For more than a month now, anti-government protests have been spreading throughout Iranian society — in the streets, on university campuses, at high schools and middle schools, in front of coffee shops, on the metro and other public transit, and most recently among workers in the oil and petrochemical industries. While it is always prudent to approach the Western coverage of these events with suspicion, it’s clear that the Islamic Republic is facing its worst crisis of legitimacy since its inception forty-three years ago.

For decades, the Iranian state has responded to eruptions of public anger with brutal repression. In July 1999, security forces attacked university students protesting the closure of a pro-reform newspaper. The retaliation sparked a week of unrest across the country, which was met with a systematic campaign of arrests and killings. A decade later, in the aftermath of the 2009 presidential election, millions poured into the streets to contest the suspicious outcome. In response, the country’s military and security apparatus arrested thousands of protesters and activists, killing several others.

In that sense, today’s protests and the state’s response are a repetition of earlier dramas in Iranian political life. Still, there is something observably different this time around. It’s astonishing to witness a movement led by girls and young women bravely rising up against forty-three years of institutionalized gender repression. The international left should affirm its feminist and democratic message instead of ceding the public discourse to neoconservatives and liberal hawks who want to use the protests for their own purposes.