STR/EPA
Protests in Iran in 2022 over the death of young Mahsa Amini
In Iran, protesters and, above all, militants are being subjected to extremely violent repression, with shots fired into their eyes. Blinding the enemy who dares to challenge the existing power is the latest act of repression to enter the country’s long history.
Over the past few years, during the Iranian resistance protests, and especially during the national Women, Life and Freedom movement in 2022, the frequency of eye injuries suffered by protesters became the target of public attention. Women, young people and students, often even passers-by, lost an eye or vision due to shotgun blasts or projectiles fired at close range.
A tactic of the security forces that we are witnessing again: the lawyer and winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi, estimated on January 9 that “at least 400 people were hospitalized in Tehran hospitals with eye injuries caused by gunshots since protests began at the beginning of the year.”
This brutal use of force reveals much more than just police errors. These acts are part of a political rhetoric that echoes throughout Iran’s long history, in which looking into the eyes symbolizes the loss of political capital and someone’s personal.
Power is in the eye of the beholder
In ancient Iranian political culture, power and eyes are inextricably linked. I see, then I know; I see, then I judge; I see, soon government. This concept permeates the literary and political spheres of Iran. For example, in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Book of Kings) (10th century), blindness constitutes a narrative marker of political and cosmic decline: announcing the loss of Farr (divine glory), the principle of legitimization of power as a symbolic and lasting disqualification of the exercise of sovereignty. Being blind is synonymous with being fallen.
In the Shahnameh, the passage in which Rustam blinds Esfandiar with an arrow is an uplifting scene for the Iranian political panorama: by striking the eyes, the narrative explicitly associates the loss of vision with disqualification from power and at the end of all grounds for claiming sovereignty.
Historically, blindness was used as a weapon of political neutralization. It was a way of eliminating a rival – prince or dignitary – without bloodshed, which was considered sacrilegious among the elite. The blind were not executed, but rather eradicated from the political arena.
The Shah of Persia, Abbas the Great (who ruled from 1588 until his death in 1629), blinded several of his children and grandchildren who he suspected of conspiring against him or opposing his succession to the throne.
In 1742, Nader Shah ordered his son, then heir to the throne, Reza Qoli Mirza, to be blinded, an act emblematic of political silencing practices in Persia.
From blinding rituals to blinding to maintain security
The Islamic Republic does not claim blinding as a punishment, but the massive repetition of eye injuries during contemporary repression reveals a symbolic continuity.
Once rare, directed and admitted, the use of blinding is now widespread, denied by authorities, carried out with weapons considered “non-lethal” and rarely authorized.
However, its political role of neutralize without killingtargeting the body to stop and prevent further dissent, still remains comparable.
In contemporary Iran, eyes have become a political weapon. The protesters film, document and disseminate what they see. The images circulate, reach the borders and weaken the government’s narrative. When the eyes are hit, the person cannot see or show it to others, which prevents filming, identification and testimony.
The target is not just the individual point of view; it is the broader vision that connects the streets of Iran with international public opinion.
Unlike the act of blinding in antiquity, which was reserved for the male elite, today violence related to the eyes is directed especially to women and young people. The female gaze, independent, free from any ideological control, for the world to see, becomes politically intolerable for a regime based on the imposition of the body and what should be seen.
A continuum of visible brutality
The ongoing repression, subsequent to mass protests that began in late December 2025, intensified after a national internet blockshamelessly seeking to reduce the exposure of acts of violence inflicted on protesters.
Independent medical reports and witness statements described hospitals overwhelmed with victims – specifically eye injuries – along with an increase in crowd control involving live ammunition firearms, documented in several Iranian provinces. These injuries confirm that the body and, particularly, the ability to see and report, are still the main target of the repressive regime.
Beyond the numbers, women’s first-hand accounts tell a different story from these contemporary practices. Although Iranian society has witnessed women leading activist movements since the assassination of Mahsa Name Believe in 2022 – some of whom were deliberately blinded during protests – such injuries symbolize both repression efforts to nullify the independent female gazewhich represents a political threat to the establishment, like the resistance of these wounded but defiant women, with mutilated faces, who are living proof of Iranian repression.
The story is not limited to a distant past of political neutralization: it is permeated by the personal bodily experiences of women today, where ocular trauma can be interpreted as exploitative violence and a sign of a political struggle that rotates around the field of vision.
The body becomes “capital”: supreme sovereignty
The Islamic Republic may have broken with the sacredness of the monarchy, but the ancient principle by which the body is perceived as capital holding personal power remains intact. While monarchs resorted to blinding their subjects to protect their dynasties, security forces use mutilation to ensure their survival.
This strategy produces a paradoxical effect. In Persia, blindness was used as a weapon of political destruction in Antiquity. Today, it makes the brutality of the regime visible to everyone. As the mutilated faces circulate, the victims become symbols and the eyes they lost become a testament to the deep crisis of legitimacy democratic Iran.
History does not repeat itself, but continues to live through gestures. By shooting people in the eyes, the Iranian government is reviving the old domination manual: depriving an individual of vision means eliminating him politically.
