During his Eid al-Fitr sermon, Iranian regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei made threats against women and ordered more repressive measures against Iran’s women. Following these comments, police departments in eastern and western Tehran announced that “the hijab and modesty plan will be more implemented in earnest on Saturday, April 13, in all public places and streets.” Simultaneously, State Security Forces began threatening women in various provinces, including Bushehr, Kermanshah, and Semnan, with statements outlining repressive measures against them.
While Khamenei warned officials and his followers against “negligence” towards “violating religious norms,” he explicitly ordered that “officials, the people, and those who enjoin good and forbid evil must fulfill their duty in this regard.”
In a blatant display of repression and disregard for public disgust, Khamenei sent Kazem Sedighi, a corrupt land grabber and disgraced figure, to lead Friday prayers, stating that “the issue of the veil itself is a corruption issue, and combating corruption is not just economic.”
However, Khamenei’s efforts were futile. The deployment of repressive police forces, hijab patrols, and plainclothes agents no longer holds sway. Sending Sedighi, a ruthless prosecutor in Sistan and Baluchestan in the 1980s and a corrupt land grabber, to Tehran’s Friday prayers does not intimidate anyone, but rather, its consequences will fire back against the supreme leader.
After four decades of relentless struggle to establish the sovereignty, freedom, and equality of the Iranian people, the leadership of Iranian women has become a remarkable force, to the extent that the Iranian people and supporters of the Iranian Resistance worldwide see the promise of destroying religious tyranny in the struggle and resistance of these leading women.
The expansion of this resilient force for change is of a kind that cannot be concealed even in controlled media and under the supervision of the regime. On March 28, a regime analyst talking to the state-run Khabar Online website referred to the “difficult days” for the regime during the 2022 uprising, saying: “2022 and the wave of protests made it difficult for everyone; women and men who went through this period, who are not rocks, have feelings, voices, and protests. We still witness protests by veiled and unveiled women. These protests are a reaction to the pressures imposed on them in the form of social constraints.”
At the International Women’s Day conference held in Paris, Dominique Attias, Chair of the Board of Directors at the European Lawyers Foundation, spoke about the courageous Iranian women and girls who have always stood against the dictatorship of the Shah and the mullahs, and who have fought the tyrant of their time since the beginning of the Constitutional Revolution, and said: “No torture, no prison wall, not even death will make them flinch. They know they will triumph. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in a year, or more, it does not matter, of course, they will triumph. And until victory, until victory, we will be by their side to cry out, ‘Women, resistance and freedom.’”
Twenty-eight years ago, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), affirmed in her speech at Earls Court in London, turned to the mullahs and said, “You have done your utmost to humiliate, suppress, torture and slaughter Iranian women, but rest assured that you would receive the blow from the very force you discounted, the very force whom your reactionary mindset cannot allow you to take into consideration. Rest assured that these knowledgeable and free women will dismantle your oppression everywhere. On the eve of the 21st century, the enlightened people the world over, proud Resistance of Iranian people and the combatants of freedom will not allow you to abuse religion.”
