Iran Resumes Dress Code Patrols

Facts

• Iran's state-run Fars news agency reported on Sunday that vehicle and foot patrols are once again operating across the country to ensure women comply with a strict Islamic dress code.¹
• Officers have been tasked with warning women outside the norm to adjust headscarves — or hijabs — and to wear long, loose-fitting clothing, sending into the judicial system those who violate the rules.²
• This comes ten months after nationwide protests rocked the country in response to the death of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the Guidance Patrol for allegedly incorrectly wearing her headscarf.³
• While police vans were taken off the streets amid the unrest, Tehran has used closed-circuit TV cameras to scan the faces of those not wearing the hijab and introduced new laws to levy fines or close shops and cafes serving women breaking the norms — an estimated ten percent of Iranian women — as soon as protests subsided.⁴
• The Human Rights Activists in Iran NGO reported that one woman was sentenced to two years in jail and a two-year travel ban — while also being ordered to undertake health checks due to her behavior — in the first sentence that relied on evidence from the cameras.⁵
• All Iranian women have been required to wear a headscarf in public since 1983 — four years into the Islamic Revolution that conducted clerics to power — but enforcement of the dress code has fluctuated since it was set up during the 1990s.⁶

Sources: ¹CNN, ²Al Jazeera, ³BBC News, ⁴Guardian, ⁵The telegraph and ⁶Washington Post.

Narratives

• Anti-Iran narrative, as provided by Iranwire. There's little doubt that the Iranian regime was irrational and completely out of touch with society. Yet, relaunching patrols to enforce the dress code is a terrible measure even for Tehran's leadership. This move can only wreak havoc in the country and reignite women-led anti-government protests.
• Pro-Iran narrative, as provided by Presstv. While enemies of Iran attempt to create cracks in the nation through warfare against the Islamic headscarf, Iranian women and girls will not give up their Muslim identity. The hijab is an unquestionable religious necessity and a practical principle of a nation that bolsters the traditional family. This policy must be protected and upheld.

Predictions