Iran International
Iran's interior minister has raised an outcry not only for approving the violent arrest of a woman for hijab violation but also claiming that catching the woman in a blanket, was “according to protocols”.
Ahmad Vahidi made the statement in response to a reporter’s question after a cabinet meeting this week, who asked him about the viral video of the arrest of the woman on a street in central Tehran Monday.
The video shows two black-veiled women dragging, a woman with uncovered hair, shoving her and pushing her to the ground before taking her away in an unmarked van accompanied by a police car.
The woman’s top came off during the scuffle after which one of the enforcers fetched a blanket from the van to throw it over her and push her into the vehicle.
Vahidi claimed that the woman had “disrobed” herself so she had to be covered up with the blanket.
The use of blankets to cover women at the time of their arrest has been reported in a few other instances in the past few weeks.
Video showing the incident that the interior minister commented on
“I have a daughter and cried so much after seeing the video. I cried even more when the minister confirmed that catching girls using blankets in the manner that we saw is protocol. Please don’t give birth to girls. Having a daughter here is the greatest calamity. Being a woman in Iran is the hardest of things, particularly now that we know they have a ‘blanket protocol’ for hunting us,” a woman posting as Sousan on X wrote.
Even some moderate regime supporters have condemned the violence on social media.
“What does the law say about [using] blankets [in this manner]? Who would dare do such things if General [Qasem] Soleimani were alive. He would say girls with unsatisfactory hijab were his daughters too. There’s a difference between gold and copper!”, an X user tweeted.
Another video showing a male hijab enforcer throwing a blanket over a woman resisting arrest in Tehran
In recent years, many Iranian women have protested mandatory hijab, leading to arrests and imprisonment. Authorities have also impounded thousands of cars and closed businesses for failing to enforce hijab rules.
Many Iranians, including some women who wear the hijab themselves, believe that wearing or not wearing the hijab is a personal decision. Eighty four percent of the over 12,000 respondents to an online poll by the reformist Shargh daily in October said they were opposed to mandatory dress code and headscarves.
This very recent video shows police violently arresting a woman for hijab
Hardliners, particularly the small but very influential Paydari Party which is positioned at the extreme end of the fundamentalist camp in the Islamic Republic, have been looking for ways to strengthen the enforcement of hijab. Their ‘morality police’ tactic of arresting women for “improper hijab” backfired with the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, triggering nationwide Woman, Life, Freedom protests that lasted for months and shook Iran's ruling establishment to its core. More than 550 civilians were killed by security forces and around 22,000 arrested.
Consequently, the morality police largely disappeared from the streets as authorities feared further backlash from the populace.
In March 2023, hardliners attempted to end women's increasing defiance of compulsory hijab and reclaim lost ground through various instructions to government bodies, but their efforts failed as the number of women who refuse to abide by the current rules only kept increasing.
On April 13, the infamous morality patrols returned to the streets. Since then, extensive violence including sexual harassment has been reported by the few relatively independent newspapers and websites that are aligned with reformists and moderate conservative as well as social media citizen reports.
“This is not a defense of myself, but the defense of the system's republican (and Islamic) foundations, a defense of the institution of presidency which as the direct representative of all Iranians should not be weakened any more than this,” the former president who was barred from running in the March 1 elections of Assembly of Experts has written in an open letter.
The letter which is addressed to the “Iranian Nation” was published on Rouhani’s personal website earlier this week.
The Guardian Council comprises twelve members, half of whom are clerics with expertise in Sharia laws and appointed by the Supreme Leader. The remaining six members, who may be laymen or clerics versed in civil law, are appointees of the chief justice, who is also appointed by Khamenei. They require parliamentary approval and over the years have expanded their role in disqualifying election candidates.
Opponents of the clerical regime and dissidents have always been barred from running in the elections, but now prominent insiders are being disqualified. Hundreds of candidates running for parliament and the Council were disqualified this year. The pattern was that those who are not members of hardliner factions or have been tossed out of Khamenei’s inner circle were barred.
Rouhani has been challenging the decision since February without any result. He said in his open letter that he has not received a satisfactory response form the Council. The reasons cited so far do not constitute legal violations on his part to warrant disqualification.
Rouhani said the “classified letter” he received from the Council’s Secretary, Ahmad Jannati, amounted to “an indictment” not only against him and his government but also against “the institution of presidency” and refuted all the reasons cited, namely insolence against the Judiciary and the Council itself, “lack of political insight”, failing to comply with the Constitution, and “contradicting pure Islamic beliefs.”
The contents of Jannati’s letter prove that the president who is the “highest directly-elected official” of the country does not have the right to freedom of speech even as much as an ordinary citizen and his statements about other institutions of the country, including the Guardian Council, Judiciary, and the Parliament can always be turned into an indictment against him, Rouhani argued.
“The Council uses my presidential record as the legal as reasons for not having been convinced of my qualification to run, as if the second highest official of the country is an opposition figure,” Rouhani said while pointing out that the Council itself had twice before found him qualified to run for the presidency and three times to run in the elections of the Assembly of Experts.
He also pointed out that he had served as the secretary and chairman of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) for 24 years and represented Khamenei in the National Security Council the whole time.
The Guardian Council, originally empowered to interpret the Constitution, review legislation, and supervise elections, bestowed upon itself discretionary supervisory powers in 1991, giving it the final say on candidate eligibility. Over the past two decades, it has used these powers to eliminate various political factions, targeting reformists, moderates, and even some conservatives.
The pattern of candidate disqualification has turned into a serious concern about the transparency and fairness of Iran's electoral process for over a decade resulting in continuous decline of election turnout in the past few years.
Some prominent former officials previously disqualified from running in elections include former presidents Akbar-Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2013, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2017, and conservative parliament speaker Ali Larijani in 2021, ostensibly due to concerns about their loyalty to Khamenei.
The Council, however, always cites other reasons for disqualifying candidates or argues that it could not “confirm the candidate’s qualifications” due to lack of sufficient evidence. Religious jurisprudence (ijtihad), required for running in elections of the Assembly of Experts, for instance, has often been cited for disqualification of candidates in its elections.
Larijani, for instance, repeatedly called on the Council to publicly announce the reason he was barred but was told it would not be “in his interest” if they did so.