Iranian women increasingly resist the public headscarf rule. Despite ongoing repression, Iran’s regime seems powerless to stop social change.
“The state’s current policy on the issue of the hijab is not to follow strict rules,” Ali Motahari, a conservative Iranian politician, told journalists last week on the fringes of the International Book Fair in Tehran.
He added that the police should only intervene in the event of gross violations.
“You have to know that even at the time of the Shah, before the 1979 revolution, women were arrested if they did not dress decently in public,” he said. Wearing a hijab, or headscarf, remains mandatory in Iran.
