DUBAI: On the streets of Iranian cities, it’s becoming more common to see a woman passing by without a mandatory headscarf, or hijab, as the second anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini and the mass protests it sparked approaches.
There’s no government official or study acknowledging the phenomenon, which began as Iran entered its hot summer months and power cuts in its overburdened electrical system became common. But across social media, videos of people filming neighborhood streets or just talking about a normal day in their life, women and girls can be seen walking past with their long hair out over their shoulders, particularly after sunset.
This defiance comes despite what United Nations investigators describe as “expanded repressive measures and policies” by Iran’s theocracy to punish them — though there’s been no recent catalyzing event like Amini’s death to galvanize demonstrators.
The country’s new reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian campaigned on a promise to halt the harassment of women by morality police. But the country’s ultimate authority remains the 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in the past said “unveiling is both religiously forbidden and politically forbidden.”
For some observant Muslim women, the head covering is a sign of piety before God and modesty in front of men outside their families. In Iran, the hijab — and the all-encompassing black chador worn by some — has long been a political symbol as well.
“Meaningful institutional changes and accountability for gross human rights violations and crimes under international law, and crimes against humanity, remains elusive for victims and survivors, especially for women and children,” warned a UN fact-finding mission on Iran on Friday.
Amini, 22, died on Sept. 16, 2022, in a hospital after her arrest by the country’s morality police over allegedly not wearing her hijab to the liking of the authorities. The protests that followed Amini’s death started first with the chant “Women, Life, Freedom.” However, the protesters’ cries soon grew into open calls of revolt against Khamenei.
A monthslong security crackdown that followed killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained.
Today, passersby on the streets of Tehran, whether its tony northern suburbs for the wealthy or the working-class neighborhoods of the capital’s southern reaches, now routinely see women without the hijab. It particularly starts at dusk, though even during the daylight on weekends women can be seen with their hair uncovered at major parks.
Online videos — specifically a sub-genre showing walking tours of city streets for those in rural areas or abroad who want to see life in the bustling neighborhoods of Tehran — include women without the hijab.
Something that would have stopped a person in their tracks in the decades follwing the 1979 Islamic Revolution now goes unacknowledged.
“My quasi-courage for not wearing scarves is a legacy of Mahsa Amini and we have to protect this as an achievement,” said a 25-year-old student at Tehran Sharif University, who gave only her first name Azadeh out of fear of reprisal. “She could be at my current age if she did not pass away.”
The disobedience still comes with risk. Months after the protests halted, Iranian morality police returned to the streets.
There have been scattered videos of women and young girls being roughed up by officers in the time since. In 2023, a teenage Iranian girl was injured in a mysterious incident on Tehran’s Metro while not wearing a headscarf and later died in hospital. In July, activists say police opened fire on a woman fleeing a checkpoint in an attempt to avoid her car being impounded for her not wearing the hijab.
Meanwhile, the government has targeted private businesses where women are seen without their headscarves. Surveillance cameras search for women uncovered in vehicles to fine and impound their cars. The government has gone as far as use aerial drones to monitor the 2024 Tehran International Book Fair and Kish Island for uncovered women, the UN said.
Yet some feel the election of Pezeshkian in July, after a helicopter crash killed Iranian hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi in May, is helping ease tensions over the hijab.
“I think the current peaceful environment is part of the status after Pezeshkian took office,” said Hamid Zarrinjouei, a 38-year-old bookseller. “In some way, Pezeshkian could convince powerful people that more restrictions do not necessarily make women more faithful to the hijab.”
On Wednesday, Iran’s Prosecutor General Mohammad Movahedi Azad warned security forces about starting physical altercations over the hijab.
“We prosecuted violators, and we will,” Movahedi Azad said, according to Iranian media. “Nobody has right to have improper attitude even though an individual commits an offense.”
While the government isn’t directly addressing the increase in women not wearing hijabs, there are other signs of a recognition the political landscape has shifted. In August, authorities dismissed a university teacher a day after he appeared on state television and dismissively referred to Amini as having “croaked.”
Meanwhile, the pre-reform newspaper Ham Mihan reported in August on an unpublished survey conducted under the supervision of Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance that found the hijab had become one of the most important issues in the country — something it hadn’t seen previously.
“This issue has been on people’s minds more than ever before,” sociologist Simin Kazemi told the newspaper.
