For Iranian human rights activist Masih Alinejad, the deaths of several prominent Iranian military and security leaders were an answer to a prayer.
The commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, and Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, were killed in separate air strikes on Friday. The Institute for the Study of War reports that "many of these officers," killed in Israel's strikes "had close personal bonds to one another, having forged brotherly ties in their youth during the Iran-Iraq War and maintained those relationships as they rose together through military ranks in the following decades. These relationships created an informal influence network at the highest echelons of the Iranian military establishment."
They not only had enormous influence on military and foreign policy, they also dominated domestic policy. Their deaths were a cause for celebration by Alinejad and other Iranians who had suffered as a result of their brutal oppression and bloody crackdowns.
"They are the ones who have made millions of people's lives miserable, not just in Iran, but across the entire Middle East," Alinejad writes in The Free Press. Their names might not be familiar to people around the world, but "for me and for the people of Iran, they are the monsters who have impoverished and tyrannized our families."
Alinejad is one of the most compelling voices of the Iranian opposition. At age 18, she was arrested for the first time for producing anti-regime leaflets. Through her prolific writings and speeches, Alinejad has "afflicted the comfortable" in Iran since the rigged presidential election of 2009, organizing the growing opposition to the regime.
She was forced to leave Iran that same year, and from that point on, Alinejad had a target on her back. Iranian government agents attempted to kidnap her several times and, failing that, eventually tried to assassinate her. Several Iranian agents in the U.S. were arrested, tried, and convicted for plotting to kill her last March.
It didn't slow her down in the least. In 2018, she wrote a best-selling autobiography, "The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran." The book detailed her creation of the anti-hijab campaign in 2012 that exploded into the Iranian consciousness in 2022, as even young girls joined the protest.
Young Iranian schoolgirls in Karaj defy the mandatory veil, which is part of their uniform, and shout at school officials in protest. Generational change may be an unstoppable force, but the courage of these girls is incredible. pic.twitter.com/6YIOToDiJE
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) October 3, 2022
With the Israeli strikes, the Iranian regime is nervous about the reaction of the people.
They should be.
While sanctions choked the economy and hospitals ran short of basic medicine, IRGC commanders lived in luxury. Today, viral images on Persian-language social media show their rooftop pools, penthouse suites, and VIP elevators, many of these destroyed in the recent strikes.
These commanders didn’t defend Iran, they defended the regime from its own people. The only people who sacrificed for the sake of the country were the poor, the women who dared to show their hair, the students shot in the streets.
This is why many Iranians are not mourning today. Despite the profound uncertainty that lies ahead, they’re celebrating.
Alinejad reports on a mother whose child was murdered by the police in 2019 and was subsequently arrested. She wrote to Alinejad of “waking up to the news of Salami’s death, I started to scream out of joy that I’m seeing justice.” She told Alinejad that “soon you’ll be back to Iran and we’ll dance on the graves of these killers.”
Another woman, whose mother was shot dead by the Revolutionary Guards in the 2022 protests against the death of a young Kurdish woman who died while in the custody of the morality police for not wearing a hijab, wrote to Alinejad “We’re all happy for the elimination of the killers of our loved ones. War comes with a price. Innocent people might get killed. But we know who we should blame: the Islamic Republic.”
Alinejad writes, "This particular woman shaved her head over her mother’s grave—an image that soon became a symbol of resistance in Iran."
Millions of Iranians have marched, danced, sung, and bled for a better future. In 2022, after Amini’s death, the world saw the courage of young women facing armed soldiers with nothing but their hair and their hope. That movement was not crushed. It is still burning, quietly and bravely, in homes, schools, and prisons across Iran. Today we are reminded of that. The courage of these Iranians might very well spell the end of the Islamic Republic itself.
Masih Alinejad is just one of many thousands of brave women and men who will eventually win the battle to rid the Iranian nation of these oppressors. For the world, it can't come soon enough.
