Iran International
Iran's president must decide whether to enforce the hardliners' new hijab law, risking alienation of millions of voters, or refuse to sign it and challenge the conservative establishment.
The hijab law that hardliner lawmakers have succeeded in finalizing will impose an array of penalties including heavy cash fines and prison terms on women for not conforming with strict hijab regulations and businesses for not enforcing them.
The hardline Guardian Council’s approval of the legislation this week means Pezeshkian must now decide whether to officially communicate the new law to government organizations for implementation.
Hardliners in parliament and elsewhere insist that "all government forces must cooperate in its implementation, and no one should cause obstruction.,” as an influential lawmaker said on September 18.
The announcement coincided with the second anniversary of Mahsa (Jina) Amini's death in custody, which, after her arrest for violating hijab rules, sparked months of protests and unrest across Iran in September 2022.
The Guardian Council's approval of the law, a year after it passed Parliament, could pose significant challenges for Pezeshkian as he travels to New York on Sunday to deliver a speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. The timing makes him vulnerable in potential interviews with international media, adding pressure during his visit.
The President has five days, from the time his office receives the notification from Parliament, to sign and communicate the law for implementation. It is not clear whether Pezeshkian’s office has already received the legislation or not.
If Pezeshkian declines to sign and communicate the new law within the required timeframe, the responsibility will fall to Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf to deliver it to government agencies.
Ghalibaf has formed an undeclared alliance with Pezeshkian against ultra-hardliners who he holds responsible for his defeat in the recent presidential elections. Many among his supporters are also against the implementation of the hijab law.
Pezeshkian will not be the first president to leave the communication of legislation he disapproves of to the speaker. Both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani have done that before.
Taking such a stance will provide ammunition to his opponents who will accuse him of favoring ‘lawlessness’ despite his repeated assertions that for him the Law comes above everything.
In early August, Parliament approved all Pezeshkian’s proposed ministers, possibly because they received ‘advice’ that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei wanted a cabinet to be formed urgently and without too much ado in the wake of Israel’s killing of Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in the heart of the Iranian capital.
Ultra-hardliner lawmakers then began pushing again for the finalization of the controversial hijab bill by the Guardian Council. Pundits say the Council delayed the approval of the bill and its implementation during Ebrahim Raisi’s presidency for the fear of a popular backlash and making Raisi’s government vulnerable.
Raisi’s government, nevertheless, launched the Nour (Light) Plan in early April to force women, who increasingly appeared in public without the compulsory hijab, back into submission to the rules.
Sources on the ground say the presence of women with no hijab in public is now 'very normal' in Tehran and many other large and small cities and towns.
Under the plan, thousands of businesses have been shut down for failing to ensure compliance among their customers. Similarly, tens of thousands of cars have been impounded for carrying unveiled passengers.
Pezeshkian takes pride in the fact that the women in his family, including his daughter—who has frequently appeared by his side since he registered to run—wear the hijab. However, he firmly maintains that violence against women is neither acceptable nor justified.
During his campaign debates and meetings, Pezeshkian labeled the proposed hijab law the "Darkness Plan" and pledged to end morality police patrols and the use of violence against women for not adhering to hijab rules.
In a 2014 interview, Pezeshkian revealed that he had personally led efforts to enforce hijab on university hospital staff in the early days of the Islamic Revolution, four decades ago.
Sarah Raviani, the spokesperson for the group’s English division, is the opposite of what a stereotypical traditional Trump supporter, often portrayed in mainstream media, would be.
She’s young, from generation Z, educated, and comes from an immigrant background. Her family fleeing shortly after the clerical establishment, once led by Ruhollah Khomeini, ousted the monarchy and created the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.
“We think that President Trump is the best option for our community to support the policies that we want and we need for freedom and democracy in Iran and for protecting and safeguarding American national security,” said Raviani.
The issue of national security and policies implemented during the first Trump administration on Iran such as pulling out of the JCPOA nuclear deal, the listing of the IRGC as a terrorist entity and the assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, proved to Raviani that the former President was tough on the Iranian regime.
National security and international relations analyst Shayan Sami’i said the Biden-Harris administration's policies towards Iran have tilted some Iranian Americans towards Trump.
“Disillusionment with the Democrats, a perception of strength by Trump, and the perception of an “appeasement” approach toward the Islamic Republic by the Biden Administration makes Iranian Americans gravitate toward Trump.”