Women in Iran are going without hijabs as the 2nd anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death approaches
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Women in Iran are going without hijabs as the 2nd anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death approaches
- Country’s new reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian campaigned on a promise to halt the harassment of women by morality police
Hezbollah vows to punish Israel after deadly pager blasts
- The attack came just hours after Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attacks
- Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will make a previously unscheduled speech at 5:00 p.m.
Beirut, Lebanon: Hezbollah vowed on Wednesday to punish Israel for a deadly attack in which hundreds of paging devices used by the militant group’s members exploded almost simultaneously across Lebanon.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the wave of explosions that killed nine people, including the 10-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member, and wounded around 2,800 others.
The attack came just hours after Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attacks to include its fight against the Palestinian militant group’s ally Hezbollah along the country’s border with Lebanon.
“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression,” the group said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that Israel “will certainly receive its just punishment for this sinful aggression.”
On Wednesday, the group vowed in another statement on Telegram it would continue its fight in support of Gaza while reiterating it would avenge Tuesday’s blasts.
“This path is ongoing and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre on Tuesday,” the group said in a statement on Telegram.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will make a previously unscheduled speech at 5:00 p.m. (1400 GMT) on Thursday, the group said.
The wave of blasts killed nine people, including a girl, and wounded 2,800 others, 200 of them critically, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said Tuesday.
“This was more than lithium batteries being forced into override,” said Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute.
“A small plastic explosive was almost certainly concealed alongside the battery, for remote detonation via a call or page.”
Israel’s spy agency “Mossad infiltrated the supply chain,” he said.
The influx of so many casualties all at once overwhelmed hospitals in Hezbollah strongholds.
At one hospital in Beirut’s southern suburbs, an AFP correspondent saw people being treated in a car park on thin mattresses, with medical gloves on the ground and ambulance stretchers covered in blood.
“In all my life I’ve never seen someone walking on the street... and then explode,” said Musa, a resident of the southern suburbs, requesting to be identified only by his first name.
The 10-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member was killed in east Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley when his pager exploded, the family and a source close to the group said.
A son of Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Ammar was also among the dead, a source close to the group told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Tehran’s ambassador in Beirut was wounded but his injuries were not serious, Iranian state media reported.
The blasts hit Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon and dealt a heavy blow to the militant group, which already had concerns about the security of its communications after losing several key commanders to targeted air strikes in recent months.
A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, told AFP that “the pagers that exploded concern a shipment recently imported by Hezbollah of 1,000 devices” which appear to have been “sabotaged at source.”
After The New York Times reported the pagers had been ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, the company denied any link to the products.
Early Tuesday, Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the Gaza war to include its fight against Hezbollah along its border with Lebanon.
To date, Israel’s objectives have been to crush Hamas and bring home the hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attacks.
“The political-security cabinet updated the goals of the war” to include “the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
Since October, the unabating exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon have killed hundreds of mostly fighters in Lebanon, and dozens including soldiers on the Israeli side.
They have also forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.
On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that failing a political solution, “military action” would be “the only way left to ensure the return” of displaced residents to the border area.
Major airlines Lufthansa and Air France on Tuesday announced suspensions of flights to Tel Aviv, Tehran and Beirut until Thursday.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived back in the region at dawn on Wednesday to try to revive stalled ceasefire talks for the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
After months of mediated negotiations failed to pin down a ceasefire, Washington said it was still working with mediators Qatar and Egypt to finalize an agreement.
US officials have expressed increasing frustration with Israel as Netanyahu has publicly rejected US assessments that a deal is nearly complete and has insisted on an Israeli military presence on the Egypt-Gaza border.
The October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,252 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.
On Tuesday, UN member states were debating a draft resolution demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of all Palestinian territories within 12 months.
General Assembly resolutions are not binding, but Israel has already denounced the new text as “disgraceful.”
The UN will vote on a Palestinian resolution demanding Israel end its occupation
- The resolution is being put to a vote in the 193-member assembly as Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza approaches its first anniversary
UNITED NATIONS: The UN General Assembly will vote Wednesday on a Palestinian resolution demanding that Israel end its “unlawful presence” in Gaza and the occupied West Bank within a year, withdraw its military forces and evacuate all settlers.
The resolution is being put to a vote in the 193-member assembly as Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza approaches its first anniversary and as violence in the West Bank reaches new highs. The war was triggered by Hamas attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, opened the assembly meeting Tuesday by saying Palestinians face an “existential threat” and claiming Israel has held them “in shackles.” He demanded an end to Israel’s decades-long occupation and for Palestinians to be able to return home to live in peace and freedom.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, urged member nations to reject the resolution, describing it as “an attempt to destroy Israel through diplomatic terrorism” that never mentions Hamas’ atrocities and “ignores the truth, twists the facts and replaces reality with fiction.”
