‘Women, life, freedom.’ Inside the protests shocking Iran.

From the moment that they seized Romina from her family home in a pre-dawn raid, the Iranian security forces designed every aspect of her two-week detention to terrify her.

Romina’s captors were determined to convince the young woman that she should give up on women-led street protests demanding improved rights.

Weeks of angry clashes and deaths – in what has been billed as Iran’s first feminist uprising – have presented an unprecedented challenge to the Islamic Republic. It is struggling to find an effective response.

At 3 a.m. one morning in late September, some 30 regime enforcers descended on the home in the northwestern city of Kermanshah to arrest Romina, as if she were wanted for murder – and not simply for peacefully attending protests.

Romina, who asked to be identified only by that name, was taken from her family, blindfolded, and driven into the night.

“They didn’t stop insulting me, repeatedly calling me a whore. I was just crying,” recalls Romina, who has a master’s degree in philosophy and owns an online business. “The touching and groping was a nightmare.”

So were the taunts to teach her a lesson about wanting to “overthrow the government.”

Upon arrival at what she later learned was an interrogation facility belonging to the intelligence unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Romina was pushed – still blindfolded – down a staircase, but managed to catch herself on a rail to break her fall.

During six blindfolded interrogations over the next three days, Romina, who today wears short