US Concerned Over Morality Police Comeback

Nima Nakisa, a former goalkeeper of the Iranian national football team, was introduced as the new CEO of Zob-e Ahan football club in Esfahan.

He was one of the few athletes who called the protesters against the murder of Mahsa Amini as "separatists" in November last year and demanded the security forces to repress demonstrators.

Following his comments, countless Iranians on social media slammed his statements, but regime supporters defended Nakisa, citing his doctorate level education as a reason for his authority.

Nakisa did not hold any position as a coach or manager until the nationwide protests began. Some critics say he has been rewarded for standing by the government.

This comes as Iran's security agencies earlier ordered the officials of Persepolis football club in Tehran to remove Karim Bagheri, the team's assistant coach, for his support of protests. Other players have suffered pay cuts, travel bans and social media blackouts for supporting the protests.

Bagheri also threw his weight behind his peer Ali Karimi, who is now one of the prominent opposition leaders, saying “Ali Karimi is neither a traitor nor a defector, but an honorable patriot… What have you done for these people except talking nonsense and insulting their heroes?”

Speaking to reformist Ham-Mihan newspaper Sunday, Dr Babak Zamani, a member of the Medical Council of Iran’s board of directors, said most of the doctors who were forced to retire or sacked from the boards were among those who had signed statements supporting protests since September.

During the protests doctors and nurses condemned the use of ambulances by security forces for transporting detainees and their use of shotgun ‘birdshots’ that blinded or caused serious eye injuries among hundreds of protesters. They have also said more recently that they could not abide by some authorities’ demands recently to refuse services to women who defy hijab rules.

Security forces also attacked doctors and others with tear gas and shotgun 'birdshots' to disperse them during protests. A young doctor, Parisa Bahmani, was shot dead by security forces.

Dr Zamani also warned that the replacement of top academics forced to quit would be very difficult due to extensive emigration of medical staff in the past few years.

Dr Ali Tajernia, another member of the board of directors of the Association of Medical Academic Societies told Ham-Mihan newspaper that he suspects the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution may have been behind the plan. “It seems that they are after some sort of cultural revolution again,” he said.

Signatories of the statement challenging the move, who are among the most prominent academics in the country, suggested that there is an orchestrated plan to eliminate prominent doctors from residency admissions boards and urged the Medical Council of Iran and the media not to remain silent about these developments.

It comes amidst revelations that the country’s health sector is 60,000 personnel short across all fields.

The Medical Council of Iran, a recognized trade union for Iranian medical doctors, is responsible for licensing and regulating the medical profession. It has nearly 300,000 registered members who elect the president of the council. Like many other semi-independent organizations and trade unions, the government often tries to control the council and influence its elections.

In late October, the Medical Council prepared a statement condemning the government for undue pressure on the medical community during the protests and intended to publicly read the statement outside its headquarters in Tehran on October 26.

Security forces who were present in the area, however, attacked doctors and others with tear gas and shotgun 'birdshots' to disperse them and prevent the reading of the statement. A young doctor, Parisa Bahmani, was shot dead by security forces. 

Videos posted on social media showed protesters chanting "Death to Khamenei" and against clerical rule near the Medical Council building. Two days earlier, a gathering around the medical association of Shiraz, capital of southern Fars Province, had similarly been attacked with tear gas. 

Reza Akrami, a member of the Society of Combatant Clerics, not even the most hardline of Iran’s extremists, said women without hijab can belong to anyone and show themselves to all men.

Speaking to Rouydad24 news website in Tehran Monday, he repeated the supreme leader's argument that wearing the hijab is not a matter of personal choice, but a political and Sharia issue. He insisted that the Quran and religious teachings make hijab mandatory, though many clerics globally would disagree.

“A woman who does not follow the law regarding hijab must definitely be punished,” Akrami said, while at the same time proposing a persuasive path to convincing women about the merits of hijab. Akrami has held many government positions over the years, but is not part of the inner circle of hardliners who form the main base of support for Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei. 

Iran re-launched its hijab police street patrols on Sunday after months of inactivity following popular anti-regime protests, triggered by the death of a young woman in custody. In mid-September 2022 Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman was arrested in the street by the hijab or morality police and received fatal blows to the head.

She passed away in a hospital after three days, triggering the longest and most dangerous popular protests against the clerical regime.

Since then, many women appear on the streets without the mandatory large headscarf covering the upper body and hair. The regime considers this a serious challenge to its authority and hardliners are campaigning to use police patrols to force women to wear the hijab again.

It comes as members of Iraq's Shia Hashd al-Shaabi militias and other proxies of the Islamic Republic have been given permission to study at Iranian universities.

Mohammad Moqimi on Monday called the reports about the use of Hashd al-Shaabi forces to repress the university protests "simplistic", students fearing the forces were being inserted to crack down on dissent as universities continue to be a hotbed of anti revolutionary sentiment.

He said the militia students are "sincere and genuine people."

On Thursday, a group of students from Tehran and Amirkabir Universities expressed opposition to the news of the new student admissions.

In a statement, Tehran University student activists said they would not accept “military forces, whether in combat or school uniforms, within the university premises".

Vowing to resist their presence, they said that the university’s atmosphere is already poisoned due to the presence of professors affiliated with the regime and Basij militiamen masquerading as students.

They accused the authorities of sidelining students by suspending, removing, and suppressing them, while replacing them with borrowed forces from Iraq.

Al-Hashd al-Shaabi was established back in 2014, following a fatwa to fight ISIS, which controlled four governorates and reached the borders of the capital Baghdad at the time.

The Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization is composed of approximately 67 different armed factions, with around 128,000 fighters that are mostly Shia Muslim groups, but also include Sunni Muslim, Christian, and Yazidi groups.

In an audio file released on Sunday, Abdolreza Seif, the Head of Faculty of Literature and Humanities and an advisor to the dean of Tehran University used a derogatory Persian word for dancers, which denotes immoral entertainers, to describe performing arts students.

Singing and dancing is forbidden in the strict interpretation of Islam, which the hardliners in Iran try to enforce.

Students at the fine arts faculty have been staging sit-ins against stricter hijab rules inside the university premises since last month.

Many were seriously injured by the campus security forces and several others arrested by plainclothes agents.

The sit-in began after the authorities announced new rules for the specialist arts institution which require girls to wear a pullover headscarf with stitched front (called maghna’e in Iran) which is like a nun’s coif, completely covering the head and the neck. Failing to comply, the university has announced, would result in suspension.

Following the incidents, several statements were issued online by students from institutions including Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tarbiat Modarres University and Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, vowing to continue protests against the repressive policies.