I do not believe this is strictly a generational matter. It is also incorrect to think that previous attempts to reform the theocratic state were undermined due to deflecting propaganda.

A letter from Evin [prison] by Bahareh Hedayati (part of student uprising in 2012) can clarify these matters for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahareh_Hedayat

https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/bahareh-hedaya...

https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/biography_of_bahareh_hedayat.pd...

-- part 1 (too long for single post) --

This is the umpteenth text that I am writing and I cannot finish it. My sentences are so overflowing with anger that I am afraid it will mangle my logic. But controlling your anger when a 22-year-old man is hanged for blocking a street to protest is tough, or perhaps impossible to do, especially anger at a government that has blocked the vital highways to an ordinary and honorable life for the people and especially for the women of this land.

The revolution is inevitable

To argue that the Islamic Republic is the enemy of this land, of this nation, has been redundant for a long time. The nature and the fate of this government is decay and it must go. Getting rid of this criminal government is bound to be costly and fraught with danger, but there is no other way but to pay this cost and face up to the dangers because this power structure is unable to recognize new social forces and to assimilate them within itself. In other words, there is no chance that the existing regime can extricate itself from the situation that has emerged, because neither can a tiny part of the protesters’ demands be fulfilled within the present system, and nor can the majority of the people waive any of their demands.

The government cannot fulfill these demands because all possibilities and mechanisms for flexibility within the power structure have already either been eliminated or have lost credibility. And the people cannot forgo their demands because these demands are tied to their normal, everyday lives. No matter how we look at them, these demands are legitimate, undeniable and self-evident. As a result, these demands are now confronting the power structure itself, which is going to crumble whether they are fulfilled or they are resisted. Therefore, revolution is inevitable.

We must be on guard against uncontrolled violence

By its nature, a revolution is a perilous and violent affair. So, although forbidding violence is practical up to a point, insistence on absolute avoidance of violence is the same as forbidding the revolution itself, meaning canceling the revolution, denying the necessity of bringing down the existing power structure and of arriving at a new social covenant.

What has been going on in the streets in the past few months is the strongest argument that we have in response to those who are still not convinced that the Islamic Republic must be brought down or argue against it. But we have to say to those who believe that this is a necessity that although — unfortunately — a revolution is not devoid of violence, we have to keep a red light on to warn against uncontrolled violence.

When it comes to violence — besides the moral issue that might genuinely be disturbing to some — the more important issue is the stability of Iran after the collapse of this regime. Therefore, the kind of violence that would start and sustain a cycle of revenge after the downfall of the regime must be avoided because it would threaten the stability of Iran and the survival of the government that is borne from the coming revolution.

We, the 1980s generation, were the last to test the possibility of peaceful change

No impartial observer can accuse the Iranian people of impatience or a propensity to violence because, in these past decades, the collective minds of Iranians have repeatedly tried every possible way to peacefully change the existing situation, but each and every time these methods have been blocked by the ruling totalitarian regime.

We, part of the generation of the 1980s whose lives were spent in war and under relentless ideological indoctrination, and whose adolescence and youth came during the so-called reform period, are perfect examples of those who tried to find the last possible outlets for change. We even agreed — mistakenly — to gamble on the social capital accumulated through the Green Movement [the name for the protest movement of 2009-10 – IranWire] under the illusion that fulfilling some of the people’s demands — normalization of relations between the government and the world and its inevitable consequence, namely the government’s compliance with modern rules of governing — would make the lives of our fellow Iranians better without violence.

At every juncture, however, the government was adamant about continuing its wrongful ways. We did everything to prevent violence, but this fear of violence both backfired and gave rise to a misunderstanding. It backfired because it gave the appearance that no action in the streets is acceptable and the reformists, following this misinterpretation of avoiding violence, virtually stopped protesting in any shape or form! It was a misunderstanding because the government came to believe in the illusion that we were afraid for our lives and even our former friends imagined that the policy of avoiding violence was the same as compromising with power! But both these ideas were illusions.

Explaining why both friends and enemies were under such an impression requires extensive discussions at another time, but suffice it say sociopolitical upheavals revolve around the forces that they release from within themselves, not prescribed guidelines and advice.

...