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^[update]. 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 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed the unrest as "riots" and part of a "hybrid war" against Iran created by foreign enemy states and dissidents abroad.

On March 6, 2024, the UN accused Iran of coordinating crimes against humanity, which the government rejected.

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 Shah banned the wearing of hijab in public and admitted women to universities. During the reign of his successor and son Mohammad Reza Shah, 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 Shah'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.