The Biden administration issued a waiver in 2023 for international banks to transfer $6 billion in frozen Iranian money from South Korea to Qatar, in exchange for the release of five American citizens detained in Iran. As part of the deal, the administration also agreed to release five Iranian citizens in the United States. Republicans point to the fact that the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, launched by Iran-backed Hamas, happened shortly after the release of these funds.
The mentality of the Iranian American voter is also influenced by the history of the Islamic Revolution.
The Islamic Revolution happened under during the Jimmy Carter's Democratic administration, meaning Iranians historically have been weary of the Democrats, said Sami’i.
“The 1979 Islamic Revolution occurred during a Democratic party administration and Democratic administrations were harsher on Iran’s monarchy, making Republicans appear as their true friends. However, Republican presidents, just like their Democratic counterparts, have provided nothing more than lip service and back-pedaling. They have stated good and heart-warming words but no concrete action.”
The “tough” guy image of Trump is often seen as big win for the Iranian Americans whose way of thinking is valuing toughness. This especially applies to those who fled at the start of the revolution, having great fear of the Islamic Republic, Sami’i told Iran International.
Nicole Namdar, a 35-year-old business advisor from Great Neck, NY, now living in Florida, is Iranian Jewish and she’s voting for Trump.
She’s a liberal when it comes to social issues, but she often feels the Democrats respond ‘too little, too late’ and are ‘blind to the realities’ of the threat of the Islamic Republic. Namdar said as a Jewish person, who lost her homeland of Iran to the revolution, she said she needs to feel safe in the land her family came to seek refuge.
“I don’t want to live through an Islamic revolution that my family lost their country to,” said Namdar.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Behnam Ben Taleblu, said while no group is a monolith, the social impact of Trump’s Iran policy has earned him support from a wide verity of Iranian Americans.
“The breaking of taboos to include vocally and vociferously supporting the Iranian people in every iteration of their protests against the regime, killing Iran’s chief terrorist Qassem Soleimani, and unilaterally reimposing sanctions on the regime to rob it of revenues has earned the former president deep support from broad swaths of the Iranian American community,” said Taleblu.
While political engagement and participation is key in any election, Iranian Americans are not going to have significant impact on the outcome of the election, according to Arash Ghafouri , the CEO of Statis Consulting.
In the previous election, according to a poll by Zogby Research Services, 87 percent of Iranian Americans were registered to vote in the US. Of that number, 52 percent are Democrats and 8 percent are Republicans. But 40 percent identify themselves as either independent or have no party affiliation.
Raviani believes that has shifted significantly in the past 4 years and gave her own personal experience of an Iranian American activist who went from being a staunch Democrat, a never Trump voter, to now being one of his biggest supporters.
“I see a lot of the community has shifted into becoming single issue voters, and this happened as a result of the uprising in 2022 in Iran. And like I said, a lot of Iranian Americans identified as either apolitical Democratic voters or independents.”
Click on YouTube Iran Internationa's Podcast playlist to watch the full episode of this week's special edition of Eye for Iran from Washington DC.
His death followed reports on September 2 about his deteriorating health, though IRGC-affiliated Fars website had initially denied the severity of his condition.
A longtime member of Iran's security apparatus, Seraj was designated by the US Treasury Department last year for his role in overseas assassination plots and human rights abuses in Iran.
He had earlier served as the head of the Special IRGC Intelligence Directorate, also known as Unit 4000, before being removed after a plot to assassinate an Israeli in Cyprus was uncovered. Following his removal, Javad Ghaffari, a figure expelled from Syria, took over the leadership of this unit.
In the last years of his life, the IRGC brigadier general held the position of spokesperson and deputy for communications at the Supreme National Security Council. However, Seraj came to be recognized for his human rights violations.
Starting his career in the 1990s, Seraj rose through the ranks as a senior interrogator within the IRGC Intelligence. Operating under the alias "Alavi," he became known as “the chief interrogator for many political and student activists, extracting forced confessions through pressure and torture.”
His actions during this period left a mark on the lives of many activists, including Ali Afshari, a political figure who in an interview with Iran International identified Seraj as the lead interrogator during his 2000 arrest.
Ahmad Batebi, a journalist at VOA Farsi also wrote on X: “This accursed individual was one of those who played a significant role in torturing me during interrogation and applying psychological pressure to force a false confession in front of state TV cameras. He also tortured many students and political activists to fit them into the absurd scenarios created by the security agencies.”
