The End of Opposition in Iran?

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of Iran © AFP

Tehran – The well-known Iranian filmmakers Mohamad Rasoulof, Mostafa Aleahmad, and Jafar Panahi were recently detained in Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's fierce opponent and reformist Iranian lawmaker Mostafa Tajzadeh was also detained, only hours after tweeting against the government's tightening of the Islamic dress code for women.

According to the statement released by Human Rights Watch on Tuesday, the latest arrests of prominent opponents by the Iranian government "are part of a fresh crackdown on peaceful dissent."

Rasoulof and Aleahmad were among a group of at least 70 Iranian filmmakers and members of the film industry who published an open letter and posted statements on social media urging their nation's security forces to lay down their arms in response to the government's violent crackdown on protesters after a building collapsed in the southwestern city of Abadan in May, killing 41 people and making it the country's deadliest incident of its kind in years. Jafar Panahi was subsequently detained on Monday night when he tried to inquire about the status of the cases of his two filmmaking colleagues at the prosecutor's office in Tehran.

Both Rasoulof and Panahi, recipients of the Golden Bear, the Berlin Film Festival's top honor, have long been wanted by Iranian authorities. Mohammad Rasoulof, who had won a significant award at the Cannes Film Festival with "A Man of Integrity," left for his home country in 2017. After that, Rasoulof's passport was seized by Iranian officials, and he was forbidden from making future movies. He received a year in jail sentence in July 2019 without being informed of the exact date of his incarceration. But he was able to produce "There Is No Evil," which won the Golden Bear in 2020.

With his 1995 feature début, "The White Balloon," Jafar Panahi received a Cannes prize. Despite growing limitations in Iran, he continued to win praise abroad. He has been prohibited from producing movies and leaving the country since 2010, but he has nevertheless been able to work in secret to produce new movies, such as the Golden Bear–winning "Taxi" (2015) and "3 Faces," which received the best screenplay award at Cannes in 2018.

For decades, the international community has been troubled by Iran. In 1979, it established Islam as a system of government. Since then, it has backed insurgents overseas and flouted international conventions. The Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear agreement reached in 2015 by six major countries and Iran in May 2018. According to the administration, the agreement does not sufficiently stop Tehran's nuclear development or address its missile program, violations of human rights, and support for terrorism. In an effort to exert "maximum pressure" on Tehran, Washington reinstituted sanctions.

On the other side, millions of Iranians are now living in poverty and have worse standards of living as a result of deteriorating economic situation brought on by US unilateral sanctions and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, Ebrahim Raeesi, who was elected president in June 2021 in a rigged election, presided over an abusive judiciary and was charged with ordering the summary death of several political detainees in 1988. While major human rights abusers went unpunished, Iranian authorities continued to crack down on nonviolent dissent, persecuting human rights advocates and dissidents.

In light of the current war in Ukraine, Iran continues its military technological co-operation with Russia. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser at the White House, stated that the material the US received indicated Iran was ready to provide Russia with possibly hundreds of drones, some of which had combat capability, for its war in Ukraine.

There Is No Evil (2020)

The four stories that are variations on the crucial themes of moral strength and the death penalty that ask to what extent individual freedom can be expressed under a despotic regime and its seemingly inescapable threats.

3 Faces (2018)

Behnaz Jafari, a popular Iranian actress, searches for a young girl Marziyeh in northwestern Iran with her friend Jafar Panahi, a director, after seeing a video of the girl asking for help to leave her conservative family.

Persepolis (2007)

A precocious and outspoken Iranian girl grows up during the 1979 Islamic revolution against the Shah of Iran, Iraq-Iran war, because of which she had to flee several time.

Coup 53 (2021)

Theatrical feature documentary on the story of Operation Ajax, the CIA/MI6 staged coup in 1953 in Iran that overthrew Prime Minister Mossadegh.