Iran Officials, Clerics Divided Over Compulsory Hijab Rules

A video, posted on social media after the incident shows the woman, whose name has not been disclosed, on the ground and scuffles between people on the scene at the parking lot of Mahan Garden, a tourist attraction 25km from Kerman, capital of the Eastern Kerman Province. The woman died at a hospital later.

Social media users have reported that the deceased and her family members were visitors from the southern port city of Bandar Abbas.

The video was taken from inside a bus which carried the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) affiliated Basij militia members and their families who were in Kerman to visit the grave of slain Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani.

Apparently, the Basij members ordered a member of the woman’s family to cover her hair, leading to an argument and a scuffle.

“Let her die!”, one of the Basij women on the bus exclaims when another one points out that the woman on the ground has died.

Scuffle between Basijis and people at Mahan Garden’s parking after a woman collapsed.

Ali Babaei, governor of Kerman, confirmed the death of the 59-year-old woman and injury of several others in the group fight, which he claimed had been “personal”. He added that those responsible for the incident were arrested by the police but did not offer further details.

A judiciary official, Yousef Sobhani, has said that an investigation has been launched into the incident and “any possible crime would be seriously dealt with.”

The footage was initially widely shared by hardliners on social media because it showed a few people attacking the Basijis and throwing stones at the bus but was later removed from most accounts as it appeared to have backfired.

In the past few weeks, hardliners have intensified their efforts to enforce veiling laws more forcefully to put a stop to women’s increasing defiance of the compulsory hijab. Since popular protests after Mahsa Amini died at the hands of the morality police in September, many women walk in the streets without hijab. The clerical regime is determined not to allow unveiled women to appear outside their homes and prevent more women from flouting hijab rules in as the hot summer season arrives.

Such efforts include encouragement of hardliners to take the matter into their own hands and carry out their religious duty of “calling to virtue and forbidding wrong”. This includes shutting businesses for their customers’ defiance of hijab, and “hijab warning” text messages sent by the police to nearly everyone who uses a mobile phone, including some men.

Warning ‘hijab-less’ women, however, in several cases has gone well beyond “verbal” and ended in violence.

Emergency responders attending to a woman who had a panic attack during a hijab fight at shopping arcade in Babol.

A video from the CCTV of a convenience store in Shandiz near the religious city of Mashhad went viral on social media in early April that showed a man dumping a large tub of yogurt on the head of a ‘hijab-less’ woman and her mother, after an argument as he demanded from her to cover her head.

Some of the people present on the scene came to the defense of the mother and daughter. The attacker was also a member of the Basij.

Another video that became viral on social media in mid-April showed a young woman having a panic attack at a shopping arcade in Babol in northern Iran. The incident happened as a fight broke out when Basij militia tried to arrest some shopkeepers over hijab and fired their guns into the air during the scuffle.

The police later denied that shots had been fired or the hijab incident had caused the young woman’s panic attack.

Hijab incidents are now becoming a daily occurrence. At Tehran University on Monday students staged a rally outside the campus security office after a fight broke out between them and guards who had used violence against female students over hijab. The security detained two female students but later released them.

Many say on social media that women will not allow to be bullied again into wearing the hijab.

Though total numbers of the expulsions are unclear due to the secretive nature of the regime, it has become a widespread punishment for educators seen to encourage the tide of unrest.

Professor Ali Sharifi Zarchi announced in a tweet on Monday that Arash Raisi-Nejad had been dismissed. Raisi-Nejad himself also confirmed the news by retweeting his colleague’s post wishing for the day when the Iranian families live a prosperous, happy, and dignified life.

Back in March, Iranian media reported the suspension of Raisi-Nejad saying that the Ministry of Science informed the University of Tehran that the professor’s contract must not be renewed.

Raisi-Nejad is a graduate of Florida International University and has published articles and books on regional geopolitical issues.

Despite numerous reports on the dismissal of university professors for supporting protests, Iranian officials deny the claims.

Morteza Farrokhi, the Legal Deputy of the Science Ministry, told ISNA that "if there are any cases of dismissal, it has been due to their academic incompetence."

This is not the first time that reports have been published about the dismissal of Iranian university professors for supporting protesters.

Hasan Baqerinia, a professor at Hakim Sabzevari University, was dismissed in February for supporting the protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.

Before that, Amir Maziar, a faculty member of Tehran University's Faculty of Theoretical Sciences and Advanced Art Studies, announced his suspension as well as the suspension of another professor of the university, Kourosh Golnari.

Iranian media reported in early February that nine professors of Tehran Azad University have been forced into early retirement because of expressing critical views against the Islamic Republic.

Workers in the oil, gas and steel industries stood up against low wages as industrial action continued to cause disruption to the country’s main sources of revenue.

Videos published on social media show staff at Madkoush steel company in the southern city of Bandar Abbas have stopped working. Contract workers in Shadegan Steel Complex in the south also went on strike in action which began on Saturday.

Major companies were hit by the action including engineering giant Imensazan, blacklisted by the US, Jahanpars companies in the Sarcheshemeh Copper Complex, electricians at the Gachsaran Petrochemical Project and contract workers in the Daralu Copper Concentrate Plant in Kerman.

Iran International revealed in an exclusive report that security forces are threatening the workers and their families to stop the strike.

However, labor activists believe this time the nationwide strikes are not the same as the previous ones and warn that society is on the verge of explosion. Experts say there is no end in sight as tensions rise amidst a crumbling economy and the biggest anti-regime sentiment in years. It remains to be seen how the government will react to it.

