UNVEILED

On September 13, 2022, Iran’s morality police arrested 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini for having too much hair protruding from her hijab (“Members of the Gasht-e Ershad then grabbed Amini and began forcing her into their van”). Three days later, she was dead in Kasra Hospital, another victim of the country’s re-education centers. Photos of Amini in the hospital showed severe trauma to her face and head, and the images quickly went viral on Instagram and other platforms. At her funeral, her mother rejected claims that her daughter had violated the law. Women ripped off their headscarves in defiance, and mourners’ wails turned into chants against the regime. Despite strict internet controls, videos circulated worldwide, and Iranians of different ethnicities, faiths, and political leanings rallied together, mounting one of the boldest challenges to theocracy in decades. Harounoff, the international spokesperson for Israel at the UN, places Amini’s death in the larger context of Iran’s authoritarian rule, showing how decades of consolidated power and violent oppression now collide with the reach of social media. Acts of defiance through sports, music, and art, though often punished, are now far more visible both in and outside Iran. Not content to just provide the timeline of the Women, Life, Freedom movement, the author examines this and similar efforts to show how even a unified front can falter without a unified message. A highly accessible resource, the work doubles as a crash course in modern Iranian history while elevating the voices of experts and exiles. The writing avoids sensationalism and treats its subjects with care, acknowledging that many never sought to be martyrs even as their deaths became flashpoints. The absence of photographs is notable, given the role images play in online spaces. The text effectively shows that social media amplified dissent, but offers little sense of how Iranian online communities actually interact, only hinting at factionalism among exiles. Without these details, this portrait of protest feels unfinished, though no less powerful.