Iranian Revolution

I am reading a novel about the Islamic Revolution that occurred in Iran starting in the 1970s, and that has continued until the present. The novel, Reading Lolita in Tehran, is written by a female professor who taught English in the Iranian University.

She writes about a type of military tactic that the government used in order to capture the holy city of Karballa in Iraq; "Any and all methods were used to achieve their purposes, including what became known as 'human wave' attacks, where thousands of Iranian soldiers, mainly very young boys ranging in age from ten to sixteen and middle-aged and old men, cleared the minefields by walking over them."

I quote her here in order to make us think about what it means to be dictated, to be zealous, to be oppressed, to be a religious extremist, to be afraid. The women in Iran were forced to wear the veil because "A woman in a veil is protected like a pearl in an oyster shell." What does it mean to be oppressed, victimized, and forced into action and/or inaction?