Iran International
The ministry of higher education said institutions under its coverage will no longer offer educational and other services to students who do not abide by hijab rules.
“All universities and higher education institutions under the coverage of the ministry of sciences, research and technology will not be obliged to offer educational, welfare and other services to the few students who do not abide by the laws and regulations of the universities in this regard,” the ministry said in a statement Monday.
Speaking to the moderate conservative Khabar Online news website, Hassan Kia, attorney at law, said the statement is in violation of the Iranian constitution which gives every citizen the right to education and forbids government bodies from making their own laws.
Hijab defenders who rallied outside the governor’s office in Ramsar threatening to take the matter into their own hands.
“It is not clear who, and how, is going to decide whether the hijab rules have been broken or not in a university? Does letting a few locks of hair show from under a headscarf mean the rules have been broken or is it totally flouting the hijab, or putting it around one’s neck? Who is going to decide? This can cause a lot of strife in universities,” he said.
An ever-increasing number of women have been casting off their compulsory hijab for good since the beginning of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement six months ago but hardliners are now taking a much more aggressive approach to the issue of hijab to punish and bring these women under control.
“The issue of compulsory hijab is so intertwined with the existence of the suppressive Islamic Republic that [it considers] even taking one step back as total defeat,” Toronto-based women’s rights researcher Leili Pourzand told Iran International TV.
A female student wearing no hijab grilling the hardliner mayor of Tehran at Sharif University in December.
Most officials and hardliners insist that flouting hijab is a crime that must be dealt with, and the ministry of interior said in a statement last week that the Islamic Republic would enforce the hijab as an “unquestionable requirement of the Sharia.” When asked about the issue a few days ago, President Ebrahim Raisi also stressed that women must abide by the hijab rules because it is “law”.
The ultra-hardliner politicians and clerics who have been demanding stricter enforcement of the hijab have also called on their supporters to actively carry out their Islamic duty of “calling to virtue and forbidding wrong”. This, however, is causing many angry encounters in between the vigilantes and women who refuse to be bullied into wearing the hijab.
Even some regime insiders who do not question the necessity of hijab as a principle are critical of the aggressiveness of vigilantes and the energy and time that the government is spending to enforce the hijab instead of addressing more vital matters such improvement of the economy, corruption, and poverty.
“I seriously believe that we are distancing ourselves from the real teachings of Islam … when authorities show more sensitivity to girls’ hair than to bribery, embezzlement, garbage scavenging, injustice and the usury that has overtaken our banks,” Moeinoddin Saeedi, representative of Chabahar in the parliament, said Monday.
Some ultra-hardliners in the parliament have taken steps to enact new hijab legislation to punish those who refuse to abide by the rules by imposing cash fines of up to $60,000 and other penalties including revocation of drivers’ licenses and passports, or a ban on the use of the internet for celebrities and social media influencers and bloggers.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, according to one of the lawmakers behind the plan, Morteza Agha-Tehrani, has promised to help urgently pass the new hijab legislation.
According to a Monday report published by 90eghtesadi, a website close to the Islamic Republic’s hardliners, Turkey, Iran, India, Brazil, and the UAE vied for a share in the Russian market, but Ankara’s exports were 14 to 18 times higher than Tehran’s.
The report claimed that Turkey's exports to Russia from February 2022 – when the war started -- to January 2023 reached nearly $10 billion, but the Islamic Republic exported only about $709 million during the timespan. Turkey’s monthly exports to Russia were about seven time more than Iran’s before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine but increased 14 to 18 times in different months during the past year.
The data of Russia's trade with different countries show that Iran has not been able to make good use of the opportunity created by Russia's war to expand its trade ties, the report said.
According to the monthly chart published by the website, in some months, the exports of Iranian goods to Russia hit lower than the monthly exports before the Russian aggression. The released data do not include any details about the commodities imported by Russia.
