Four Years Later, Jina Mahsa Amini Has Not Been Forgotten

The Headlines Remember 200 Nights, Not Amini

On September 16, 2022, Jina Amini, also known as Mahsa Amini, died in a Tehran hospital after being detained by the morality police. Her death ignited the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, which began in Kurdistan and spread across Iran. In 2024, a UN fact-finding mission concluded that there were signs of physical trauma and that violence inflicted on her while in custody caused her death. Iran rejected the findings and continued to maintain that Amini had not been beaten.

On the fourth anniversary, the event is almost entirely absent from the main headlines of Iran’s authorized media outlets. The space the regime prefers not to devote to Amini has instead been filled by another campaign: the commemoration of 200 nights of rallies in support of the state and the war. One report declared that “the presence of the people during 200 nights of gatherings is a popular referendum for the continuation of resistance.” A subheadline even claimed that 85 percent of the public supports continuing the rallies, but the accessible report did not provide the wording of the questionnaire, the sample size, or the identity of the organization that conducted the survey.

This is a highly calculated use of the term “referendum”. A genuine referendum includes a question, the right to vote, the option to oppose, and a verifiable count. The nightly rallies contain none of these elements. The regime counts the number of nights, not the number of participants, and presents the persistence of an organized group as the decision of an entire country.

The campaign also changes the role of the street. During the 2022 protests, the street was where women and citizens challenged the state. In the version offered by the regime in 2026, simply attending a rally is treated as a vote in favor of the state, the war, and the policy of resistance. Voices that do not participate remain outside the frame.

Iranian Society Does Not Look the Way It Did Four Years Ago

Amini’s absence from the headlines does not mean that the social change triggered by her death has disappeared. A field report published on the anniversary describes women in cafés and on the streets of Tehran and Isfahan without hijabs, including in places where such a sight was rare before 2022.

A 36-year-old woman from Tehran who identified herself by the pseudonym Golnar put it simply: “This country is not the same country it was four years ago.” According to her, the wars accelerated some of the changes, but the new presence of women in public spaces and the way they dress also stem from what happened after Amini’s death.

Iranian law has not changed. The mandatory hijab remains in force, and the authorities have legal tools, cameras, and identification systems that can be used to punish women. The change has occurred in the gap between the law and the state’s ability to enforce it everywhere and at all times. Many women have turned noncompliance into an everyday practice rather than waiting for a large demonstration or a call from a political organization.

For the regime, this is a more complicated problem than a demonstration that can be dispersed. A rally ends, leaders are arrested, and slogans are removed from walls. A change in habits, clothing, and the way public space is used requires constant surveillance of millions of people. That is why the official media invest so much effort in portraying the street as a place of loyalty: visible reality offers citizens a different picture.

In Oshnavieh, the Eve of the Anniversary Begins With Arrests

In Iranian Kurdistan, an entirely different picture emerged. The Hengaw human rights organization reported that security forces raided homes in Oshnavieh ahead of a general strike called by an alliance of political parties in Iranian Kurdistan. According to the organization, forces entered homes without warning and used violence during the arrests.

Hengaw said it had verified the identities of five detainees: Fakhr al-Din Ebrahimi, Qader Amini, Soran Bayazidi, Rahim Arshadi, and Reza Dian. The report contains a discrepancy regarding the name of one of the business owners, who is later identified as Qader Abdollahi. Four of the detainees were described as shopkeepers or business owners, while Ebrahimi was described as a former political prisoner and the son of Mohi al-Din Ebrahimi, a Kurdish prisoner who was executed.

The information has not received public confirmation from the judiciary, the Interior Ministry, or an independent media outlet operating inside Iran. The report alone therefore does not establish how many people were arrested, what their condition is, or whether a strike took place on the scale claimed by Kurdish organizations.

Even with that qualification, the contrast between the two streets is clear. Pro-establishment rallies receive front-page coverage, congratulations, and a celebratory count of every night. Organizing to mark the anniversary in Kurdistan is met, according to activists’ reports, with preventive arrests and pressure on shopkeepers. The regime is not content merely to present its own image of public support. It acts in advance to reduce the likelihood that a competing image will emerge.

The Revolutionary Guards Count Drones, Qeshm Residents Hear Explosions

In the Hormuz arena, the Revolutionary Guards announced that they had shot down a U.S. MQ-1 drone east of the strait. According to the announcement, it was the fourth aircraft of this type to be downed within several days. The Guards had previously claimed to have shot down another aircraft west of the strait.

No U.S. confirmation of the four shootdowns has been published, nor has independent documentation been presented that would make it possible to identify the aircraft, their locations, and the circumstances in which they went down. It can be verified that the Revolutionary Guards issued the announcement, but there is not enough open-source material to verify the full operational outcome.

Media outlets aligned with the regime expanded the military claim into a political conclusion. Hormuz is portrayed as an area that Iran manages through military power, navigation rules, and the denial of logistical services. This clearly expresses Iran’s ambition: not merely to defend its coastline, but to determine who is permitted to operate in the strait and under what conditions.

But residents of Qeshm received a reminder that morning that this control is far from complete. Local sources reported several explosions heard from the direction of the sea. Authorities did not immediately say what caused them, where they occurred, or whether any damage was caused. There is no basis for attributing the sounds to a U.S. strike, an interception, or an Iranian exercise. They do, however, expose the gap between the official message and residents’ experience: the press speaks of managing the strait, while people living on the island hear military activity that the state does not explain.

In Vienna, Iran Seeks the Treaty’s Protection; in Tehran, Its Value Is Questioned

In the nuclear arena, Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, presented Iran at the IAEA conference as a longstanding member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a country committed to civilian uses of nuclear technology. According to him, the organization supplies 76 radiopharmaceuticals to 230 medical centers and serves more than 1.5 million patients. These figures were provided by the organization itself and have not been independently verified.

