After more than two months of protests in the streets and harsh repression, the Iranian regime is sending signals that it is considering changes in the use of the veil, mandatory for women in public, and the abolition of the morality police. The country’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, said during a television intervention on Saturday that although Iran’s Islamic foundations, which protect the dress code, are ironclad, “the application of the Constitution could be flexible.” This week the government has shown some willingness to revise the strict 1983 law, which forces women to veil their hair or wear loose clothing in public and which has become a symbol of riots sparked after the death. of the young Mahsa Amini, on 16 September in police custody. Amini had been arrested for wearing the hijab incorrectly. At the start of the protests, Raisi had maintained a forceful rejection of the protesters, calling for “acting decisively against them” as well as a rigorous application of the legislation regarding the headscarf.
Amini, of Kurdish origin, was arrested by the morality police, who are also in the crosshairs of the protests. Precisely, the attorney general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, has ruled on this body, who has proposed its abolition without giving further details. Neither the Ministry of the Interior – on whom the morality police depend, as Iranian media related to the regime remarked – nor any other government official has confirmed this. “The morality police have been dismantled by the same people who created it,” said Mohammad Jafar Montazeri when answering a question about the cancellation of the group, according to various agencies. “Also, [este cuerpo] It has nothing to do with the judiciary”, he remarked without providing more information.
The morality police, known as Gasht-e Ershad (orientation or guided patrols), was founded in 2006 under the presidency of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, also a radical conservative, who held office from 2005 to 2013. Unlike the basijies, a paramilitary group with ties to the Revolutionary Guard created in 1980 by Ayatollah Khomeini; the purpose of the morality police is to “spread the culture of decency and hijab”. Its units are made up of men, who wear green suits, and women with black chador, a garment that covers the entire body except the face, and one of their tasks is to monitor the application of the dress codes established by the 1983 law, approved four years after the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the shah’s monarchy. In recent weeks, outlets such as the Iranian reformist newspaper shargh and citizens on their social networks have published information indicating a lower presence of these decorum supervisors on the streets. A decision that they interpreted as an attempt to de-escalate the demonstrations, united under the feminist emblem: “Woman, life, freedom.”
In addition to suggesting the possible dissolution of the body, during his speech, the attorney general also referred to a possible relaxation of clothing policies: “Parliament and the Judiciary are working [en su articulación]”. Despite that statement, he also did not specify the changes that said reform would imply. Montazeri made these statements from the city of Qom, an important Iranian theological center, which houses the Sanctuary of Fatima. The city is the headquarters of the school where the ayatollahs are trained and is a relevant destination for religious pilgrimage. Despite the apparent openness of his words, the prosecutor wanted to emphasize that “wearing the hijab poorly, especially in the holy city of Qom, is one of the main concerns of the judiciary, as well as of our revolutionary society.” “But it should be noted that legal action is the last resort,” he added.
Although the Iranian authorities have insisted that the protests will not motivate a normative or social change; the slight nuances in the presidential tone and the ambiguous abolition suggested by the attorney general are considered gestures towards the protesters who, since Amini’s death, have gathered against the ayatollahs in all the country’s cities. In these protests, in which the presence of women and young people stands out, almost half a thousand people (470) have died, according to the NGO Iran Human Rights, and more than 18,000 have been arrested. Tehran, for its part, acknowledges 200 deaths; 60 of them part of the security forces. This Sunday, the protesters have made an appeal to start three days of strike and economic boycott starting this Monday. They will culminate on Wednesday, when Raisi is scheduled to visit Tehran University. There, the president will give a speech within the student’s day acts, a day in which there are also convened rallies in the capital to continue showing his opposition to the iron regime.
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The US sees no readiness in Tehran for the nuclear deal
The United States special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, considers that Tehran has no intention of returning to the nuclear agreement it signed with the international community in 2015, practically suspended since 2018, when former US President Donald Trump unilaterally removed his country. of the pact. “Iran is not interested in a deal and now we are focused on other things,” Malley said in an interview with Bloomberg.
The senior official recommends that Washington focus its efforts on, on the one hand, “interrupting, delaying, and sanctioning” the supply of Iranian weapons to Russia and, on the other, supporting the protests against the regime that are sweeping the country: “Support Aspirations [de derechos] Fundamentals of the Iranian People.
The Nuclear Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) denounced last month the obstacles placed by Iran when examining its facilities. In fact, Tehran has called for an end to these visits as a condition for returning to the agreement. Something unaffordable for the US “What’s the point of this? Why should we focus on this issue if Iran responds with unacceptable demands?” Malley said. To which she has added: “We cannot return to the table to be played all the time.”
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