The Islamic Republic did not manage to gain from the international measures aimed at further isolating Moscow but has faced several rounds of sanctions for supplying drones and missiles for the Russian invasion. Iran has supplied hundreds of Shahed and other drones to Russia since mid-2022, and although Ukraine is capable of shooting down most of the slow-moving UAVs, Russia relies on the Iranian weapon to swarm Ukraine’s air defenses.
The United States and its European allies have imposed a series of sanctions on Iranian individuals and companies involved with the drone program and shipments of the weapon to Russia. They have also warned Tehran that one of the conditions to restart nuclear talks is ending its weapons supplies to Russia. A nuclear agreement between Iran and the West could suspend most economic sanctions and boost the country’s economy.
In addition to Tehran’s failure in securing a share of the Russian market, a document obtained by Iran International revealed in February that Russian companies are not willing to invest in oil and gas projects in southern Iran, despite joint plans. In a top-secret letter addressed to First Vice-President Mohammad Mokhber, Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Diplomacy Mehdi Safari said that many development projects that were supposed to be carried out by Chinese and Russian companies have been stopped, calling on the government to take measures to re-start the projects.
Tehran keeps boasting about its long-term strategic cooperation deals with Russia and China, but such deals have not yet borne any tangible results, despite several meetings among senior officials of the countries. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on an official visit to Moscow late in March to exchange views on signing a long-term strategic agreement, Tehran’s nuclear issue and the war in Ukraine. Moreover, some Iranian observers suggest that the West is not likely to respond to Iran's renewed calls for nuclear talks unless Tehran stops helping Moscow in its war.
"We will not allow the Iranians and Hezbollah to harm us. We have not allowed it in the past, we won’t allow it now, or anytime in the future," Gallant said during the visit to an army brigade in the West Bank.
The statement came as tensions increased last week with three Israeli air and missile strikes on Iranian bases in Syria, followed by warnings of retaliation by Tehran. Iran admitted that two of its officers were killed in the attack, leading to suspicions that it wanted to lay the ground for a possible counterattack.
Iran's government spokesman, Ali Bahadori-Jahromi, tweeted Sunday that Israel's "terrorist acts will not remain unanswered."
An unidentified aircraft that tried to enter Israel from Syria on Sunday was shot down by the air force, but the government has not yet officially identified it as an Iranian aircraft, most probably a drone.
Iranian officials and government media remained silent on the aircraft incident on Monday, with some newspapers and websites simply reporting the incident and unconfirmed reports that the Israeli government believes the intruding aircraft was Iranian.
Netanyahu announced Gallant's dismissal a week ago after he spoke out against the pace of the government's hotly contested judicial reforms.
The announcement triggered foreign alarm and unprecedented street protest, and Gallant never received a formal dismissal letter from Netanyahu.
Netanyahu's religious-nationalist coalition government has since moved to pause the judicial reforms.
Gallant was briefed during his visit on a probe into a Palestinian motorist who the Israeli military said it shot on Saturday after he rammed his car into a group of soldiers in the West Bank.
Israeli-Palestinian tensions are simmering after months of violence in areas of Jerusalem and the West Bank. Tensions are also simmering with Syria, Iran and with Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah.
"All our fronts are tense. The Iranians are extending their outreach to (the West Bank) and Gaza and are attempting to entrench themselves in Syria and Lebanon," said Gallant.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) called on Palestinians last week to take advantage of recent protests in Israel to destabilize the country. IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif said on Tuesday that “the occupied territories are the scene of confrontation of a movement within the Zionist regime that wants to stand against the totalitarianism of another wing.”
“This is a golden opportunity for the Palestinian fighters to take advantage of the situation,” he added.
Iranian government media have been trumpeting “the end of Israel” resulting from internal disagreements.
Gen. Sharif was quoted by local media on March 29 as saying that Jerusalem's "liberation" is near, "thanks to the Palestinian struggle", and to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who "is the flag-bearer" of the fight against Israel. He also said that IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani played an important role in driving the "resistance". Soleimani was targeted and killed by the United States in Baghdad in January 2020.