Despite Claim Of No ‘Morality Police’, Iran's Hijab Crackdown Goes On

Reformist analyst Abbas Abdi openly said in an interview in Tehran that protests in 2009 did not call for regime change, but "the demand of current protesters is to change the regime. They do not know what will happen next, but they believe whatever that might take place will be better than the current situation."

Abdi said some of the characteristics of the current protests are that "They are deep-rooted, have taken the government by surprise, they have been continuing for a long time, and have gone further, in a way that it is impossible to return to the situation as it was before."

Abdi said that another characteristic of the movement is that the people have behaved in a way during the past 10 weeks that they can no longer retreat. They have challenged the core of the regime and Supreme Leader Ali khamenei.

He added that the main question is not, as some officials charge, that foreigners have instigated the protests. Even if we suppose that is true, it is not important who started the movement. “What is important is that it is taking place in Iran."

Abdi stressed that, "This is not a riot. This is a protest that was predicted long ago. The reason why it did not quickly follow the 2019 protests, was the coronavirus pandemic."

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He added that the government was taken by surprise because it never pays attention to society. It is always watching other countries. All these youngsters in the streets have been in classrooms where teachers and headmasters have been in close contact with them. How could have they not noticed that something was going on? The reason they did not see it, is that no one in the government wishes to really see the society, even now when it is in turmoil. Even the intelligence organizations found out about the movement after they arrested the protesters."

Abdi said this comes while young people were not acting secretly. They even showed off what they are doing. He explained that generation Z is only the driving force of the movement. The other part, which is important but neglected is the silent majority that follows the movement. He said that many opinion polls the government did not allow to be published indicate that some 60 to 80 percent of the population support the youngsters in the streets although they may not be as vocal.

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Abdi's interview coincided with the publication of an interview with Iranian American sociologist Asef Bayat with Rouydad24 news website in Iran. Bayat is the author of books such as Revolution without Revolutionaries, Street Politics, and Global Middle East, whose observations about the Arab Spring are widely acclaimed in the US academic and political circles.

He said in the interview that it is in the nature of the street that a common cause can turn a gathering of 500 individuals into a massive rally of several thousand people.

Speaking about the current Iran protests and the violence and suppression that have been going on in the streets during the past 10 weeks, Bayat said: "People do not like to be on the streets. They want to live peacefully. The reason why people take to the streets is that politics stops working. Politics means an institutional mechanism to settle political, social and economic disputes and reach a democratic agreement. When the government cannot do that and does not allow the people to have their representatives in the government, citizens tend to take part in strikes or refuse to go to classrooms. But some citizens such as those who do not have a job might take to the streets to voice their demands and to show their social power."

He went on to say, "Authoritarian governments do not tolerate protesters presence in the streets because they do not want the people to believe in their collective social force."

Azar Mansouri, the secretary general of Unity of the Nation Party, a coalition of so-called reformists, was quoted by a local media outlet that she and others were invited by national security council secretary Shamkhani to a meeting Sunday. She did not name the other participants, but it is safe to assume many were also reformist politicians.

Mansouri said that she urged Shamkhani to start short-, medium- and long-term reforms in governance,” first by releasing all protesters who have been detained since September, followed by constitutional changes through a “founding assembly”, as a path to emerge from the current political crisis.

The female politician also demanded a policy that would end sanctions against Iran and would help end the current economic crisis, that she said could bring “40 million people” to the streets.

The Islamic Republic leaders should first acknowledge their mistakes and “bridge gaps with the people” by listening to their grievances, Mansouri told Shamkhani.

Hardliners in charge of Iran’s ruling institutions have said time and again that there could be no constitutional changes and no “retreat from principles.” Raising the specter of constitutional change and forming a potentially unpredictable assembly will certainly be viewed by regime hardliners as a challenge to the principle of having a Supreme Leader and the person of Ali Khamenei.

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Iran’s reformists are blamed by regime opponents for long pursuing the idea that the Islamic Republic can be reformed and thus giving false hope to the people. Some reformists in the past two months have acknowledged that their thinking has proven wrong, as the extent of deadly violence and untold cruelties against protesters has proven the regime incapable of reforming itself.

In fact, young protesters see little difference between regime hardliners and reformists who want to make incremental changes but keep the Islamic Republic. All slogans and announcements by protesters demand an end to clerical rule.

But according to her own account, Mansouri seems to have also said things that would be annoying to the regime. First, she upheld the memory of all those who were killed during protests since September. She also told Shamkhani that if the regime wants to hold talks with politicians as an attempt at window dressing and as a tool, the whole idea is bound to fail. Discussions to solve the political crisis should be based on “strategic rationality.”

