The Woman, Life, Freedom revolution: the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic

What he says

An English translation of the talk, which is in Persian. It was made with AI from YouTube's automatic captions and may contain errors; the Persian transcript is authoritative. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

0:01 Hello. It is Monday, 24 Shahrivar 1404, September 15, 2025. Tomorrow, Tuesday, 25 Shahrivar, is the third anniversary of the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini, the Kurdish girl from Saqqez, in Tehran at the hands of the Guidance Patrol. Her killing, which was the start of the Woman, Life, Freedom revolution, unleashed a wave in our society that, one can confidently say, is the biggest event to have happened in our country since the Constitutional Revolution. In fact, the spark set off by Mahsa's killing was the lifting

1:03 of a curtain over a movement whose roots and foundations had been forming for a long time. On the anniversary of this great event, yesterday, Sunday, and the day before, Saturday, in dozens of cities around the world, across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania, hundreds and even thousands of Iranians came out into the streets, honored the memory and names of those who gave their lives on the path to freedom, and emphasized the continuation of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. In Iran, too, well-known

1:57 figures trusted by the people issued various statements honoring the memory and name of Mahsa Amini and the revolution known as Woman, Life, Freedom. Zahra Rahnavard, who has been under house arrest along with Mir Hossein Mousavi for 15 years, wrote in a message, in part, that the killing of Mahsa was like a lash upon the conscience of the nation, and that her movement brought about an endless awakening. Narges Mohammadi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, also stated in another message that it is now women who are turning the streets into an arena of protest against the system of religious despotism.

3:01 The renowned filmmaker Jafar Panahi also stated that with Mahsa's death, the curtain was pulled back from the lies, and a generation rose up that decided it would no longer remain silent. Others, such as Ms. Sedigheh Vasmaghi, Pantea Bahram, the actress banned from working, and Katayoun Riahi, another filmmaker and artist, are among those who also sent messages and marked this anniversary. But why should we consider this event a turning point in Iran's contemporary history? The first point is that Mahsa's death, as I said, at the hands of the Guidance Patrol, was in fact the trigger, or

4:02 the spark, that brought with it the birth of a great social and cultural revolution. Usually, such events, known as triggers or sparks of great social movements, give rise to transformations, changes, protests and so on only when that movement has been laying its foundations for decades, for years beforehand, has roots, and has gradually taken shape. In other words, great social movements are not created by one person, or one group, or one faction; rather, they come into being on their own, and events like

5:02 Mahsa's death are merely the sparks that set those wheels in motion. The combined conditions of time and place over at least the past four decades have shaped a discourse in our society that, one could say, has become institutionalized and crystallized in the central slogan of this movement. The second point is that the central slogan of this social and cultural revolution, which is flowing powerfully through our society and has also challenged the ruling political power and locked horns with it,

5:57 was "Woman, Life, Freedom," or in its Kurdish form, which one could say was a gift from our Kurdish compatriots to all of Iran, "Jin, Jiyan, Azadi." It has three parts. The first part is woman, as our largest social group, half of our population, which has been subjected to discrimination, and the legal, social, cultural and political discrimination against them is still ongoing in society at the hands of the ruling regime. Therefore, the demand of "woman" is in fact not only the elimination of discrimination against women, but in fact the elimination of discrimination against all social groups and ethnic and religious sections

6:56 and gender minorities and so on. In other words, this part of the slogan puts forward the demand for equal citizenship rights for all Iranians. The second part is the desire for life, the emphasis that the people of Iran want to live, with young people, especially the young people of Generation Z, who had the greatest presence and activity in this movement, at its center. This second part is in fact a modern slogan, a slogan of the age of modernity, standing against a medieval

7:52 religious government that has at the center of its theory the call to death, the afterlife, martyrdom, and a desire for death. In other words, the desire for life of our young generation is in fact a Renaissance against a medieval government and its propaganda for returning to the Middle Ages. Just as in the West all historians believe that the book The Decameron, written by Giovanni Boccaccio, was the first book to start the literary and artistic Renaissance, which later led to a comprehensive Renaissance and the scientific revolution and so on, this movement, that is, the desire for life, is in fact first of all

8:53 a fitting slogan for the Renaissance and rebirth of our people against a medieval government. In that book, a few young people go out of Rome to a villa, and there, instead of talking about death and the Day of Judgment and Jesus Christ and religion and so on, they begin telling their own stories of youth and life, falling in love, parties, and their romantic relationships, and in this way they set life against death, seclusion, and turning one's back on the world. This slogan, in its second part, that is, life, effectively puts forward the desire for life and for having

9:51 a life in step with the modern age and suited to the new world. But the third part of the slogan, that is, freedom, has effectively been our lost cause for more than 100 years. In fact, one could say that over the past 200 years, all of our social and political movements can be summed up under two headings: the struggle between tradition and modernism, and the struggle between despotism and freedom, the latter of which should also be considered part of the former. Freedom, about which it has become clear today that both individual freedoms and social freedoms, as well as the democratic system built on the foundations of the pursuit of freedom, are both a requirement for economic development, through the work of people like Acemoglu and Robinson

10:53 and others, and the basis of justice, through the work of people like John Rawls and others. Therefore, it is a must for the movement of the Iranian nation, and of any nation, to achieve prosperity and freedom and to reach modern civilization. And this central slogan has been compared by many thinkers to the slogan of the French Revolution, that is, liberty, equality and fraternity, and they have stated that this slogan is, compared to that one, a twenty-first-century slogan and far more progressive. The third point is that it shook the world, and in fact

11:44 various cultural, artistic, social and political circles around the world took their hats off in respect to the Iranian nation, especially the women and young people of Iran. They carried out tactics such as cutting their hair and protest tactics on the floors of parliaments, at festivals and elsewhere as a sign of solidarity, and effectively, one could say, this movement left its stamp on history and drew the attention of the whole world. In the course of this revolution, the young people and the organizers driving it forward, through two innovations they carried out, first, making the time and place of the protests fluid,

12:39 and second, decentralizing the management of carrying them out, were able, against a government whose every drill and whose entire apparatus of repression is designed to crush any protest within a week or at most 10 days, to carry a protest movement forward for more than 110 days, and effectively show that with simple tactical changes and with shrewdness, this regime can be pushed back. In any case, the Woman, Life, Freedom revolution, which I consider a revolution because it generates, gives rise to, and heralds fundamental changes in the social and cultural sphere, has started a movement that sooner or later will act as

13:42 a platform for political change. It has delegitimized the ruling religious government, the religious despotism, and has challenged its theory, which sooner or later will also have its political impact and will bring the government down. Toomaj Salehi, the people's artist and the eloquent voice of social movements, has also performed a new song for the anniversary of the Jina revolution called "Lullaby," which, in his own words, is dedicated to all the sisters and brothers who sacrificed their lives in this revolution for justice and freedom,

14:38 and in memory of the more than 551 people killed in this movement, among whom are 68 children like Kian Pirfalak, as well as the hundreds of wounded, among whom there are at least more than 580 with eye injuries, some of whom have been blinded in one eye completely or in both eyes. In any case, this movement flows like a roaring flood through the bed of our society, and may it soon roll up the scroll of the ruling murderers, criminals, despots, dictators and corrupt. In hope of victory for Iran and Iranians.