Cornelius Adebahr and Barbara Mittelhammer discuss why Iranians are revolting, how the unrest fits into the country’s broader socioeconomic and political context, and how the EU should reimagine its Iran policy.
Iranians are revolting against a regime built on the systematic oppression of women, marginalized groups, and civil society. Against this background, as well as Tehran’s ties with authoritarian powers and the risk of escalating the nuclear file, the EU must reorient its approach by placing human rights and security at the center of its policy. Only then can it play a greater role in ensuring a brighter future for all Iranians and securing nuclear non-proliferation.
Cornelius Adebahr, a nonresident fellow at Carnegie Europe, and Barbara Mittelhammer, a political analyst and consultant, discuss how the feminist nature of the protests can transform the country and lead to a re-think of the EU’s relations with Tehran.
[00:00:00] Intro, [00:01:46] Iran in Present Day, [00:10:06] 30 years of EU Engagement with Iran, [00:15:38] A New Approach Toward Iran.
Cornelius Adebahr and Barbara Mittelhammer, March 31, 2023, “Half a year of feminist revolt in Iran,” Delegation of Die LINKE in the European Parliament.
Cornelius Adebahr and Barbara Mittelhammer, December 5, 2022, “Sketching a Feminist EU Response to the Revolt in Iran,” Carnegie Europe.
Cornelius Adebahr, January 17, 2023, “Europe Needs a New Iran Strategy,” Carnegie Europe.
Cornelius Adebahr, September 8, 2021, “Looking Beyond Iran to the Persian Gulf,” German Council on Foreign Relations.
Cornelius Adebahr and Olivia Lazard, July 7, 2023, “How the EU Can Help Iran Tackle Water Scarcity,”, Carnegie Europe.
Cornelius Adebahr, October 11, 2022, “Can Protests in Iran Topple the Regime?,” Carnegie Europe.
Cornelius Adebahr et al., January 20, 2022, “How the Transatlantic Relationship Has Evolved, One Year Into the Biden Administration,” Carnegie Europe.
Cornelius Adebahr and Barbara Mittelhammer, January 2, 2023, “’Women, Life, Freedom’: A German feminist foreign policy towards Iran,” Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.
Cornelius Adebahr, March 21, 2023, “What Germany’s turning point means for its feminist foreign policy,” Politico.
Europe Inside Out
Episode #8 - Why Europe's Iran Policy Warrants a Rethink
Scholars: Cornelius Adebahr and Barbara Mittelhammer
Cornelius Adebahr
Woman, life, freedom.
The chants of women and men jointly protesting the repressive regime in Iran triggered an outpouring of support in Europe and beyond beginning in September 2022.
Zan zendegi azadi. Or in the motto's original Kurdish version, jin jiyan azadi.
Just as the attention for this feminist revolt is beginning to fade, it is crucial to look at broader trends. What are the fault lines in Iran today? What role has the international community, particularly the EU, played? And how can a comprehensive European policy tackle the challenges emanating from Iran while helping Iranians determine their own future?
Cornelius Adebahr
Hello and welcome to Europe Inside Out, a monthly podcast from Carnegie Europe about the continent's greatest foreign policy challenges.
My name is Cornelius Adebahr and I am a nonresident fellow at Carnegie Europe.
Cornelius Adebahr
This episode of Europe Inside Out is about Iran and the particular challenges it poses to the European Union. We will look at the revolt that has gripped the country and what it could mean for democracy more broadly, but also the security dilemmas related to Iran that directly affect Europe.
I’m joined by Barbara Mittelhammer, a political analyst and consultant who focuses on human security and gender in peace and security.
Barbara is also well versed in feminist foreign policy, an expertise in high demand, given Germany's recent publication of its own feminist guidelines. Barbara, welcome.
Barbara Mittelhammer
Thank you, Cornelius, and it’s great to join you today.
Cornelius Adebahr
With the ongoing protests, Iran has been in the headlines for over half a year now, just as the regime continues to make waves in the foreign policy community, whether through its material support for Russia’s war in Ukraine or the recent Beijing-brokered deal with Saudi Arabia.
Yet the focus on individual events, I think, can sometimes limit our ability to understand and unpack the bigger picture. So I’d like to start our conversation by spotlighting the common threads, the trends that help explain what Iran is going through today.
Many observers, me included, have seen the recent revolt in Iran as a beacon of hope, as a sign that change is possible in a country and region that would badly need some improvement. What is your reading of these events, Barbara?
