The Iranian regime struck at two enemies at the same time. Israel and disobedient Iranian women.

Over the past year, Iranian women have been able to enjoy moments without the hijab, undisturbed by the morality police.

That made the country’s supreme leader angry. He has asked the police to step up the hunt for women who defy the order.

Now the morality police have started to crack down on women without the hijab.

Fluttering hair became too much for the clergy in Iran.

“My hands were tied when a policeman approached me. Then he touched my face. I couldn’t stop him because I was tied up. One of the police officers also sexually assaulted me.” The young journalist Dina Ghalibaf wrote that on Twitter.

According to the young woman from Tehran, it started with her not covering herself well enough. She was violently dragged into a room by the morality police. There, she is said to have been subjected to an electric shock to the arm while her hands were tied.

This should have happened on Monday evening. Ghalibaf was released the same day.

Late on Tuesday evening, Ghalibaf was arrested at her home again after she shared what had happened to her on social media.

Escalation in the hunt for women without hijab

On the night of Sunday, Iran sent hundreds of drones and missiles against Israel. On the same day, the infamous morality police got ready to punish women who did not cover up well enough.

This happened just a few days after the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, gave a stern speech that all women must wear the hijab. Women who are opposed to wearing the hijab are controlled by foreigners, he claimed. Khamenei also asked the authorities to step up the hunt for women who defied the order.

After this speech, Tehran police declared on Saturday that they will start a new phase of enforcing the hijab law.

Last summer, the Iranian parliament passed a new law. It means that women who do not cover themselves well enough can receive harsher penalties than before. But the law was not implemented. For now.

The new crackdown comes 19 months after 22-year-old Kurdish Mahsa Jina Amini died in the custody of Iran’s morality police. She was arrested in Tehran for allegedly not covering her hair well enough.

Amini’s death sparked nationwide protests that lasted for months.

The morality police gradually became less visible on Iran’s streets.

At the same time, more and more women broke the law by dropping the hijab.

Now the regime wants to put an end to it.

The moral police are back

On Saturday, Tehran’s police chief, Abbas Ali Mohammadian, stated that the morality police would once again warn and arrest women without hijabs.

In the capital, the first constables from the morality police could be seen on the streets in specially marked cars.

Several sources Aftenposten has spoken to confirm that the morality police are back in large numbers.

– They are back on the streets. When the morality police see me, I quickly put on the hijab. As soon as they can’t see me anymore, I take it off again, says Shima (26) on the phone from Tehran.

– The regime fears losing power

The hijab has become a symbol of the regime. In the past year and a half, many women have removed their hijabs in protest.

– This has frightened the government, which fears losing power if they allow more resistance, journalist and political activist Adnan Hassanpour tells Aftenposten.

He was sentenced to death in 2007 for espionage, but after spending almost ten years in prison, he was released in 2016.

Summer is approaching, and then the regime probably fears that women will dress more lightly. Hassanpour believes that the authorities will use all their power to stop them before that time.

Several cases have already been reported where the police have used violence against women. Many Iranians quickly began sharing their experiences with the morality police on social media.

Samira Rahi signed https://twitter.com/Samiraraahi/status/1780505019999244358?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1780505019999244358%7Ctwgr%5Eb9ac6e5016f7f87d74b0005ae0a6c3d9076fd813%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Firanwire.com%2Fen%2Fwomen%2F127680-war-against-women-iran-intensifies-hijab-crackdown%2F that a girl of only 12 years was taken by the morality police in the city of Karaj, south of Tehran. The morality police did not allow the girl’s mother to join her daughter in the police car, she was left all alone.

“They are waging a kind of war against women and girls of all ages,” Rahi wrote.

Refusing to give up the fight against compulsory hijab

Many Iranian women refuse to give up the fight against mandatory hijab. They have posted pictures of themselves without the hijab on social media and say they will not bow to the new strict rules of the regime.

An Iranian woman posted a photo of X from inside a police car. She wrote that she was placed in the car because she refused to put on a shawl when a female police officer asked her to.

During the New Year celebrations on 21 March in the Kurdish part of Iran, several women and girls defied the mandatory hijab order. With it, they sent a message that they will no longer bow to the regime’s oppressive dress codes.

– The women in Iran are stubborn. They do not follow the hijab rules. If this continues, the confrontations will start again. We are not backing down, says 25-year-old Perya from Karaj to Aftenposten.

Her Instagram profile is full of pictures of her and other girls without hijab in the streets of Karaj.

– Women have woken up and want freedom. The regime cannot force society back to the way it was before, claims journalist and activist Hassanpour.