Iran airport control tower staff strike disrupts flights nationwide

Her arrest for “improper hijab” sparked the historic Woman, Life, Freedom movement, drawing women and men into the streets to demand an end to compulsory veiling and gender apartheid.

For many outside Iran, this seemed like a sudden eruption. But it was the continuation of a struggle that began long before 2022—and long before 1979.

Iran’s state-supported march toward women’s equality began in the early 20th century under Reza Shah, who ruled from 1925 to 1941 and believed modernization required women’s active participation in public life.

His 1936 decree compelling women to unveil—though heavy-handed—was a watershed moment, symbolizing women’s entry into civic life after centuries of seclusion.

Under the Pahlavi shahs, especially Mohammad Reza Shah, who ruled from 1941 to 1979, this state-led transformation expanded into education, political participation, family law and the workplace.

Modern schools for girls expanded dramatically, and by the late 1970s women made up a growing share of university students, entering specialized fields from medicine to engineering.

In 1963, Iranian women won the right to vote and run for office. Within a decade, women held seats in parliament, served as cabinet ministers and worked as judges. The Family Protection Laws of 1967, expanded significantly in 1975, curbed polygamy, raised the minimum marriage age and substantially expanded women’s rights in divorce and child custody.

By the late 1970s, women were increasingly visible as doctors, lawyers, executives, pilots and business leaders.

Together, these advances transformed the legal and social position of Iranian women and brought greater equality within reach.

That progressive trajectory ended abruptly in 1979. While Ayatollah Khomeini cloaked his takeover in the language of prosperity and liberation, he delivered a theocratic counter-revolution.

The Family Protection Laws were dismantled, female judges were removed from the bench, the minimum marriage age for girls was lowered, and compulsory veiling was progressively imposed.

Iranian women resisted almost immediately. In March 1979, thousands marched through the streets of Tehran against compulsory veiling. Yet the West, eager to believe Khomeini’s moderate diplomatic promises, looked away as women’s hard-won gains were rapidly erased.

The consequences of that original betrayal continue to shape Iran, though the Islamic Republic’s methods have changed dramatically. In recent years, state security networks have intensified enforcement through measures including the Noor Plan, which stepped up enforcement of compulsory hijab.

Street-level coercion has increasingly been supplemented by technology and punitive restrictions. Authorities have used surveillance cameras, heavy financial penalties and other restrictions against women who defy compulsory veiling.

Yet this expanding apparatus has failed to break the population’s resolve. The civil defiance that followed Mahsa Amini’s death helped lay the groundwork for subsequent protests that again shook the Islamic Republic.

As an immigration consultant in Canada, I speak to many Iranians seeking to leave Iran. Again and again, they tell me the same story: they want a future where their daughters can study freely, choose their own paths and live without fear.

The history of Iranian women’s struggle also carries a lesson for the outside world. In 1979, Western leaders mistook a theocratic revolution for a movement that would deliver greater political freedom. Today, the West risks repeating its mistakes if it prioritizes short-term “stability” or narrow regional de-escalation agreements over fundamental human rights.

Supporting Iranian women is not a matter of international charity. It is also a strategic question. A secular, free Iran could fundamentally reshape the political and security landscape of the Middle East, reducing the forces that have fuelled proxy warfare and threatened vital maritime routes.

Golden Global Investment Bank was built largely by veterans of state-owned Halkbank, which itself inherited longstanding Iranian banking relationships when Turkey transferred the troubled Pamukbank to it two decades ago.

The same state fund that took control of Pamukbank in 2002 is now exercising shareholder rights covering nearly all of Golden Global.

The US Treasury sanctioned Golden Global, alleging it facilitated tens of millions of dollars in transactions for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and was established to help move Iranian oil revenues from China to Turkey for conversion into cash and gold.

Golden Global denies the allegations.

Turkey’s banking regulator moved on September 16 to put shareholder rights covering nearly all of Golden Global under the control of the country’s Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF).

The decision covers stakes held by three shareholders and excludes dividend rights. It comes three days before a US authorization to wind down dealings involving the bank expires.

Corporate filings show Golden Global drew its founding and subsequent leadership heavily from Halkbank. The bank opened in Istanbul in June 2020 with former Halkbank bankers as chairman and general manager, then recruited other veterans as chief executive, vice chairman, board member and compliance head.

Treasury’s designation does not name any of the Halkbank veterans personally. Their career connections are documented in corporate filings and published biographies; the US allegations concern Golden Global and its subsidiaries.

The sanctions came less than three months after a federal judge dismissed the US criminal case against Halkbank on June 17. That prosecution concerned alleged Iranian sanctions evasion between 2012 and 2016 and ended under a deferred prosecution agreement, without an admission of wrongdoing by Halkbank.

Golden Global faces a separate administrative sanctions action.

