US Launches Second Attack Against Iran Targets In Syria

“There are stringent laws regarding hijab. We will confront those who do not comply with the rules of hijab and deal with them,” Ahmad Rastineh told Rouydad 24 news website Wednesday.

Rastineh, who is a member of the ultra-hardliner Paydari Party, which was behind a recent hijab bill, claimed that observance of hijab has improved in the past couple of months in comparison with the time that followed last year’s nationwide protests. Rastineh is a member of parliament’s cultural committee.

The bill, approved by the parliament last month, faced an unexpected rejection from the Guardian Council, a potent constitutional body responsible for vetting all legislation. The Council returned the bill to the parliament for amendments, citing formal shortcomings in the text, including the ambiguity of terms like “unchastity” or “corruptness.”

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Some analysts viewed the Council’s rejection as an effort to refine the legislation for greater precision, dismissing any correlation with public discontent. Others speculated the Council might be wary of escalating public dissatisfaction before the upcoming parliamentary elections in March, possibly seeking to postpone its final approval.

Rastineh’s remarks over the matter seem to confirm the authorities’ fear of causing further alienation among the population.

"Some misinterpretation hindered the law's implementation. Some believed it would polarize Iranian society and lead to division. They assumed there was substantial demand for freedom in women's dress code, but we observed it was only a minority," asserted Rastineh, accusing authorities of succumbing to the "psychological propaganda" of those opposing mandatory hijab.

The reality on the ground contradicts Rastineh’s claim that abidance by hijab has improved. Images posted on social media suggest more and more women appearing in public across the country without covering their heads despite being often targeted by hijab enforcers and other consequences including loss of their license to work.

Many celebrities who had removed their hijab during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests have refused to wear it again even at the cost of being banned from working.

Not only women who wore the hijab in public to stay away from trouble, but also some women who had always covered their heads and even worn the long black veil by choice, are now saying they no longer believe in it.

Among the latter was a former state television presenter, Fatemeh Kia-Pasha, who used to appear on air wearing the ‘chador’ long veil.

Kia-Pasha who had not been on air for a couple of years, about a year ago began posting photos and videos of herself on Instagram wearing headscarves that covered all her hair.

In a post two weeks ago, the twenty-six-year-old former presenter said she had been wearing the chador by choice but no longer believes in it. The reason she still wears the headcovering in the photos she posts on her Instagram page is out of respect for her mother who believes in the necessity of wearing the hijab, she wrote.

While Kia-Pasha does not appear to have flouted the hijab as a political statement, other women such as Sedigheh Vasmaghi, a prominent Islamic scholar and politician, have stopped wearing the hijab in public as a strong political and religious statement.

Vasmaghi, 63, recently removed her headscarf after decades and even challenged Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s hijab edict, by arguing that there is no foundation in the Quran or the Sharia for such an edict.

Khamenei said emphatically in an April 4 speech that “based on Sharia and also politically”, discarding hijab is haram (sinful).

The goal is to assess how individuals' lifestyles align with the broader culture of the Islamic Republic, their media consumption patterns, their inclination toward foreign-based media for news and information, and their utilization of communication tools.

Certain lawmakers with access to the complete bill contend that the proposal extends beyond mere lifestyle monitoring, resembling more of a surveillance initiative aimed at individuals and their private lives.

According to reports, 162 of the parliament’s 290 members have voted for the bill, 10 members opposed it and another ten abstained. However, it is not clear where the other 108 members of the parliament stand. That is a large number and could indicate serious but otherwise silent opposition to scrutinising people’s private life.

While the bill was being discussed at the Majles during previous months, Iranian media including Tejarat News, suggested that the government was going to monitor individual Iranians’ presence and activity on social media.

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The Iranian regime began restricting access to the Internet as early as 2002, when it began to block independent news websites and many other sites it deemed religiously forbidden.

Since 2009, the Iranian government has progressively imposed restrictions and outright bans on social media platforms. Their concern primarily lies in the potential use of these platforms for organizing and mobilizing groups of people against the regime. The Iranian government has grown more apprehensive due to several rounds of nationwide protests since 2017, recognizing the pivotal role of social media in disseminating and fuelling dissent. Their response to this challenge has largely involved the arrest and, on occasion, even the killing of social media activists.