“Instead of a resolution condemning the rape and massacre committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, we gather here to watch the Palestinians’ UN circus — a circus where evil is righteous, war is peace, murder is justified and terror is applauded,” he said.
If adopted, the resolution would not be legally binding, but the extent of its support would reflect world opinion. There are no vetoes in the General Assembly, unlike in the 15-member Security Council.
The resolution is a response to a ruling by the top United Nations court in July that said Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories is unlawful and must end.
In the sweeping condemnation of Israel’s rule over the lands it captured during the 1967 war, the International Court of Justice said Israel had no right to sovereignty over the Palestinian territories and was violating international laws against acquiring the lands by force.
The court’s opinion also is not legally binding. Nonetheless, the Palestinians drafted the resolution to try to implement the ruling, saying Israel’s “abuse of its status as the occupying power” renders its “presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful.”
Mansour stressed that any country that thinks the Palestinian people “will accept a life of servitude” or that claims peace is possible without a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “not being realistic.”
The solution remains an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side in peace and security with Israel, he said.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield told reporters that the resolution has “a significant number of flaws,” saying it goes beyond the ICJ ruling. It also doesn’t recognize that “Hamas is a terrorist organization” in control of Gaza and that Israel has a right to defend itself, she said.
“In our view, the resolution does not bring about tangible benefits across the board for the Palestinian people,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “I think it could complicate the situation on the ground, complicate what we’re trying to do to end the conflict, and I think it impedes reinvigorating steps toward a two-state solution.”
The resolution calls for Israel to pay reparations to Palestinians for the damage caused by its occupation and urges countries to take steps to prevent trade or investments that maintain Israel’s presence in the territories.
It also demands that Israel be held accountable for any violations of international law, that sanctions be imposed on those responsible for maintaining Israel’s presence in the territories, and for countries to halt arms exports to Israel if they’re suspected of being used there.
Mansour said an initial Palestinian draft demanded Israel end its occupation within six months but that it was revised in response to concerns of some countries to increase the time frame to within a year.
Most likely, he said, Israel won’t pay attention to the resolution.
Israeli military says four soldiers killed in southern Gaza
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said on Wednesday four soldiers were killed in combat in southern Gaza.
Three soldiers were severely wounded and two others moderately wounded in the same incident, it said.
Blinken arrives in Egypt to push Gaza ceasefire
- On his 10th trip to the Middle East since the start of the war in Gaza nearly a year ago, Blinken will address negotiation efforts with Egyptian officials
- Blinken is expected to meet with Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and hold a press conference with Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty
CAIRO: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Cairo early Wednesday, an AFP reporter said, as efforts to secure an elusive ceasefire in Gaza were further complicated by a wave of blasts in Lebanon.
On his 10th trip to the Middle East since the start of the war in Gaza nearly a year ago, Blinken will address negotiation efforts with Egyptian officials, according to the US State Department.
Blinken is expected to meet with Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and hold a press conference with Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, but will not be visiting Israel in this round of diplomacy.
US officials say privately that they do not expect any breakthroughs at Wednesday’s talks in Cairo, but Blinken’s visit will aim to keep up the pressure campaign for a deal between Israel and Hamas.
“He’ll be meeting with Egyptian officials about a number of things, but squarely on the agenda is how we get a proposal that we think would secure agreement from both parties,” said US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
His visit comes after a series of pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and wounding about 2,800 in blasts the Iran-backed militant group blamed on Israel.
The United States was “not involved” and “not aware of this incident in advance,” according to Miller.
Israel recently announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah along the country’s border with Lebanon.
Gold Apollo says it did not make pagers used in Lebanon explosion
- Gold Apollo says BAC Consulting produces model of pagers used in Lebanon blasts
TAIPEI: Taiwan’s Gold Apollo said on Wednesday BAC Consulting KFT based in Budapest has a license to use its brand and made the model of pagers used in the detonations in Lebanon a day earlier.
“Regarding the AR-924 pager model mentioned in the recent media reports, we clarify that this model is produced and sold by BAC,” Gold Apollo said in a statement.
Earlier on Tuesday, Gold Apollo denied reports that it made the pagers that were used in the detonations in Lebanon.
At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday.
Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo.
Hsu said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the Taiwanese firm’s brand.