Barbara Mittelhammer
Well, Iran stands out globally for the feminist nature of this revolt, all while the regime itself actually proves the findings of feminist research that when women are not safe in a country, then no one is safe.
And we know that the level of gender equality is the strongest indicator for the peacefulness of that country, internally and towards the outside.
Additionally, when a regime is oppressive vis-à-vis its own citizens, it also tends to be aggressive towards the outside.
Cornelius Adebahr
Well, that’s quite an original illustration of our podcast’s Inside Out motto to apply to Iran, I'd say, isn't it?
Barbara Mittelhammer
Yes, and we’ve indeed seen this continuum of violence both within the country and towards the outside. So, on domestic level, the systemic discrimination and heavy violation of women’s rights and rights of marginalized groups, the shrinking of civic space, and the repression of civil society have, of course, already been there before the protest, but heavily increased with the regime’s reaction to the revolt.
And with this heavy crackdown on protests, we have seen an extremely high number of people being arrested. Nearly 20,000 have been documented by human rights groups. At least 530 protesters have been killed in protests. There is a systemic level of sexual and gender-based violence and torture and abuse of the judicial system, with over 100 protesters still under the impeding threat of the death sentence, so much so that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights referred to this as weaponization of judicial procedures. And within that, there is an alarming percentage of minors and children being arrested, violated, harmed, and over 70 children killed by the regime.
And this extreme violence extends to the regional and international sphere as well. Iran has been engaging in regional spats and proxy wars with its neighbouring countries. It has played a central role in Syria and Yemen. And taking one further step back, Iran is the only country worldwide to openly deliver drones and possibly missiles to Russia that are used for strikes at Ukrainian civil infrastructure.
Cornelius Adebahr
One element that I would like to emphasize is the role of Iran’s minorities in the revolt. Many will know that the protests started in the Kurdish region following the funeral of Mahsa Jina Amini, the young Kurdish woman beaten to death in Tehran by the so-called morality police. But the pattern goes way beyond that, doesn't it?
Barbara Mittelhammer
Yes, it seems like the regime is trying to use sectarian lines to strike divides and build its own narrative. So preemptively warning of secessionist tendencies and foreign interference, while it has itself been cracking down with brute force on protests in minority regions.
So, if we look at the numbers of deaths that have occurred, protesters with minority backgrounds such as Kurdish or Balochi are disproportionately affected. And the same goes for imprisoned protesters. Those who have been charged with crimes which could carry the death penalty, and also the four men which have been executed so far, all hailed from ethnic minority backgrounds. And again, this pattern of violence extends into the regional sphere, with Iran attacking Kurdistan region of Iraq in September last year, coinciding with the beginning of protests.
Yet, the protest movements has resisted the sowing of divisions. Instead, the regime’s brutality has brought the challenges of neglected regions to the center of protests, right? And has made Iranians of the Persian majority much more aware of the plight of minorities in the country.
Cornelius Adebahr
It’s good you're mentioning this interaction between the minorities and the majority population. So let’s briefly look at the grievances that all Iranians have faced over quite some time now. After all, this isn’t the first time they have taken to the streets, even though this is the most fundamental and most widespread uprising. I recall the student protests in 1999 for free media, the Green Revolt in 2009 following a fraudulent election, and then with increasing frequency protests in response to the country’s economic malaise in 2017-18 and again in late 2019.
Barbara Mittelhammer
Exactly. Iran has indeed been in a profound socioeconomic crisis for years marked by rising poverty, increasing unemployment, raging inflation, and skyrocketing prices. As a consequence, many Iranians struggle to meet their basic needs.
And it is important to note that this economic crisis has hit women and marginalized groups hardest. And on top of that, the COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the situation, again particularly for women and marginalized groups. So this crisis is on the one hand, due to the widespread corruption to government mismanagement, including of the country’s natural resources like water, which is bringing about, just to note that, also severe environmental crisis on top of things. But on the other hand, the strict sanctions period following the US withdrawal of the nuclear agreement in 2018 has also had a harsh impact on Iran’s economy, again impacting Iranians in general, but those most vulnerable hardest.
Cornelius Adebahr
And it has also had an effect on civil society, I have learned. Is that true?
Barbara Mittelhammer
When speaking about Iran and the revolt, it’s important to acknowledge also how the socioeconomic situation is also affecting civil society and its capacity to act and to mobilize, for one, because people are struggling to make ends meet.
