Are hijab protests ‘the beginning of the end’ for Iran’s regime?

The uprising over the death of Masha Amini is like no other, but whether it leads to revolution remains to be seen

The Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, was holding court to a small group of journalists at the Millennium Hilton in New York on his first visit to the United States since his election in June 2021. At home, protests over the death in police custody of Masha Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, were entering their sixth day.

At the start of the meeting, a 10-minute film was shown, part patriotic travel brochure and part paen to how the Iranian people live peacefully together in a new model of democracy". Given the events in Iran, it seemed like the kind of absurd propaganda only a severely self-deluded regime would screen.