Kamalvandi said that “nuclear science, technology and industry have taken root in Iran, and they cannot be erased through military action or assassinations”. He argued that the country had complied with its commitments for years, while the United States withdrew from the nuclear agreement and the agency failed to condemn attacks on Iranian facilities.

The Iranian argument sounds less convincing in light of the Board of Governors’ decision to report Iran to the UN Security Council over its failure to cooperate with an investigation into uranium traces at undeclared sites. Iran maintains that its program is civilian and that the war prevents it from guaranteeing safe access for inspectors, but from the IAEA’s perspective the question remains more straightforward: where is the material, what is the condition of the facilities, and what can be verified?

Inside Iran, a different message was being heard at the same time. Esmail Kowsari, a member of parliament’s National Security Committee, said: “Whether we withdraw from the NPT or not, international law is not being implemented in our case”. He did not announce that a decision had been made to withdraw from the treaty, and senior members of the committee also said that no formal bill on the matter had been submitted to them.

Tehran is in no hurry to relinquish its membership in the treaty. It still needs the rights, status, and legitimacy that membership provides to its civilian nuclear program. Statements about withdrawal currently serve as leverage and a threat, but they also erode Iran’s argument that the treaty constitutes a binding framework that other countries must respect.

One Million Tomans on the Card and the Dollar Above 230,000

On the economic front, the government loaded one million tomans per person in credit onto the food cards of families whose heads of household have identification numbers ending in 3, 4, 5, or 6. The credit is valid for purchasing products included in the program and cannot be withdrawn as cash. It helps with food purchases, but it cannot be used to pay rent, debts, transportation costs, or medicines not covered by the program.

In Minab, Hormozgan Province, authorities restricted the use of emergency fuel-station cards to three refuelings per week. Motorcycle owners may use station cards only between 6:00 and 8:00 a.m.; at other times, they are required to present a personal card. According to the report, all 16 stations in the area have been equipped with license-plate recognition cameras. The restrictions were presented as a measure to combat smuggling and abuse of fuel quotas.

The hours are not a minor detail. They determine when a person is allowed to refuel. For workers who depend on motorcycles, a two-hour window in the morning changes the structure of the entire day. It also illustrates how Iranian subsidies are taking on a new form: less of a uniform, readily available price, and more individual eligibility, usage restrictions, and monitoring of drivers.

The dollar was trading on the open market at around 230,000 tomans, even after a modest weekly decline. At that rate, one million tomans in food-card credit is worth slightly more than four dollars at the market exchange rate. The comparison is not exact because subsidized goods are not necessarily priced according to the free-market dollar rate, but it illustrates the erosion in what the state is able to offer households.

Communications Minister Admits Filtering Is Harming the Country

Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi said that “the internet is a public right” and that a high-quality, stable network cannot be provided as long as the issue of filtering remains unresolved. According to him, the restrictions and the widespread use of tools to circumvent them have harmed both network quality and the digital economy.

Hashemi explicitly referred to the events of 2022. According to him, the blocking of international platforms following Amini’s death initially reduced network traffic, but users returned through VPNs. A tool regarded by the regime as an illegitimate activity became a routine part of online life. “If we continue saying block this, allow access to that and later prevent it, it is clear that internet quality will suffer”, he said.

The minister also acknowledged that Starlink has become a serious challenge to Iran’s digital sovereignty. During the war, a significant share of traffic shifted to the satellite service, and in such a situation, he said, the domestic control mechanism loses its significance. This is an unusual admission: the attempt to control information pushed users toward infrastructure that the state has difficulty filtering, monitoring, or disconnecting.

Hashemi does not have the authority to dismantle the blocking system on his own, and he did not announce that the restrictions would be lifted. His remarks point to a disagreement within the state. The security establishment views blocking as a means of limiting protests and information leaks; the Communications Ministry sees the damage to the network, businesses, and the state’s ability to keep the public within Iranian infrastructure.

The Desk’s Conclusion: The Memory Has Not Been Erased, It Has Moved Elsewhere

The attempt to present 200 nights of rallies as a referendum is intended not only to convince the public that the regime enjoys support. It is meant to create a competing date to September 16. Instead of the anniversary of the death of a young Kurdish woman in custody, the media offer a celebration of national loyalty, war, and the exercise of power in the Strait of Hormuz.

The effort succeeds only to a limited extent. The regime can decide what is printed on the front page, which rally is photographed, and which senior official receives airtime. It does not exercise the same degree of control over changes that have already taken place in society. Women continue to appear without hijabs, shopkeepers in Kurdistan are suspected of supporting strikes, and internet users are turning to circumvention tools and satellite systems.

The establishment’s “referendum” also suffers from a simple problem: support is not measured by the number of nights on which a rally was held. If the regime were fully confident in the public’s position, it would not need to substitute an organized gathering for a national vote, nor would it need to almost entirely remove from the headlines the event that the new rallies are intended to replace.

The contradiction recurs in other areas as well. The Revolutionary Guards speak of control over Hormuz, but the authorities do not explain to Qeshm residents the explosions they hear. The delegation in Vienna emphasizes membership in the treaty, while a member of the National Security Committee says it makes no difference whether Iran remains in it. The government presents food credit as protection for the public while restricting access to fuel and monitoring license plates.

Four years after Jina Amini’s death, the regime is not ignoring her memory. The very effort invested in constructing an alternative narrative demonstrates how threatening that memory remains to it. Amini’s name may be absent from newspaper front pages, but the change that began after her death is visible in the streets, in clothing, in shuttered shops, and in the routes Iranians use to bypass the state in order to communicate with one another.