It’s really affecting how they access basic needs such as food, health services, provision of housing, and it’s really restricting. The situation in Iran is really severe in that sense. But it also is affecting people’s livelihoods because they either depend on the state or simply cannot afford to risk losing their job or their income by being arrested. So people are extra careful, and it's really an existential issue for them.
Cornelius Adebahr
It’s true. And it’s good you’re mentioning this, because this is, to me, one of the things that, for example, the European Union could engage much more on when it comes to the current protests. It’s not just about raising these human rights issues, investing in the accountability to possibly one day prosecute the crimes that have been committed, but it’s also about providing emergency support to activists in Iran.
This can be money, funding that is needed for bail, for medical treatment, family visits, or even the replacement of confiscated devices. But it’s also about providing assistance to those facing persecution, especially women and human rights defenders. And also, if necessary, offering these people asylum. Which again then means to engage governments in the region to allow safe passage for those who are fleeing and to provide safe havens for those who are already in Europe, to ensure their physical safety, and to facilitate possibilities for them to continue their work.
Well, Barbara, I regret we cannot go deeper on this, so I’d particularly like to recommend your paper on the socioeconomic aspects of women’s rights in Iran coming out this month. For now, suffice to say that 44 years after the Islamic Revolution, the old guard not only no longer knows how to run this country well, in addition, the regime has been losing authority with the people at a rapid pace ever since the hardliners around supreme leader Ali Khamenei have consolidated their power by making Ebrahim Raisi president in 2021. If it weren't so depressing, it could be called ironic.
Cornelius Adebahr
If this is where we stand today, it is important to inquire how we got here -and that doesn't mean looking at historical events some 70 or more years ago, as we unfortunately don’t have the time to go into the details of Iran's very complex and intricate history. But to better understand Europe's posture vis-à-vis Iran, it is worth looking at what has happened since the EU first formulated a policy toward the country in 1992. The so-called Edinburgh Declaration was merely three paragraphs coming at the end of more than 100 pages of Council conclusions, but it laid the groundwork for engaging a country with which the bloc hitherto had had no relations.
So I’ll try to give you some key developments in a 1-minute rundown. In the first decade of EU-Iran relations, critical dialogue was the name of the game, which meant a political dialogue, reviving trade ties. and engaging Iran on human rights. This was pretty much frowned upon by the United States and Israel, which pressed for the country’s isolation. Hope briefly blossomed with the reformist President Khatami being elected in Iran, only to shrivel soon after.
The second decade, if you look at it, began with the Iraq war in 2003 and the nuclear talks that followed revelations about Iran’s clandestine nuclear program. First it was only the Europeans negotiating, then they took the United States, China, and Russia on board. There was lots of futile talks and increasingly harsh sanctions, to put it briefly.
The last ten years, so from 2013 onwards, saw a brief upward period at the beginning, with a nuclear deal being signed in 2015, also called the JCPOA. And this saw the EU becoming the UN mandated supervisor of the deal’s implementation. But soon relations went downhill after the United States left the deal in 2018, as we mentioned, which made Iran renege on its obligations while also ramping up with regional escalation. And despite a campaign promise of now President Biden, there is still no improvement on the nuclear side. Instead, it’s in continuous crisis mode.
Barbara Mittelhammer
And if I might add to that, what we can see from this historical detour is that a lot of issues have fallen off the table because of the EU’s focus on the nuclear file. Fundamentally, there has been the political conviction that the situation of Iran’s nuclear program needed to be addressed and resolved first before other policy issues could really be tackled. And it goes without saying, of course, that preventing Iran from advancing its nuclear program is and has been a key security concern. At the same time, though, all the other dimensions women’s and human rights, socioeconomic issues, all regional security have been disregarded.
And there was a brief moment in 2016 when the EU tried to bring the breadth of policy instruments to bear in the wake of the signing of the nuclear deal. But it did not get very far. Did it Cornelius?
Cornelius Adebahr
That’s true. In April 2016. It was in fact the biggest commission delegation ever until then that traveled to Tehran, led by the High Representative Federica Mogherini, and with seven commissioners in tow. They went to Tehran to meet the Iranian government and to discuss the potential bandwidth of EU-Iran relations, from trade and education to climate and culture, everything that the EU has to offer. However, with the election in the United States later that year and the ensuing setback on the implementation of the nuclear deal, plus a growing human rights crisis in Iran, the implementation of the plans never really took off.
Barbara Mittelhammer
This is a really good point because it shows that even in adapting this programmatic framework, women and human rights and also civil society engagement or support, have not been key considerations to the EU.
