Iran International
Despite the many economic woes including inflation and recurring protests, Iran's police, judiciary and other authorities have focused on hijab enforcement.
Police said Sunday that on the first day of the implementation of its new hijab enforcement plan it had warned 3,500 businesses about hijab infringements on their premises. They also shut down 137 shops as well as 18 restaurants and wedding hall-gardens that were repeat offenders and referred their cases to the judiciary for further action.
According to police spokesman Brigadier Saeed Montazerolmahdi, police also warned owners of several hundred vehicles whose drivers or passengers were spotted hijabless by text messages.
“The police force will enforce the law against a small number of people who look like they have arrived from a different planet, are unaware of the norms and traditions of the country, and break the law,” he said.
Cycling “hijabless” at Tehran’s Keshavarz Boulevard on April 16.
Police officials warned last week that the campaign against women who do not abide by the hijab rules would begin Saturday with the help of public CCTV cameras.
Many women, however, have shared photos of being in the streets, parks and other public areas without hijab on social media despite the harsh warnings.
Since Khamenei’s declaration of “hijablessness” being not only religiously but also politically forbidden, Iranian officials have focused on the hijab issue despite the many other problems such as high inflation and corruption that the country is facing.
Workers and retirees who resumed their scattered protests after the New Year holidays in early April complain that their dire circumstances are being ignored at the cost of re-establishing the regime’s control over women for hijab. “Bridling inflation was only an empty slogan,” protesting retirees in Shushtar in Khuzestan province chanted Sunday.
Protesting retirees in Shushtar chanting “Bridling inflation was only an empty slogan”
Meanwhile, students staged sit-ins in several universities in Tehran in protest to officials cracking down on women for hijab, using harsh punitive actions against dissident students.
In recent days authorities have denied entrance to women whose tunics were considered as “too short” or for wearing make-up in some universities. Punitive actions such as suspensions, for as long as two years, for hijab and political activities have also been reported in several universities.
“Stop suffocation and suppression in universities” and “Freedom of choice over hijab is the Iranian women’s right”, were some of the placards protesting students held at the psychology and educational sciences faculty of Tehran University.
“Schoolgirls are being poisoned, teachers are in prison, and all they care about is hijab!” protesting students chanted at the social sciences faculty in the same university.
Girls behind the gates of Rasht Azad University waiting for inspection of their appearance before entering.
In a statement Saturday, fifteen prominent Iranian lawyers and rights activists warned the government over its “suppressive policy” of imposing hijab and said a truth finding committee of the United Nations would be required to investigate the harms caused by these policies.
The statement signed by lawyers and human rights activists from inside Iran and abroad including Nasrin Sotoudeh and other rights defenders have urged that UN human rights sanctions should be imposed on those involved in violence against women for hijab.
“Unable to establish justice and equality of women and men as the most basic of legal principles, the Islamic Republic is expanding the suppression of women in contradiction to basic human and civil rights, by forging new terms such as ‘politically haram’ while continuing its clear repressive policies,” the statement said.
“Politically haram” is a term first used by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on April 4. “Discarding hijab is haram (sin) based on Sharia and also politically,” Khamenei emphatically declared at a meeting with state officials while claiming that foreign intelligence services were encouraging Iranian women to disobey mandatory hijab.
The Supreme Leader’s remarks were contradictory, as he told senior military commanders and officials that the “enemies are vincible” yet blamed such enemies for the main problems of the country.
"The enemies can be defeated with all their seemingly solid calculations and military might,” he said, without elaborating on his claims.
Despite widespread unrest -- ignited by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini -- as well as the country’s grave economic and social crises, Khamenei voiced his satisfaction with what he called as years of continuous progress by the Iranian Armed Forces.
With an economy in crisis, a restive population and little to show after 34 years of presiding over an ever-unpopular regime, the military is the only institution he can praise, because they have made some advances in developing weapons.
Khamenei maintained that the armed forces should not focus their efforts on the actions of “weak elements” but should be prepared and vigilant against the behind-the-scene plotters. “Arrogant powers wage a conflict from behind the scenes wherever it benefits them,” using the Islamic Republic’s jargon for the US and Western powers.
Paying no heed to the fast-paced dynamics of political change in the countries that Khamenei calls enemies of the Islamic Republic, he said, “Paying close attention to the enemy's five- or ten-year schemes is necessary, but mid- and long-term plots should be considered and monitored.”