The government also began a serious clamp-down on Internet access by reducing connectivity and banning all social media outlets, while promoting homegrown platforms, though unsuccessfully. While Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Raisi and most top officials use platforms such as Twitter (X) and Instagram the government bars ordinary Iranian from using them.

The plan to monitor the people’s lifestyle is part of the country’s controversial five year development plan, which has not been endorsed by the Majles yet, but in a strange way, article 75 of the plan has been approved.

The Majles has called for "Ongoing monitoring and assessment of key indicators related to general culture, lifestyles, media influence, and communications" in Iran, to be conducted through online means.

According to Tejarat News, this involves gathering data on people's social media usage, as well as comprehensive details of their lives, including travel patterns, shopping behaviors, and even the specific food items they purchase from online supermarket websites. This data will then be cross-referenced with individual Iranians' information maintained by the Statistical Center of Iran, a government agency associated with the Planning and Budget Organization.

While the Majles was approving the bill, lawmaker Gholamreza Nouri Ghezelcheh pointed out that such a monitoring is against Article 25 of the Iranian Constitution which bars the government from spying on citizens’ private lives. He warned that any study of lifestyle should not include the private lives of citizens and invasion of their privacy. 

Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf concurred that any investigation into people's private lives would require permission from the prosecutor. He emphasized that this law should not be exploited to encroach upon individuals' privacy. However, he did not specify whether there was a mechanism in place to prevent the government from infringing on its citizens' privacy. Another lawmaker, Moineddin Saeedi, expressed concerns about the public's sensitivity to their privacy and anticipated a negative reaction.

"We learned with the greatest concern that Mr. Louis Arnaud had been sentenced to five years in prison," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre said in a statement.

"This conviction, for which there is nothing to support and the absence of any access to a lawyer, is unacceptable."

Ties between France and Iran have been strained over the issue in what Paris has said are arbitrary arrests that are equivalent to state hostage taking.

Arnaud, who has been held since September 2022, is one of four French nationals held in Iran, and is being detained at the Evin prison in Tehran.

His mother, Sylvie, told Reuters the pretext given for his sentencing were for "propaganda and harming the security of the Iranian state."

"These are completely baseless and a carbon copy of what they attribute to other Europeans held in Iran," she said.

In recent years, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, mostly on charges related to espionage and security.

Rights groups have accused Iran of trying to extract concessions from other countries through such arrests. Iran, which does not recognize dual nationality, denies taking prisoners to gain diplomatic leverage.

(Report by Reuters)

In an interview in local media, he said in the event of an attack on Iran, “the Islamic Republic has the capability to eliminate the hostages within a mere half-hour.”

While he has no current official role, and Iranian officials may deny or distance themselves from his remarks. Iran has recently exchanged five US hostages in exchange for the release of $6bn of frozen Iranian funds in South Korea. However, the regime consistently claims that it does not take or hold hostages.

It is unknown how many diplomatic hostages are being held in Iran but high profile cases have revealed the systematic policy of the regime to detain dual-nationals in return for political leverage.

In a related development, an Iranian court on Wednesday sentenced French national Louis Arnaud to a five-year prison term. Arnaud, who has been detained since September 2022 and faced trial on national security charges, was convicted in a Revolutionary Court on charges of “promoting propaganda against and attempting to undermine the security of the Islamic Republic.”

The Arnaud family strongly contests the charges, asserting his innocence and condemning the verdict as a violation of human rights and individual freedoms.

Louis Arnaud's family described him as a “passionate traveler” who had longed to visit Iran, only for his dream to turn into a nightmare as he was unjustly targeted, imprisoned, and now convicted on what they deem “baseless charges.” They maintain that he had no political intentions during his time in Iran and had distanced himself from the social movements that erupted in September 2022.

Appearing in Piers Morgan Uncensored on Sky News Australia Tuesday, Reza Pahlavi reiterated the call on the global community to differentiate between Iranian people and the Islamic Republic's regime, saying that what the people of Iran want is “totally different” from the “radical” regime in their country. 