From Pamukbank to Halkbank

Pamukbank was a privately owned Turkish deposit bank founded in 1955. It established a representative office in Tehran in 1984 to support business between Turkey and Iran, two decades before becoming part of Halkbank.

Reporting on its opening, the Turkish newspaper Milliyet cited Pamukbank general manager Ibrahim Betil as saying inadequate banking links were hampering trade between the two countries. The bank said its Tehran presence would help financing and communication with Turkish businesses.

Pamukbank came under TMSF control in 2002 and was transferred to Halkbank in November 2004. Its assets, liabilities and branches passed to the state-owned lender, including the Tehran office and accounts Iranian banks already held at Pamukbank.

By 2005, Halkbank was publicly promoting its access to Iran’s oil business. Its annual report described it as the only Turkish bank authorized to open letters of credit directly to the National Iranian Oil Company. The Turkish edition also said its Tehran office helped handle large foreign-trade transactions with Iran.

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Former Halkbank executive Hakan Atilla later testified in a US trial that the bank initially made only a preliminary assessment of the Iranian relationships inherited from Pamukbank and returned to them after its 2007 initial public offering. Halkbank itself later dated its Iran-related foreign-trade activity to 2004.

In January 2008, US Treasury Under Secretary Stuart Levey pressed Halkbank’s senior management over those Iranian ties. A US diplomatic cable records him urging the bank to close Iranian correspondent accounts and warning against expanding relationships with Iranian financial institutions seeking international partners.

The pressure continued in 2009, when Treasury officials warned Halkbank about Iranian efforts to disguise transactions. Halkbank officials said they financed documented trade and did not handle third-party, transit or cash-for-goods transactions.

From Halkbank to Golden Global

Golden Global later recruited bankers who had built their careers at Pamukbank and Halkbank, including in international banking, foreign operations and compliance.

The bank received its operating licence in early 2020 and opened for business on June 1. Its founding chairman, Mustafa Akin, had begun his career at Pamukbank in 1986 and managed branches for Pamukbank and Halkbank between 1994 and 2011.

Golden Global’s first general manager, Ozay Balta, had started at Halkbank as an assistant inspector in 2004 and served as a branch manager from 2012 to 2016. His published biography lists no other employer before Golden Global.

Yavuz Yeter became general manager in May 2024. He had joined Pamukbank’s Board of Inspectors in 1996 and moved to Halkbank in the 2004 merger, later serving in senior roles in its International Banking and Structured Finance department.

Yeter was therefore in senior international-banking roles during the period when Halkbank advertised its access to the National Iranian Oil Company and received Levey’s warning. That chronology does not establish that he handled the Iranian business. Atilla assigned responsibility for the Iranian accounts and Tehran office to a separate department.

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Yeter later moved into senior central-bank roles. From 2016 to 2019 he held a banking-and-financial-institutions post at Turkey’s central bank. From 2020 to 2023 he served as its representative and economic attaché in Frankfurt, then advised its Istanbul office before joining Golden Global.

Coskun Cabuk joined Halkbank in the 2004 merger and worked across inspection, corporate banking and regional coordination, according to Golden Global’s 2025 annual report. The report gives no dates for those individual posts.

Cabuk stayed at Halkbank until 2017, then ran its leasing subsidiary, Halk Finansal Kiralama, until 2024. Golden Global shareholders elected him to the board for two years in March 2025 but his seat ended only a year later. Cabuk became general manager of Turkland Bank in July 2026.

The Halkbank connection also extended to compliance. Golden Global’s 2025 annual report identifies Cigdem Sefer as head of regulation and compliance. She began at Halkbank in 1996 and worked in its foreign operations, international banking and compliance units before joining Golden Global in November 2025.

Her unit’s responsibilities include evaluating correspondent relationships, screening customers and transactions against national and international sanctions, and overseeing obligations relating to money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing.

Gold, cash and correspondent banking

Correspondent banking—the use of other banks to process payments and gain access to financial systems abroad—is central to Treasury’s allegations against Golden Global.

Treasury alleges the bank knowingly provided such services to Iranian financial institutions, enabling transactions through accounts controlled by the IRGC-QF and its proxies. It places Golden Global within Iran’s rahbar system, which it describes as a network of companies coordinating overseas payments for Iranian banks through foreign accounts and money exchangers.

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The alleged network used correspondent banking, gold and cash to move funds.

The Treasury identifies Turkish businessman Sitki Ayan and his companies among the networks involved. OFAC sanctioned that network in 2022. Golden Global says it has had no direct or indirect dealings with those individuals..

Golden Global’s own figures show substantial growth in those areas of its business. Its 2025 report lists 45 accounts held at 20 banks in 17 countries and 66 accounts hosted for 25 banks from 16 countries. Those 25 banks are not identified.