This statement, more than anything else, revealed Khamenei’s fascination with conspiracy theories, imagining that the United States and European powers have long-term plans for decades to come.
Another conspiracy theory put forth by the octogenarian autocrat was why the US military’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, describing them as “the two wars America started in the east and west of Iran about two decades ago.” He claimed, “Americans had interests in Iraq and Afghanistan, but their ultimate goal was the Islamic Iran, and due to the solid foundations of the Islamic Revolution, they failed in their adventures as well as their ultimate goal.”
While Khamenei called the United States feeble, he also said it was imperative not to underestimate the enemy. “At no stage should one ignore the enemy's machinations and plots.”
Since the beginning of the 'Women, Life, Liberty’ movement in Iran last September -- the boldest challenge the regime has ever faced – Khamenei has been blaming other countries for the popular uprising.
His strange denial of the nationwide revolt against the regime and his unfounded accusations are manifestations of his usual tactic of blaming others and refusing to take responsibility.
While more than 500 people have been killed by the regime's security forces since the start of the uprising, he has failed to utter a single sympathetic word about the victims.
In February, Khamenei for the first time admitted that there are disagreements between the people and the regime, nonetheless, his state of denial about dissent appears to continue as he repeated that sowing discord and creating differences is the "enemy's strategy."
Months of protests in the streets against the government have left a fragmented society in Iran where trust in the regime is at its lowest point.
Vaezi on Saturday dismissed reports about Rouhani's plan to run for the Majles as a lie, and added in an interview with Rouydad24 news website that the former President's political rivals published many false reports about him during his Presidency.
Earlier, IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency had claimed in a report that Rouhani was determined to run in the next election. Tasnim further claimed that Rouhani would try to name some of his aides as candidates for the Majles election, and that Rouhani holds weekly meetings with his aides in preparation for the next election.
The hardliner website charged that Rouhani was Iran's most unpopular President and opined that the failure of his economic policies continue to plague the country.
Vaezi told Rouydad24 that the Tasnim report was about Rouhani's meeting with his former officials on the Iranian New Year and it had nothing to do with the elections. He said that at the meeting Rouhani called for a high-turnout election that would boost the Islamic Republic's legitimacy, but he did not say a word about his own inclination to take part as a candidate.
"The current government has spread so much false information about the Rouhani administration while it has not successful in running the affairs of the state during the 20 months it has been in office,” Vaezi argued. He continued, "Wherever there is a success, they attribute it to the new government and as soon as they encounter a problem, they blame the Rouhani administration."
It is almost customary that Iranian governments blame their predecessors for their failures. For a long time, the government under President Rouhani blamed its predecessor, the Ahmadinejad government for the country's economic problems and diplomatic impasse with the United States and Europe.
Furthermore, throughout the past four decades Iranian presidents and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei kept blaming the pre-revolution monarchy for all of the country's problems. Most recently, Khamenei blamed the last Pahlavi king Mohammad Reza Shah for Iran's problems in a speech on March 21 more than 44 years after the downfall of monarchy and establishment of the Islamic Republic.
Ahmadinejad has also resorted to blaming his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami when chaos and inefficiency plagued his eight years in office from 2005 to 2013.
It would be fair to say that Rouhani's failures were to a degree caused by the United States withdrawing from the nuclear deal and imposing crippling economic sanctions in 2018. His subsequent attempts to reach a deal with the Biden administration were stopped in June 2021, before the presidential elections.
During the Rouhani administration, Ahmadinejad was vocal against Rouhani and Khamenei and harshly criticized Khamenei and his regime in open letters. However, the media have been speculating recently that he might have been silenced by security forces during the past months.
Last week his absence at a memorial service for the father of his former aide was quite eye-catching. Persian media outside Iran said he has been told by one of Khamenei's top intelligence officers to keep silent and stay away from public events. It is hard to verify the report about Ahmadinejad's undeclared house arrest, while other reports were accompanied by photos that showed him on holiday in Iran's Caspian region.
By far, Rouhani is the only former president whose dignity appears to be respected by Khamenei although some of his hardliner opponents are said to be determined to demand nothing less than his execution, said reformist figure Ali Soufi.