Iran’s women are ditching hijab. Why regime dares not stop them

Dubai: Iran is confronting a familiar battle at home even as it remains locked in a bruising conflict with the US: What to do about the growing number of women openly refusing to wear the hijab.

At the height of the war, women without headscarves were seen even at pro-government gatherings and on state media. In one video, an unveiled woman carrying an Iranian flag said her husband was serving in the military and that she was proud of him.

For authorities consumed by war, economic fallout and a reorganisation of the security establishment under Mojtaba Khamenei, enforcing women’s dress appeared to have slipped down the list of priorities.

Now Iran’s hardliners want it back near the top.

Conservative clerics and politicians are demanding action against what they call “public nudity”, while cafes and other businesses are being shut for failing to enforce clothing rules, CNN reported.

But the regime faces an explosive calculation: Punishing businesses is one thing. Sending morality police back onto the streets to confront large numbers of women is another.

Four years after the death of Mahsa Amini ignited the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, many Iranian women are openly defying compulsory hijab rules — and Tehran appears wary of triggering another confrontation.

At least seven cafes and restaurants in Tehran were closed on July 19 for failing to enforce mandatory hijab rules, according to human rights group HRANA. Ten cafes were also reportedly closed in South Khorasan province over alleged violations of “social norms and mandatory hijab rules”.

Hardliners want authorities to go further. Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, has argued that enforcing hijab rules is both a legal obligation and religious duty.

At a rally in Isfahan, one placard declared: “Netanyahu: Unveiled women are our soldiers for free.”

There is no record of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu making the remark, but it reflects a hardline narrative portraying hijab defiance as potentially disloyal during wartime.

Yet on Iran’s streets, the trend is moving in the opposite direction.

Social media videos show young women riding scooters through Tehran and other cities wearing helmets but no headscarves.

One woman in her 60s in Tehran told CNN that authorities still appeared reluctant to challenge women directly.

“They still don’t dare say anything to people on the street. Girls in Tehran are out and about wearing crop tops, shorts, and all kinds of clothes, and headscarves are practically no longer a thing,” she said.

“I don’t think they can make these girls wear headscarves again. But then again, that’s also what we thought when the revolution happened. We never thought they would be able to force us to wear them, but in the end, they did.”

President Masoud Pezeshkian has also questioned whether compulsory enforcement can change behaviour.

Referring to disagreements with his own daughter, he asked: “Does it mean I should force her?!”

“Changing behaviour is a cultural matter; it’s about belief. You can’t create belief in people through force.”

Former MP Gholamali Jafarzadeh Imanabadi has argued that officials should focus instead on inflation and livelihoods.

That argument carries greater weight during wartime. Iran is dealing with the economic consequences of its confrontation with the US while portraying the war as an existential struggle. Opening another front against women at home carries obvious risks.

The regime has reason to be cautious.

Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, was detained by Iran’s morality police in Tehran in September 2022 for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly. She died three days later.

Her death triggered protests across Iran under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom”, evolving into one of the biggest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution.

Women removed and burned headscarves and cut their hair as protests spread. The uprising was brutally suppressed, but widespread defiance of hijab rules endured.

Article 638 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code criminalises women appearing publicly without “Islamic hijab”. A tougher law approved in 2024 would have expanded penalties and surveillance, but its implementation was halted following intervention by the Supreme National Security Council.

That retreat angered hardliners.

MP Mohammad-Taqi Naqdali warned this week: “Israel and America cannot destroy us, but this decay that has plagued our religious culture and is spreading nudity in a disastrous and widespread manner in society will.”

For Iran’s hardliners, the hijab battle is existential too.

But for a government already confronting war abroad, economic hardship and the risk of renewed unrest, enforcing it may come at a price it is not yet willing to pay.

For now, Tehran appears to be testing how far it can tighten the screws without once again sending Iran’s women into the streets.