Moving one step further, this also highlights the EU’s challenge when it comes to supporting women in human rights and civil society in repressive contexts overall. The EU has a number of programs and instruments for this, but it doesn't make targeted use of them as soon as political concerns pop up, like, for example, in the case of Iran. And on a different level, to mention a different perspective on challenges, there is also the standard complaint about the EU’s external action that not always Member States are aligned. So there are those that focus more on trade or on human rights, some that value their relations with Israel and the United States more than the importance of developing a coherent and effective policy toward Iran.
Cornelius Adebahr
That’s an important element you mentioned, Barbara, because the United States really on Iran has become a determining factor for the EU’s policies. It is interesting to see how the EU, led by France, Germany, and the UK at the time, devised a diplomatic approach early on, which, however, only began to bite once they convinced the United States to join.
The JCPOA then is something that the transatlantic partners could claim as a joint success, each contributing through their specific roles. But with Washington’s abandoning of the deal and a subsequent maximum pressure campaign to break the Islamic Republic, the Europeans were left powerless. They couldn't keep up legal trade in the face of US secondary sanctions, and they couldn’t convince incoming President Biden to overcome domestic resistance and make a fresh start with a nuclear deal once he had entered the White House.
Cornelius Adebahr
We’ve spent a bit of time now looking at where Iran is today and how we got here, so I'd like to look toward the future now.
Both you and I know better than to try and read the tea leaves about what Iran might look like in the next five months, let alone five years. But I think it's worth talking about how the EU's approach is fit to respond to today's and tomorrow's challenges and where we think it might need to improve. So we said at the beginning that we wanted to look not just at individual events, important as they may be like the current revolt, but at the deeper, less visible connections that weave them together.
For someone who has worked intensively on women peace and security as well as on feminist foreign policy, how does the big picture of Iran look to you, Barbara?
Barbara Mittelhammer
So we see that the current approach has actually left the EU with very little room to maneuver and it has left it struggling in three ways. First, in finding a more comprehensive response to the current situation in Iran that would more effectively support Iranians and respond to the regime’s human rights violations. Second, in moving forward on the issue of nuclear nonproliferation. And third, in actually regionalizing its approach because many of the security issues concerning Iran and the region cannot be solved on national or bilateral level and looking at, for example, environmental aspects, water security, arms control, the situation of refugees or the climate crisis. And I think the feminist perspective is in my view, particularly relevant in developing such a reimagined EU foreign policy approach. So when we consider, for example, the potential impact that the recent deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia brokered by China might have from a gender aware or human security perspective, this also brings in a whole new dynamic to the international perspective.
And you mentioned, Cornelius, that we wanted to weave together current events with a long term dimension. We see that we need a different approach both in the short term but also at strategic level. Right?
So the EU would be well advised to develop a wholly different and more comprehensive approach vis-à-vis Iran based on this realization that a human security perspective, women and human rights, or civil society engagement are as important as nuclear nonproliferation and arms control.
Cornelius Adebahr
That's true, but that’s only the EU you're talking about here. And there are other especially global powers like the United States and China that we also need to look at. We’ve mentioned the United States a couple of times and the difficulties that President Biden has in getting anything that has the name nuclear deal on it through the domestic machinery. But it is something else, what we have seen from China lately. And you also already mentioned the deal that China has brokered between Saudi Arabia and Iran. So in a way, if you look at these things, the Europeans see Iran and they try to get an engagement with Iran, have been doing so for 30 years long. But it is not the same sentiment if I can say or if I can see from in the United States and in China. In the US, Iran has very much become a domestic politics issue. It’s much less a foreign policy question, but it is dealt with at the domestic level: different factions, different parties pursuing very hawkish lines against Iran and has less to do as a European, with a sober analysis of the facts on the ground.
In China, it’s the other way around. China sees Iran as part of a global realignment and also its brokering of this deal which basically meant to come in at the last stage after Saudi Arabia and Iran had already talked for months. Coming in at the last stage and taking in the fame for getting the two to sign an agreement on the reestablishment of diplomatic relations.
But for China, this is part of balancing major powers in the Middle East. Iran in turn has been looking to China for a number of years already, going away from the Western perspective that it had for decades, and looking to Russia, to Central Asia, and to China as its partners. And so this is something that the EU needs to take into consideration, that it needs to pick up on when devising its more comprehensive approach. As I say, it’s not just the European Union and its member states thinking what would be best for Iran, but it would also be taking into consideration the situation on the ground and also the global realignment.
