because she criticized them, to then come to the west in search of freedom of speech and safety, to then be silenced not just by some random person on Twitter, but an elected politician claiming that her words speaking out against a dogmatic, oppressive regime, is Islamophobic.
- [51:45]
B
I don't know.
- [51:46]
A
The mind boggles. I think it's like.
- [51:50]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's ridiculous, I think. And Marcy said it herself when we saw her in New York, like, she was like, you know, if wearing the hijab is your choice, fine, yes. But you cannot argue that in a country where wearing it is the law, that it is a choice. You can't.
- [52:06]
A
No, of course it's not. And to make this point that for her to tell the story of what happened to her and call for the freedom of women who don't want to do that, who don't want to follow those rules, who want more freedoms, is somehow Islamophobic is just so gross. Now, the term Islamophobic itself is well documented as actually being an invention of the Iranian regime. At the end of the 1970s, Iranian fundamentalists invented the word with the aim of making Islam as a religion beyond criticism. Basically, their aim was to label anyone who dared to cross that line, a racist. But obviously, Islam is not a race, it is an idea. It's a religion. And before a million people at me, I'm not saying anti Muslim bigotry doesn't exist, but Islamophobia as an idea was created and propagated by the Iranian regime as a way to curtail criticism of their behaviour in a way that they knew would work in the west, because they knew in the west we're particularly sensitive to being called things like racist. So they weaponized our own sensitivities around things like that to curtail anybody criticizing them.
- [53:17]
B
And just to be clear, under oppressive Islamist regimes like the one in Iran, it's the Muslims who suffer the most. Those who try to leave the religion, those who are from different sects to the ruling class, those who demand equality of the sexes and ethnic minorities like the Kurds. And we've shown you in this very episode that someone like Marcy, who grew up Muslim in a Muslim country and wanted to live her life differently, to end the gender apartheid in Iran and didn't want to wear the hijab when she rebelled and spoke out, she was threatened with death multiple times.
- [53:51]
A
So for her then to come to the west and be threatened with being an Islamophobe for speaking her truth and talking about her own lived experience is just so gross. Any religion, just like any idea, should be up for criticism. And we shouldn't let calls of Islamophobia bring in anti blasphemy laws to the west by the back door. I really, really urge people to check out Masihla Nejad and her work. Like I said, Hannah and I both got to see her speak earlier this year and it was just so, like, I don't even know what the word was. She was so inspiring to listen to. She's incredibly brave and kind and intelligent. And I really think we should be listening to what she has to say, especially when it comes to things like how much we should cherish things like freedom of speech and the right to criticise.
- [54:43]
B
So now let's go back to where we started, the death of Ibrahim Raisi, immediately after the Ayatollah called for five days of mourning. Raci's state funeral was, however, quite the sombre affair. Nothing like the pomp and circumstance of other leaders who had died recently.
- [54:59]
A
Yeah, when Soleimani, that general, was killed, his funeral was like, grander than grand. But Ibrahim Raisi, they were kind of like, it's okay, let's just, you know, let's just get this over with what was interesting, I did learn, is if you watch the funeral, obviously other people died. They have all of their funerals at the same time. Ibrahim Raisi has a black turban on top of his casket where the others don't. And apparently it was there to signify his direct descendants from the Prophet Muhammad, which I thought was interesting.
- [55:29]
B
Oh, wow. The event was also punctuated with usual chants of Death to America. Even though Iranian officials have not pointed the finger of suspicion at America having killed Raci or anything like that. The Iranian state just really fucking hates America.
- [55:45]
A
It's so strange to watch this funeral. And it's like people cry, but then they're just like, all screaming, death to America. Like, why? And I don't know. The chants of Death to America, which rung loud and clear throughout Raci's funeral, make it all the more strange, in my opinion, that the UN flew its flag at half mast and held a minute's silence for the death of Ibrahim Raisi. I remember that the Butcher of Tehran, noted war criminal. The BBC even published a bizarre article on the day that Raci died, commenting on the mixed legacy he leaves behind, stating that he was the president of the underprivileged and poor and hailing him for the reforms that he brought about. Like processing a backlog of court cases by murdering everyone. Yeah, it's much faster. Maybe we should try that because we have a big backlog of court cases in this country. Maybe we should just murder everybody. Yeah.
- [56:40]
B
Get me a crane.
- [56:41]
A
It's unbelievable. And I think if we're shocked by that, I think it will probably be even more despicable and shocking. No doubt to the thousands and thousands of people who have lost their family and friends at the hands of the regime's brutality led by the likes of Ibrahim Raisi. And also not to mention the thousands of dissidents across the world who have been forced to flee Iran over the past few decades.
- [57:09]
B
So let's round it off. Who or what really killed Raci? Was it a hit or was it just an accident? As soon as the crash was announced, many people were already theorising that the US or Israel might have been involved. And when it came to light that the transponder from the helicopter wasn't sending out any signals like it should have, after the accident, these rumors went into overdrive. But we don't think a foreign government was involved, mainly because there's no real benefit from the death of Raisi. His death has changed nothing. It certainly won't change policy in Iran. He'll just be replaced and it will be business as usual.
- [57:51]
A
But that doesn't mean he wasn't murdered. If we look at who actually stood to gain from Raci's death, we need to look a little closer at Iran's hierarchy itself. The current Ayatollah son, Mojtaba Khomeini is a bit of an enigma. He doesn't hold public office, he doesn't give public speeches. No one really knows that much about him, except that he is very well ingratiated with the irgc, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are basically a powerful branch of the Iranian armed forces. Had Mojtaba resented that Raci had been chosen by his father to be his successor? Did he kill Raci knowing that with the backing of the IRGC, he could take his father's place one day?
- [58:38]
B
Maybe. Certainly if Raci was killed, whoever did it would have to feel pretty bloody safe taking a shot at the second in command. But again, we just don't have any evidence. And when you consider that the helicopter Raci was in was about 40 years old and due to sanctions imposed by the US, the regime couldn't get their hands on any parts to repair it either. So maybe the crash was just down to the fact that the helicopter probably shouldn't have even been in the air.
- [59:08]
A
That's probably why they're not accusing anybody else.
- [59:10]
B
Yeah, right.
- [59:11]
A
It's either because it's Ayatollah Khomeini's son and they don't want to point the finger at anybody and they know that, or they know it's just because he was flying around a fucking piece of shit. And they were like, we don't want the world to know how bad our helicopters are that we put our Presidents in. But whatever happened, Iran is sticking firm with the it was just bad weather explanation. And whether Raisi was murdered or not, the power struggle at the top in Iran is going to be intense. Not just for who will replace Ibrahim Raisi as President, but more importantly who will now succeed the 86 year old Ayatollah when he eventually kicks the bucket. And how that will impact Iran, the Iranian people and the wider Middle East.
- [59:56]
B
I don't know how, but it's gonna, it's definitely gonna.
- [60:00]
A
So, yeah, that is everything that we can probably tell you in one episode of Red Handed that you need to know about Ibrahim Raci and Marsha Amini. And go check out Marcia Linejad. She is doing some great work and everybody should do so. She also wrote a book called the Wind in My hair, which I haven't read yet, but it is on the list. Yeah, she's just a pretty fucking cool person.
- [60:25]
B
Yeah, yeah. Really inspiring lady. So go forth and learn and let.
- [60:31]
A
Us go get a pret. Because I am that could. So that's it, guys. We'll see you next week for something else.
- [60:38]
B
Goodbye.
- [60:38]
A
Bye.