Seraj was also appointed head of the Student Basij and later appeared as an "analyst and academic" regularly featured in state-controlled media. As the head of the Student Basij, he was actively involved in suppressing students during the 2009 protests, according to Dadgostar, a site documenting human rights violators in Iran.
Throughout his career, Seraj held various roles within the IRGC, including the political deputy of Sarallah Headquarters in Tehran, deputy head of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, and head of the Prophet Muhammad faculty and Imam Hossein University.
In addition to his political and security roles, Seraj was also involved in the interrogation and torture of Fahimeh Dorri Nogourani, the wife of Saeed Emami, a former Deputy Minister of Intelligence.
Seraj was also one of the commanders responsible for the attack on political prisoners in Ward 350 of Evin Prison on April 17, 2014, an incident that came to be known as the Black Thursday of Evin.
In the aftermath of the attack, political prisoner Gholamreza Khosravi Savadjani reported that Seraj had personally escalated his sentence from three years in prison to execution. Khosravi was hanged less than two months later, on June 1, 2014, in Rajai-Shahr Prison.
Hossein Salami, IRGC Commander-in-Chief, praised Seraj in a statement on Saturday, calling him "effective" in confronting what he described as the "sedition movement," a reference to anti-government protests. Salami said, “Seraj played a significant role in confronting sedition … and raising awareness in dealing with various deviations that threatened the Islamic Revolution.”
Since 2022, hundreds of Iranian families have marked the beginning of fall by grieving the loss of their loved ones, who were killed during nationwide anti-state protests.
Each day has become a solemn anniversary of a protester’s death, as the uprising against the state continues to resonate deeply among Iranian society.
These families have remained in mourning, affected by the regime's brutal crackdown on protesters that followed the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini while in the custody of the so-called morality police on September 13, two years ago.
Amini was detained by agents for allegedly violating state-imposed Islamic hijab regulations. Her family has consistently asserted that the head injuries she sustained while in custody led to her death three days later at Kasra Hospital in Tehran. The UN has since held the Iranian state responsible for her death.
On Friday, her father, Amjad Amini, posted a message on Instagram to commemorate his daughter's birthday, which also falls in September. He wrote: "My beautiful, innocent, and dear daughter, my beloved Jina, Mahsa of Iran—today marks the blessed anniversary of your blooming."
Amini expressed his enduring sorrow, writing: “Even after two years, we continue to carry the weight of that bitter day, finding solace only in the fact that your beautiful name is still spoken with grace and purity. Your memory remains forever etched in our hearts and in the hearts of those who love you.”
Human rights organizations estimate that throughout the months-long nationwide protests, at least 551 protesters, including 68 children and 49 women, were killed at the hands of state security forces.
This year, while some families have held memorials in private settings, others have observed the occasion in different ways, as public mourning remains restricted by authorities. For example, the Al-Jawad cemetery in Nowshahr, where several victims of the movement are buried, was sealed off with chains, and public access was restricted starting on Thursday.
As the second anniversary of Nika Shakarami's death, one of the teenage protesters killed amid the anti-state protests, approached on Friday, her family reported that authorities had blocked the routes leading to the cemetery where she was buried, preventing them from visiting her grave.
On Friday, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi marked the second anniversary of Shakarami's murder with a statement on Instagram.
"The killing of 16-year-old Nika Shakarami, like the murder of hundreds of other young people and children, is a stark example of the Islamic Republic's crimes against humanity," Ebadi wrote.
The lawyer and former judge further remarked, "The government is attempting to render the pursuit of justice meaningless."
Leila Mahdavi, the mother of 16-year-old Siavash Mahmoudi, who was killed during the protests, marked the second anniversary of her son's death on Thursday by sharing images from a memorial ceremony held in his honor, seemingly in a private venue, on Instagram, where she firmly stated: "Your killers will face the consequences for what they have done."
Hasti Khazaei, sister of Erfan Khazaei, another victim of the uprising, shared a video on Instagram from a memorial event marking the second anniversary of her brother’s passing.
Accompanying the video, she wrote: “In the name of joy that was taken from us, stolen, denied, killed, and buried. In the name of the wedding attire you never wore, whose absence lingers in our hearts forever. In the name of the love that radiated within you, my dear brother. In the name of your sweet life that was cut short.”
As the anniversary of those killed during the uprising approached, the Islamic Republic has, over the past month, escalated its pressure on grieving families across Iran.
A renewed wave of repression, aimed at civil and political activists as well as the families of the victims, began in September. During this time, dozens of citizens have been arrested, summoned, or subjected to interrogation by security forces.