Fees paid for foreign settlement services rose 56 percent in 2025 to 482 million lira. The bank also reported playing a critical role in settling $1.8 billion in gold transactions in 2025, nearly three times the $613 million reported a year earlier.

Physical banknote trading reached $4.4 billion, an increase of about 70%. Golden Global also reported $21.9 billion in interbank foreign-exchange trades, nearly double the previous year, and $14.5 billion in currency swaps, more than twice the 2024 total.

The reports document substantial activity in the same types of services Treasury says the Iranian network used. Those aggregate figures do not, on their own, establish which transactions involved sanctioned parties.

The September 19 deadline

Treasury designated Golden Global under Executive Order 13902, which targets specified sectors of Iran’s economy, including finance. It placed the action within Operation Economic Outcast, a campaign announced in August to intensify pressure on Iran’s remaining financial and trading channels.

The sanctions are already in effect. OFAC’s General License CC provides limited authorization for transactions ordinarily necessary to wind down dealings involving Golden Global and other covered entities. That authorization expires at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on September 19.

The license carries conditions, including a requirement that payments to blocked persons go into blocked, interest-bearing accounts in the United States. When it expires, transactions covered by the licence lose that authorization.

Treasury has also warned that foreign financial institutions conducting or facilitating certain significant transactions on behalf of designated entities could face prohibitions or restrictions on their US correspondent accounts.

For Golden Global, whose business reaches counterparties across more than a dozen countries, the immediate pressure therefore extends beyond its Istanbul office to the institutions connecting it to the international financial system.

“I felt like a human being, that I had the right to choose and that others could no longer decide for me,” one woman wrote.

Most of the responses portrayed removing the headscarf not simply as a change in clothing, but as an emotional experience accompanied for many by anxiety over possible consequences.

Freedom and fear

Words including freedom, relief, lightness and power appeared repeatedly in the responses. Some said going without a headscarf gave them a sense of making their own decisions about their bodies and clothing.

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But many described fear alongside that sense of freedom.

Some others said they initially carried a headscarf in their bags, repeatedly looked around while walking or worried about being confronted.

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One woman recalled leaving home without carrying a scarf for the first time in November 2022.

“I was wearing a hooded puffer jacket so I could do something if I had to. It was the first time I had left home without taking a scarf with me, and my heart was racing with fear the whole time. But now wearing a headscarf feels unusual to me,” she wrote.

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Another respondent said seeing other women without headscarves gradually reduced her anxiety.

“I was extremely afraid, but seeing people like me made me less frightened and gave me more courage,” she wrote.

Public defiance of compulsory hijab expanded after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022, three days after her detention by Iran’s morality police, triggering the nationwide Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

‘When the wind touched my hair’

Several focused on physical sensations that had previously been denied to them in public, including feeling wind in their hair or cool air on their face and neck.

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One woman said going completely without a scarf and feeling the wind in her hair was so different that she regretted experiencing it at 40 rather than 20.

“The first time I sat behind the wheel wearing a T-shirt, I was about to cry,” another woman wrote. “Why did we have to wear so many clothes and suffocate in the heat? When the air touched me, I felt light.”

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Another wrote: “When the wind touched my hair, face and neck, I enjoyed feeling it without having to fix my headscarf afterward or untangle the hair underneath it.”

The accounts come as messages sent to Iran International in recent days described the return of morality patrols and increased pressure on women in cities including Isfahan, Rasht, Fuman, Mashhad and Neyshabur.

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Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a member of Iran’s Expediency Council, another the Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s father-in-law said on September 9 that the Islamic Republic could not enforce its hijab requirements as extensively as it wanted because of “war conditions,” describing the situation as more difficult than in 1980s.

Grief and solidarity

For some, taking off the headscarf brought the dead with it.

One woman wrote that the experience did not bring a sense of freedom because she remembered the “heavy price” young people had paid. Others recalled crying or experiencing happiness and grief simultaneously.

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Solidarity between women also featured prominently.

A middle-aged woman in Pardis, near Tehran, said she was among the first women of her age there to remove her headscarf.

Another recalled girls periodically giving her chocolates with notes thanking her for her courage.

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“I will never forget the smile I had at that moment,” she wrote.

Others described smiles and encouragement from women they did not know, while some said simply seeing others without headscarves helped their fear subside.

For some women, there was no defining first time. Years of gradually pushing back against compulsory hijab had blurred that boundary, while others said workplace rules, restrictions on clothing or decades of habit still kept them from abandoning the headscarf altogether.

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The responses also showed how the experience stretched across generations. A 70-year-old woman said she had stopped wearing a headscarf completely at 60. Another, born in the 1960s, described removing it as unexpectedly recovering a piece of her youth.

“I couldn’t believe I was feeling like a teenager again,” she wrote.

