The current wave of protests in Iran is unprecedented: global support from leaders, celebrities and ordinary surfers;
A wave of resignations of university professors to show solidarity with the people;
general strike;
The Mahasa Amini hashtag in Persian has already passed 100 million mentions;
Demonstrators test the security forces and chase them, there are dead - including high-ranking - from among the security forces, in addition to the dead from among the demonstrators, at least one city that was declared liberated, artillery shelling by the Revolutionary Guards on the Kurdish strongholds in Iraq, and it is not known what else will happen.
But each wave of protests is unprecedented until the next wave.
And most commentators still predict that it will be suppressed or subside - but not decisively.
Why, maybe we will make a historic move here that changes the face of the Islamic Republic?
First, Mahasa Amini, whose death ignited the protests, did nothing.
The beautiful 22-year-old did not demonstrate, did not protest, did not defy - she did not even take off the hijab completely.
And yet she was arrested by the "modesty police" using unimaginable violence (the video of the arrest was published online and it is not ambiguous), did not receive medical treatment until she lost consciousness a few hours later, and died three days later in a coma.
This thing, together with a case of rape and a horrific murder of a 16-year-old boy at the same time, dropped the token to the Iranians that even if they are completely fine, lower their profile and do not demonstrate, they still have no personal security.
And then, basically, they have nothing to lose if they go out to demonstrate.
Second, most of the waves of demonstrations so far have been on a topic that does not deny the existence or the foundations of the Islamic Republic.
In the apparent rigging of the 2009 presidential election, the protest basically said that we wanted Mousavi at the head of the executive branch of the Islamic Republic, and we got Ahmadinejad.
This protest still maintains the legitimacy of the method.
In the fuel riots in 2007 and then again, even more so in 2019 - the last wave of violent riots which was unprecedented in its scope and the number of injured and killed - the protest was about an economic matter.
Most of the waves of protests that were seen were local, sectoral and usually on an issue that, if you really wanted to, could be resolved within the framework of the Islamic Republic.
In 2011 there was an attempt to shake off the Islamic Republic inspired by the Arab Spring.
There we heard slogans questioning the very system, such as "Death to the religious wise government", but there were more security forces on the streets than demonstrators.
Bell planted.
The protest is not about hijab.
She was never about it.
The current protest started because of an event related to the head covering, among its characteristics is the burning of hijabs and revealing hair, including in videos of women dancing with bare hair in the street - but the hijab has always been, and remains even now - a symbol.
In contrast to the fuel protests, the teachers' protests, the workers' protests, the truck drivers' protests, the farmers, the pensioners, the residents of Shimiran, the Arabs of Khuzestan, and more - here the issue is not one issue or another that the Islamic Republic can pursue towards the protesting sector if it so wishes.
Even if the riots are suppressed this time, the heads of the regime will no longer be able to say that these were demonstrations on a legitimate issue, which were "hijacked" and made political by foreign parties.
The protesters now do not demand freedom of dress.
They demand complete liberation from the oppressive yoke of the Islamic Republic.
The author is an expert on Iran from the Azri Center at the University of Haifa and from the "Enriched Iranium" research
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