Iran’s dilemma

Iran for a while has been at a crisscross with its own. A larger segment of society nurses severe reservations over a number of policies in the social milieu. This has put the revolutionary regime in the dock, and it is busy giving it an auto-correct. The street protests since September when a Kurd lady, Mahsa Amini, was arrested by police and later succumbed to injuries in interrogation has led the country over the brink. The subsequent violent agitations were for annulling the morality police powers, and scrapping the compulsory hijab code. It is a good sign, nonetheless, that the Islamic Republic has realised the boiling situation and hinted at relaxations in both the domains, which is a landmark departure from its conventional approach of living in a denial mode.

Iran’s attorney general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was quoted as saying that the parliament and judiciary are looking at the issue of relaxing compulsory hijab. Media went on to confirm that Tehran has abolished the department of morality policy, commonly known as Virtue and Vice, or Basij. But a section of the government was quick to deny it, and the same indicated a tug of war over jurisdiction between the Interior Ministry and the judiciary. But it is an established fact that both the conservative bodies have promised to review it, accordingly.

Dissent is now also reported from the inner circles of the government. A niece of Supreme Leader Syed Ali Khamenei, identified as Fareeda Murad Khani, recently was on videotape castigating the alleged highhandedness of the regime. Likewise, Iran’s main reformist party of former president Mohammad Khatami called for the mandatory hijab law to be rescinded. To what extent the government gives in is anybody’s guess, but it goes without saying that perpetual foreign meddling is a source of irritation in Iran. This is further calibrated by channelised domestic protests wherein people are genuinely complaining of human rights violations. Iran has to deeply study this mix and climb down the ladder of hardliner-ism.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6^th, 2022.

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