But going back to the current revolt, if I translate the response, Barbara, that you gave us into what the EU should be doing, I see safeguarding human rights, supporting civil society, and promoting human security, not just in Iran, but also in a regional context as being on top of the list.
Barbara Mittelhammer
Yes, precisely. And looking at it from a feminist perspective, that would mean that any policy response should be measured against its impact on and benefit for Iranians in the country. This particularly refers to any form of restrictive measures because we do know that broad economic sanctions tend to harm the civilian population first and strongest. But of course the EU can do much more and faster. So, just to give two examples. On sanctions, we are discussing this for over half a year now and there are only 204 individuals on the list of individual sanctions. In comparison, and I know it’s a different context, but there are almost 1,500 individuals sanctions because of Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, and rightly so, but this shows it would be possible to go further.
So, for example, stronger international coordination could be a helpful element to create matching lists of Iranian officials who should be denied visa and whose assets should be frozen to really go further with that.
And another example on supporting civil society in human rights, aside from the financial support and coordinating with member states on the provision of visa or asylum and protection, which is also something that the EU would need to step up, the EU would need to refine its instruments. When we look, for example, at engagement with civil society expertise. So a possible way to do that would be to develop instruments for do-no-harm assessments when it comes to sanctions packages. But again, this needs to be accompanied by a long-term policy shift to have a meaningful impact.
Cornelius Adebahr
Thanks for mentioning the long-term perspective, because in a way, it seems to me that Iran is emblematic of some of the challenges that will come to the European Union in the near future. We’ve described the situation inside the country with the popular unrest, with the dissatisfaction with an autocratic, theocratic regime, which can boil over any moment again, so there is a latent possibility for another uprising and a situation which might spiral out of control. There is the regional dimension that we’ve touched on the margins, where the power play between Saudi Arabia and Iran has cooled off for a moment out of a realization; both sides have come to realize that it is better to get along rather than heighten this conflict to the point of a possible military confrontation. The nuclear file remains there and it remains unsolved. There is no alternative, as I see it, to a diplomatic solution. What exactly the diplomatic solution can be at this point in time is very much debated. It would not be helpful to go for the military solution. And we can see the geopolitical backdrop of the increasing rivalry between the United States and China and Russia as a third party here.
All this plays out against the backdrop of the situation in Iran. And this is something where the European Union should really invest in and try to devise this comprehensive long term perspective for the sake not just of its own Iran policy, but also for getting a grip on how future challenges might be dealt with.
So, as we’re coming to an end, allow me briefly to zero in on Germany’s feminist foreign policy. That’s not only because the country has been a driver of the European response to the recent protests, but also because you, Barbara, have advised the government on how to develop a feminist approach towards specific foreign policy issues.
Barbara Mittelhammer
Well, it's great to see that the German government has joined the ranks of those countries that are pursuing a feminist foreign policy, and I do commend their efforts to really build a thoughtful approach. For me as an analyst, there is much that remains to be wished for and worked upon. So I don't want to sound overly optimistic, but now that the foreign and development ministries have both launched their strategies, let's see how they will be implemented, and let's evaluate the progress over time.
But coming back to the context of Iran and a feminist approach, I do want to stress that it would be little differentiated to assume that Germany now has to prove that the concept of feminist foreign policy works in its response to Iran. Because we are still maneuvering in a flawed context that has been built up over decades, and we discuss some of those challenges today. We do, of course, and that’s maybe one of the conclusions that we can take from our conversation. We need the shift of priorities in the bigger picture.
Yet, what is maybe the most noteworthy to me is what the uprising in Iran can teach us Europeans, first, with its courage and inclusivity, and as it builds on Iranians’ really long standing and overlooked grievances of women, minorities, and marginalized groups. Because those are really the issues we need to look at in a given country. And only if we do get this full picture, which a feminist approach helps us to do, then we can devise better policies for the conflicts that we face.
Cornelius Adebahr
Well, it doesn’t happen very often that one can end a conversation on Iran on a positive note, but that’s what we've achieved today.
Cornelius Adebahr
Thank you very much, Barbara, for joining me on this month’s episode of Europe Inside Out. It was a pleasure speaking to you.
Barbara Mittelhammer
Thanks so much, and it was my pleasure Cornelius.
Cornelius Adebahr
For those who are interested in learning more about women peace and security, I encourage you to follow Barbara's work on Twitter @Bmittlehammer. That's at B-M-I-T-T-E-L-H-A-M-M-E-R.
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