In an interview with Iran International TV Saturday evening, Esmaeilion who had not directly mentioned the exiled Prince as the reason for leaving the alliance a day earlier, named him as the person with whom he had disagreements and left the group.

Prince Reza Pahlavi has not responded to Esmaeilion’s accusations yet.

Esmaeilion claimed that the “near absolute majority” of the members of the alliance sought the formation of specialized committees and drawing up articles of association for the alliance, but the Prince “resisted” such initiatives and instead demanded that the alliance should only give support to political organizations formed outside it.

“Another problem was that discussions within the group leaked out … The tweets that Mr Pahlavi posted in the past two, three weeks transferred internal discussions outside although we were still discussing the issues,” he said.

Prince Reza Pahlavi said in an April 4 tweet that he had submitted a letter containing the names of additional prospective members to give a voice to those who were unrepresented in the alliance. In another tweet on April 10 he reported that members of the group had not come to a consensus regarding the said candidates.

Calling this a setback, the Prince had also said that he would work with other individuals and groups “to amplify the voices of all Iranians, adding that he would not limit himself “to one group” and stand behind “all groups who believe in ensuring Iran's territorial integrity, who want human rights for the Iranian people, and who believe the future government of Iran should be a secular democracy, the form of which should be decided by the Iranian people.”

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Prince Reza Pahlavi has not publicly named his proposed candidates but some of his his supporters who call themselves ‘constitutionalists’ allege that Esmaeilion opposed the inclusion of football legend Ali Karimi at the time of announcement of their association.

They allege that Esmaeilion opposed the inclusion of London-based journalist Amir Taheri and Germany-based musician and activist Shahin Najafi.

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There is also the accusation that Esmaeilion resigned because of Prince Pahlavi’s recent trip to Israel.

In his interview with Iran International, however, Esmaeilion denied the allegation that he had announced his resignation Friday, immediately after Prince Reza Pahlavi’s visit to Israel, “to undermine his achievements.”

Some constitutional monarchists seem pleased by Esmaeilion’s departure from the alliance. “From now on fresh blood will enter [the veins] of the pragmatic front of the opposition. This is a very positive development!” one of the supporters of the exiled Prince tweeted.

“Esmaeilion’s departure from the alliance has another aspect, namely, if the project of restoring constitutional and parliamentary monarchy in the future, is realized, it will again result in autocracy,” another tweet said.

It also accused monarchists of not having the capability of cooperating with those in favor of a future republic. “The problem is in the theory of monarchy, which does not prepare the ground for pluralism.”

In recent years, the former crown prince did not lay claim to the throne, and at least on one occasion he said his own desirable government would be a republic rather than a monarchy, but many of his supporters, who always refer to him affectionately as ‘The Prince’ see him as the future king of the country.

NOTE: In the earlier version of this report it was erroneously said that Prince Reza Pahlavi had proposed US-based Amir-Hossein Etemadi as a candidate for the Council.

The meeting which was a nocturnal fast-breaking party during the last week of Ramadan, was attended by the incumbent speaker of the Iranian parliament (Majles) Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who calls himself a neo-con, and his predecessors, Ali Larijani, a moderate conservative politician, ultraconservative Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, whose political stances are aligned with the Paydari Party, and Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, another moderate conservative who was once very close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and served as his chief inspector for several years until 2017.

The meeting was called for by Ghalibaf and was held in his office and is generally believed to have been about the outlook of the parliamentary elections and the challenges facing Iran's conservatives. Interestingly, all four men were presidential candidates in different years.

Some Iranian media including the moderate conservative Khabar Online suspect that the meeting was aimed at coming to some sort of arrangement between various conservative groups, in the absence of other political groups including the reformists who have been barred from taking part in elections in Iran at least since 2020.

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From among the four, Ali Larijani was the only one who told reporters that the meeting did not have any political agenda. Others remained silent.

The IRGC-linked newspaper Javan opined that the speculations about the meeting are the outcome of Iranian reformists' conspiracies. According to Javan, one of the leaders of the reformists has advised his likeminded politicians that "When your political rivals are moving toward some sort of accord, try to magnify their points of differences. Then, without any intervention just sit there and watch them fight and whenever there is a truce, you try to flare up the dispute.”

In the current round of the Majles, Ghalibaf has managed to garner support for his speakership from among the members of Paydari and the Conservatives Coalition Council, a group directly under the supervision of Haddad Adel who also has some influence in Paydari.

Haddad Adel on the other hand, who has helped Ghalibaf to win his role in the Majles, had pushed Ghalibaf aside in the 2017 Presidential election to pave the way for Raisi's victory, but Raisi lost that election to Hassan Rouhani. Nonetheless, the outcome of Haddad Adel's manoeuvres was creating the hegemony of hardliners in all three branches of the government.

The result for the country was the weakening of the Majles, which lost its supervisory power by being committed to support the hardliner government under any circumstances. Ghalibaf's attempts to stop impeachment motions to change cabinet ministers dramatically reduced the motivation of younger politicians to run for a Majles that no longer has a part in running the affairs of the state, Khabar Online wrote.

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Political observers’ take on the issue is that if the next Majles, like the current one, fails to remain independent of the government, this will eventually turn the voters away from any election.

Khabar Online even opined that although there is some sort of tactical alliance between Ghalibaf and Haddad Adel, both relatives of Khamenei, they are unlikely to garner support from Larijani and Nateq-Nouri.

To further undermine the significance of the meeting of the four former presidential candidates, Lawmaker Jalal Mahmoudzadeh told reporters sarcastically that some of those in Raisi's cabinet were also presidential candidates, and you see how they are running the country and what does the country's economy look like under their management.