But she was also cautious in her approach by not mentioning the absolute power Khamenei exercises or raise the issue of holding those who are responsible for the killing of hundreds of civilians responsible.

She also did not demand an immediate end to mandatory hijab, and just reminded Shamkhani that having a ‘morality police’ is a bad idea. The issue of systemic discrimination against women, she said, is an issue to be addressed in the long term.

However, she told the top security chief that Iranian women are asking “What has the Islamic society accomplished that would make us proud to use its hijab?”

Despite these remarks, many would still see reformists meeting with security officials as a non-starter, because they believe that now the regime finds itself in deep trouble and wants to save the situation. If protests end and the pressure is lifted, all talk of reform and gestures of pluralism will also end and the clerical-military rulers will go back to what they know best, monopolizing power by relying on force.

The recording is from a recent meeting of the Coalition Council of Islamic Revolution Forces, a conservative coalition of parties that endorsed a joint electoral list for the 2020 Iranian parliament and city council election. 

The parliament, elected in a non-competitive election in February 2020, is packed with hardliners and Revolutionary Guard officers, most of whom, including its speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, are members of this coalition. 

During the session, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, the head of the coalition and a hardliner politician very close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, asks the secretary, Reza Davari, to brief members about recent developments in the country. In his report, Davari said 80 people have been charged with "Moharebeh" and "corruption on earth.” Mohareb (muharib), which means warrior in Arabic is a term in Iran’s Islamic law that means an "enemy of God” or “war against God,” which carries the death penalty. “Corruption on earth” is also another term that carries the death penalty. 

He said that Khamenei preferred the detained protesters be executed based on the principle of "qisas" -- or punishment in kind, which in the Islamic criminal code can be applicable in cases of bodily harm – for killing of Basij paramilitary forces. The regime has on many occasions used the Quranic principle -- similar to “an eye for an eye” or the law of talion – to execute protesters after charging them with killing security agents.

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Davari added that if the authorities wanted to execute the protesters based on qisas, they could only issue death sentences for about 10 people, therefore they decided to charge the protesters with “moharebeh” and “corruption on earth” that ensure the execution of more prisoners. He noted that the largest number of such indictments were issued in the provinces of Tehran, Alborz, Fars, Khorasan Razavi and Esfahan.

Any act of defiance can be arbitrarily interpreted as ‘war against god’ in a judicial system that ignores due process and is controlled by the authoritarian ruler Khamenei.

According to recent reports, at least 10 underage protesters are also facing death sentences for the “moharebeh” and “corruption on earth”. During the popular uprising in Iran, over 18,000 citizens have been arrested and it is not clear how many of them were accused of “corruption on earth” and “war against God”. 

Davari went on to say that for some of the protesters arrested in Kurdish-majority cities “terrorism” charges were issued so that they could be sentenced to death. 

In November, a group of 227 parliament members called on the Judiciary to issue death sentences for people arrested during the ongoing antigovernment protests.

Among other things that were discussed during the session, records of which Iran International obtained, was the brutal crackdown on protesters in Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchestan, known as the Bloody Friday. It took place September 30, when security forces killed close to 100 people, including women and children. The Islamic Republic never acknowledged the killings of ordinary people and always claimed that security forces only opened fire at those who wanted to attack a police station in the city. However, in the leaked audio, Davari admitted that one of the officers who was stationed on the roof of the police building “made a grave mistake and shot at people” who were not even near the police station, killing some men, women, and children who were not even protesting.

Repeated leaks by hackers and insiders in recent days has unmasked the inner thinking and unpleasant secrets of the Islamic Republic, putting the regime in an uncomfortable situation. 

According to the official news website of the judiciary, Mizan Online, the four Iranians, identified as Hossein Ordoukhanzadeh, Shaahin Imani Mahmoudabad, Milad Ashrafi Atbatan, and Manouchehr Shahbandi Bojandi, were hanged early on Sunday. Ordoukhanzadeh – the alleged main link with Mossad – had been imprisoned in Greece between 2014 and 2017 for attempting to traffic humans from Turkey to Greece. 

“This morning, the sentences of four main members of the gang of mobsters related to the Zionist intelligence service were executed,” read a statement by the judiciary, adding that their sentences were carried out four days after the Islamic Republic’s supreme court upheld the penalty of capital punishment for “their intelligence cooperation with the Zionist regime [Israel] and kidnapping.” There was no recourse to appeal after the decision on Wednesday, November 30, it added.

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According to the Wednesday ruling, three other defendants were sentenced to between five and 10 years in prison for crimes against the Islamic Republic’s security, complicity in kidnapping and possession of weapons. 