The previously undisclosed meeting was held at the US Embassy in Muscat, three of the sources told Reuters. Two said Oman, a longtime regional mediator, helped organize the talks.

One source said the meeting took place on Sunday. US embassy personnel represented Washington, while the Houthi delegation included senior official Mohammad Abdulsalam, who is under US sanctions, and Abdelmalik al-Ajiri, according to Reuters.

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Houthis say US ships not a target

The Houthis told US officials they did not intend to attack American vessels and remained committed to a ceasefire reached with Washington in 2025, two sources told Reuters.

A Yemeni source said the group also said it would not attack Israeli ships or other commercial vessels, except those belonging to Saudi Arabia.

The State Department did not confirm the meeting but said protecting freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and preventing terrorism from spreading from the Middle East were core US interests.

President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the Houthis had contacted his administration and asked Washington to stay out of the Yemen war. Vice President JD Vance said on Monday that the United States was in direct contact with the group.

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Talks come despite terrorist designation

The Trump administration designated the Houthis a "foreign terrorist organization" in March 2025.

Washington nevertheless negotiated with the group later that year and reached a ceasefire in May after two months of US strikes aimed at stopping attacks on Red Sea shipping.

The latest talks came after the Houthis seized effective control of Yemen's Red Sea coastline, including the port of Mocha and Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key route for international shipping.

Saudi-Houthi fighting intensifies

Later on Wednesday, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said that the group had attacked an airbase in Khamis Mushait as well as Aramco facilities in Yanbu. Saudi Arabia did not confirm either of the attacks.

The Houthis have fought a Saudi-led coalition for more than a decade after seizing Yemen's capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

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Fighting had largely eased under a ceasefire but resumed in July after the Houthis declared a blockade of Saudi shipping in the Red Sea in response to a Saudi blockade of Yemeni ports.

Saudi warplanes have since struck Houthi positions as the group has advanced along the Red Sea coast and launched attacks toward Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh sought US help

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Trump last week seeking US military support as the Houthi offensive accelerated, Reuters reported.

Washington told Riyadh it would not become directly involved in the fighting, according to Reuters.

The escalation has also increased pressure on global energy supplies already disrupted by the Iran war and reduced shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The person was shot with a Kalashnikov rifle from about 20 meters away in the central city of Isfahan on the evening of January 9, according to an informed source.

“The infection at the wound site is still continuing, and a problem with the tissue flap means another surgery is necessary,” the source said.

The bullet shattered bone and severed a nerve and tendon in the leg, leaving some of the damage permanent.

What followed the shooting began a medical ordeal that has stretched across months, repeated hospital admissions and operating rooms.

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Iran International is withholding the individual’s identity and the names of the hospitals involved because of security concerns.

Shot, taken away and left in a gutter

Security forces put the badly wounded protester into a vehicle after the shooting. But the patient never reached hospital in that vehicle.

Believing the wounded person had died, the forces left them in a roadside gutter.

“Some time later, someone found the protester and took them to a hospital,” the source said.

The patient was still alive, but in critical condition.

Doctors administered 18 units of blood in an effort to save the protester’s life.

After the condition partially stabilized, the person was transferred to another hospital. There, the medical emergency collided with another problem: the presence of intelligence forces.

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  Iranian protester still unable to walk despite 23 operations for gunshot wound

Agents at one point prevented orthopedic doctors from entering to perform surgery.

Medical staff nevertheless secretly arranged to transfer the patient to the operating room.

A wound that would not heal

Surviving the shooting was only the beginning. The bullet had extensively shattered the bone in the leg, while exposure of the open wound to contamination contributed to a severe infection.

The patient remained in hospital for about four months.

Doctors used vacuum-assisted therapy to treat the wound and an external fixator to stabilize the severe bone injury. Surgery followed surgery.

Discharge from hospital did not bring the treatment to an end. The protester repeatedly had to return as doctors continued trying to treat the damage and control the infection.

A tissue flap – skin and underlying tissue transferred to reconstruct the damaged area – has since developed complications, making yet another operation necessary.

It will be the 26th.

Months after the shooting, the infection remains uncontrolled and protester’s life continues to move between home, hospital and the operating room.

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  Iranian protester undergoes months of secret treatment to save wounded leg

Treatment under security pressure

The physical injuries are only part of the difficulty surrounding the treatment.

The wounded person works in an administrative position at a government institution, and concern that the circumstances of the injury could become known has added to the difficulties surrounding treatment.

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The account is one of several received by Iran International describing protesters facing prolonged treatment after being wounded during the January demonstrations.

The family of a 34-year-old demonstrator wounded in Qazvin previously told Iran International that the patient underwent more than five operations after being shot in the lower leg with live ammunition and had to pursue parts of the treatment secretly and at considerable expense.