He said the world cannot ignore the elephant in the room, referring to how the Islamic Republic is the main engine behind a wide range of conflicts, elaborating that since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic has fomented “antagonism, regional instability, warmongering” through supporting terrorist groups. 

Stating that the cure for the extremism fueling terrorist groups was to end it at the source, which is the Islamic Republic. “I’ve always asked the world community, including the media when they talk about Iran, to specify they are talking about the regime in Iran, not the people," he explained. 

“The principal support and the principal funding that comes to these (terrorist) groups must have a money trail … it is not a secret that the regime in Tehran has been behind most of these groups, has financed them, has armed them, has used them as proxies,” he said.

Stressing the threat this poses to the West, including the recent revelation in The Times in London that Tehran was backing mass pro-Palestine protests in London, and stoking unrest in Europe, he added: “Today we hear this ominous sound of radical Islamists who are trying to shape a different future for countries even in Europe.The cure is to put an end to the source behind this extremism.”

In addition to its web of proxies across the Middle East, Iran has also been found to be supplying arms to Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, showing the breadth of the threat posed by the regime's war-mongering elite. Since mid-2022, Iran has reportedly supplied a substantial number of kamikaze Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to Russia, which have been extensively deployed to target civilian infrastructure and cities.

The former crown prince, who has long campaigned for a secular and democratic Iran rather than a restoration of the monarchy, has time and again talked about how the collapse of the Islamic Republic and the establishment of a new government in Iran that is at peace with the world can resolve a plethora of international conflicts. He enjoys a large supporter base in Iran and abroad with no gathering held without people chanting slogans in admiration of the Pahlavi monarchs, who were pioneers of leading Iran to its modernization. A Revolutionary Guard official revealed this week that imprisoned protesters expressed a desire for the return of the exiled prince to Iran.

Pahlavi made the remarks amid an escalating conflict in the Middle East, ignited on October 7, when Tehran-backed Hamas Islamist militants launched a multi-thronged attack into Israel, killing over 1,400 mostly civilians and taking more than 240 hostages. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Israel's retaliatory bombardment in the most serious conflict since Hamas took control of the Strip in 2007.

The Islamic Republic has been trying to indoctrinate the Iranian people with anti-Israel notions and its attempts start since the early years at elementary schools where students must shout “death to Israel and the US” before going to the class every morning. Since war broke out, around 40 attacks have also been made on US bases in Iraq and Syria as the regime capitalizes on the opportunity to expand the conflict beyond Gaza. 

However, amid the wave of pro-Palestinian rallies across the world, hardliners in Iran are admitting that the general public in Iran have little appetite for the Palestinian cause. Iran has seen no grassroot, popular expression of solidarity with Palestinians, except by groups loyal to the regime despite the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the main supporter of Hamas – or perhaps because of it.

Even on the streets of London where some 100,000 people at a time have come out in pro-Palestine marches, Iranians have made their voice heard.

Since the Hamas terror operation it codenamed al-Aqsa Flood (Storm in Persian), Iranians have become even more vocal about their distance from the Islamic Republic’s narrative of the conflict, making trendy hashtags like #IranStandsWithIsrael or chanting creative slogans about where the regime should put the Palestinian flag. Public events such as football matches, are a good touchstone to see the real public mood of Iranians, who use such events to chant slogans against the regime’s pro-Hamas propaganda.

Earlier this week, people set fire to a pro-Hamas billboard in the religious city of Mashhad, where the Supreme Leader and President Ebrahim Raisi hail from. Setting fire to billboards and monuments promoting the Islamic Republic’s lines of propaganda has become another way Iranians express their desire to break free from the rule of the Islamic theocracy. A large number of Iranians also stand with the people of Israel but do not dare to express their opinions openly in fear of reprisal by the regime. 

It is time for many under the regime to break free of not only its control of how to dress, but also from the confines of how they must think. According to an Iranian anti-regime activist, “Iranians risk their life to stand by the people of Israel” because they have been “prisoners of these terrorists and their propaganda for 45 years!”