All the seven individuals – whom the judiciary called “thugs” with previous criminal records -- allegedly received payment in cryptocurrencies and were guided by Israeli intelligence to buy weapons and equipment, do the abductions and interrogating them, engage in destroying public and private property, theft, kidnappings, and obtaining fake confessions. They allegedly received their instructions from a Mossad operative based in Sweden. They also received training on how to destroy evidence, evade security cameras, and swap vehicles, the judiciary claimed. 

Iran’s state media claimed that the group was behind the kidnapping and interrogation of Iranian "jihadist" Yadollah Khedmati.

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In July, Iran International obtained video footage of an interrogation in which a man introducing himself as Yadollah Khedmati, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Logistics, says he regrets his involvement in shipping weapons to Iran’s proxy groups in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen and urges other IRGC officials to avoid engagement in such activities.

According to a source, Khedmati served as the deputy of Brigadier General Ali Asghar Nowrouzi, the IRGC’s Logistics commander who is known as a close associate of the former commander of the IRGC’s Qods Force, Ghasem Soleimani. Soleimani was assassinated by the US in Baghdad in January 2020.

Khedmati also tells his interrogators about Nowrouzi’s connections with Fars Air Qeshm cargo airline. The airline has been accused of transporting weapons for Hezbollah during the civil war in Syria.

In another case, Israeli media had published a short video in which a man identified as Mansour Rasouli said he was sent to Turkey by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) to establish an operational network, assassinate an Israeli diplomat in Istanbul, a Germany-based US general, and a journalist in France.

The audio recording surfaced hours after Iran International's report of the alleged Iranian triple assassination plot. Israeli television channels including Channel 12 which broadcast the recording, without providing a source according to The Times of Israel, claimed it was made by Mossad operatives posing as Iranian secret service at Rasouli's home in Tehran but did not hold him after the interrogation. In another video aired by Iran International in May, Rasouli said he was abducted and coerced to make false confessions.

Factual corrections were made in this report on June 15, 2023

Mohammad Jafar Montazeri made the comments in a meeting Saturday, stressing however, that the judiciary continues to monitor behavioral conduct among the people, a hint that hijab rules are not scrapped and only special patrols in streets are disbanded.

It is not clear if Montazeri's remark is an official decision endorsed by other top officials or a publicity stunt to show flexibility on the part of the authorities. So far, there is no word from law enforcement that controls the hijab police, or the presidential administration.

Earlier in the week Montazeri had mentioned that the Parliament and the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution would announce their opinion on the issue of forced hijab within two weeks, signaling that the mandatory hijab rule might be modified or revoked.

The recent protest movement in Iran was triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, when she was arrested by the ‘morality police’ for ‘improper attire.’ During the nationwide protests, women removed the mandatory hijab and set their headscarves on fire in the streets as a sign of protest.

Western governments, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, added the hijab law enforcement unit to their list of sanctioned entities.

Many women in Iran are now appearing in public without the mandatory veil and regular police is not interfering in a sign that authorities are either unwilling to risk further confrontation with the public or find it impossible to deal with so many women undermining the rule at the same time. Police forces have also become over-stretched during protests and many have resigned or have applied for early retirement.

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The ‘morality police’ was officially launched in the summer of 2006 during the presidency of then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative. Ahmadreza Radan, the former police chief of Tehran during this time described the mission of ‘morality police’ as “fighting against improper hijab.”

The apparent end of the controversial and violent institution has been announced by a top Iranian judiciary official in a situation that people on social media say the decision would not persuade them to give up protests since they have fundamental demands, including an end to the Islamic Republic.

They say the mandatory hijab itself is an apartheid policy against women which is still in force. It also symbolizes broader demands for fundamental political and economic reforms like a free and independent judiciary, freedom of speech, free elections, etc.

The Islamic Republic is far from accepting such demands because that would mean its demise if officials became accountable through democratic institutions.

While people on social media generally call for the ouster of the regime, it seems the end of morality police is an insufficient concession to protesters.

Iranian women’s fight against state-imposed hijab started as early as in 1979 shortly after the Islamic Republic was established. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the first leader of the clerical regime announced immediately announced that women would be allowed in their workplaces only if they observe compulsory hijab.

Soon after his comments, thousands of Iranian women poured into the streets to protest but they were brutally suppressed by pro-regime forces that would later form the Revolutionary Guard, Basij paramilitary and the ‘morality police.’

This led to years of socioeconomic marginalization of women who rejected the imposition of compulsory hijab and a host of other discriminatory statues and practices. Many well-educated Iranian women, including doctors, nurses, and teachers, lost their jobs and a large number emigrated.