The Iranian state silenced protests with brutality. What now for Iran’s opposition?

The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami in his novel 1Q84 may have foreshadowed the great and indelible rift Iranian society is about to experience. “The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things they don’t want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can’t turn away. Their memories are passed on from parent to child. That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”

Inside Iran, contrasting memories are already being brought into even sharper relief and made more traumatic by the blanket propaganda from Iran state TV portraying protesters as drug-crazed or pawns of a foreign power attracted to a violent terrorist culture reminiscent of Islamic State.

But underlying this battle for narrative lies a wider political challenge for the opponents of the Iranian government inside and outside the country.

View image in fullscreen Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian (right), meets the chief of police, Ahmad-Reza Radan, in Tehran on 3 January. Photograph: Iranian Presidency/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock

Yet again the Iranian state, faced by a revolt, has resorted to overwhelming repression and state violence to silence. The initial promise by the reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, that he would listen to the voices of protest as the grievances were legitimate emerged to be hollow, or quickly superseded.