Iran expels Afghan researcher over hijab ‘non-compliance’
Iranian authorities have expelled Kobra Gholami, an outspoken Afghan social researcher, allegedly for failing to comply with the country's mandatory hijab regulations.
Iranian authorities have expelled Kobra Gholami, an outspoken Afghan social researcher, allegedly for failing to comply with the country's mandatory hijab regulations.
Reports indicate that, despite possessing valid residency documents, Gholami received multiple text message warnings regarding her hijab before being summoned to the passport office, where she was detained by Iranian police and deported within hours.
The people close to her contend that her expulsion lacked legal justification and that she was denied the opportunity to communicate with her family.
Her deportation has ignited a social media firestorm amid Iran's ongoing crackdown on women over mandatory hijab.
Users have launched a campaign with the hashtag "#BringBackKobra," voicing concerns about her fate in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and advocating for her return to Iran.
Shima Va’ezi, an Iranian social media user, drew attention to Gholami's abrupt deportation on X, stating, "Kobra is now on the bus and hasn't had the chance to speak to or say goodbye to her family and loved ones. She possessed all the necessary residency documents and was pursuing a master's degree at Al-Zahra University."
On Thursday, Ameneh Zamani, a child rights activist briefly detained in 2022, wrote on her Instagram account that Gholami recently delivered a speech in Iran titled "Identity Formation of Migrant Women at the Intersection of Gender and Nationality."
Describing Gholami as a "strong and independent" woman, Zamani wrote: "All of us women dream of living in a world of freedom. Let's be Kobra’s voice! As Kobra said, 'Hope is the seed of our identity.'"
Last year, Gholami spoke at the sixth conference on Social-Cultural Research in Iran, under the theme "Femininity and Social-Cultural Transformation," in a panel titled "Afghan Migrant Women in the Cycle of Oppression," where she criticized the treatment of Afghan migrant women in Iran.
Afghans constitute the majority of immigrants in Iran, both legal and illegal, and are frequently labeled as "foreign nationals" by officials and the media. Currently, officials estimate the number of Afghan immigrants in Iran to be as high as 8 million.
International human rights organizations have recorded years of mistreatment of Afghan refugees and migrants in Iran as they continue to be deprived of many essential services, including healthcare, employment opportunities, and housing. However, a large influx since the 2021 takeover of the Taliban has led to some backlash by Iranians who say their country has multiple serious economic and social crises and cannot handle refugees.
According to Afghan authorities, Iran deported over 20,000 Afghan children last year, many of whom were unaccompanied and without guardians.
According to these reports, Niknejad and his wife were detained at Berlin airport upon their return from a one-month leave, three weeks after the closure of Islamic centers affiliated with the Islamic Republic across Germany, and were subsequently deported back to Iran.
An Iran International source told our correspondent, Ahmad Samadi, that Niknejad became involved in a confrontation with airport police after realizing he was not permitted to enter Germany.
Previously, in November 2022, Soleiman Mousavifar, the deputy head of the Islamic Center of Hamburg, was expelled for supporting Hezbollah.
Germany shut down the Khamenei-controlled Islamic Center of Hamburg and Blue Mosque in July for its role in serving as a hub of terrorist ideology, antisemitism and anti-democratic threats to the Federal Republic’s constitution order, according to the interior ministry.
When asked the closure, a German interior ministry (BMI) spokesman, Lars Harmsen, told Iran International on Thursday that “In addition to the Islamisches Zentrum Hamburg, the BMI has also banned sub-organisations and confiscated their assets. These were the following: the Islamische Akademie Deutschland, the Verein der Förderer einer iranischen-islamischen Moschee in Hamburg, the Zentrum der Islamischen Kultur in Frankfurt (Main), the Islamische Vereinigung Bayern in Munich, and the Islamisches Zentrum Berlin.”
When asked by Iran International if the confiscated assets from Iran’s regime, the Islamic Center of Hamburg and Blue Mosque and other entities, will be used to provide compensation to the Iranian victims of terrorism in Germany, the spokesman said, "Concrete plans for a future usage of the Blue Mosque and other confiscated assets can only be made by the BMI once the ban is final. Therefore, the outcome of the administrative procedure remains to be seen.”
When questioned about future closures of other Iranian regime-linked and controlled centers, mosques and associations the BMI spokesman said, “In principle, the BMI does not comment on possible further bans, regardless of whether there is reason to consider them in individual cases or not…”
Meanwhile, Iranian-German dissidents are urging the German authorities to shutter additional organizations and mosques linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Dr. Kazem Moussavi, the spokesman for the Green Party of Iran in exile in Germany, told Iran International “The closure of the Islamic Center of Hamburg was long overdue and necessary. The closure came too late and is insufficient. Germany’s appeasement policies toward Iran’s regime continues. “
He urged that Germany to shut down the Islamic Republic’s embassy in Berlin and the regime-linked Al-Mustafa Institute in Berlin , as well as the pro-Khamenei Islamic Community of Shiite Communities. Moussavi termed the Iranian regime embassy and other Tehran-linked entities a “security risk” for Germany.
According to Moussavi, the Al-Mustafa Institute’s director was a long-time religious teacher from the banned IAD (Islamic Academy in Germany). The Al-Mustafa Institute in Berlin is part of the Al-Mustafa International University in Iran, where foreign recruits are being ideologically trained.
“The Al-Mustafa International University is the main institution for exporting the regime's ideology to the Islamic world, the West and Germany. It has over a hundred branches worldwide with more than 40,000 students,” said Moussavi.”
He added that the organization of Islamic Community of Shiite communities has more than 150 mosques and the director of the now-defunct Islamic Center of Hamburg is the chairman of the spiritual council of the Islamic Community of Shiite Communities.
Moussavi noted that the largely pro-Iran regime German Körber Foundation is Hamburg protects and supports Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Tehran diplomat who currently is employed by Princeton university. Körber’s cooperation with him legitimizes his past activities, Mousavi argued.
The Iranian-German dissident, Mina Ahadi, who is leading the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA) campaign in Germany to compel Körber to pull the plug on its relations with Mousavian and Iran’s government, told Iran International Germany should close the Iranian regime’s “embassy and consulate and the Islamic Community of Shiite Communities.”
She added that Germany needs to sanction the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Ahadi said there “must put more pressure” on the Körber Foundation.
“Körber must see that when it works together with the Islamic regime, they are making a fascist and anti-women government stronger,” she said.
Ahadi was pleased with the interior minister's decision to shutter the Islamic Center of Hamburg. She worked to secure the center's closure.
In 2023, German Iranians demanded that the German state government of Hesse shut down the pro-Iran regime Center for Islamic Culture in Frankfurt that honored IRGC's Qasem Soleimani.
Iran International reported, in May, on the growing pressure on Körber Foundation to sever ties with Mousavian and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In June, Iranian-Germans protested in front of Körber’s building in Hamburg.
Iranian activists in Germany say that Mousavian is "an extension of the antisemitic regime, acting as its loyal lobbyist in the US through the support of the Körber Foundation in Germany.”
When asked about the scandal-plagued Körber Foundation, the German interior ministry spokesman told Iran International "As a matter of principle, we do not comment on matters of public foundations. The Körber Foundation is not an object of observation of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution." Germany's domestic intelligence agency is called the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Multiple Iran International press queries sent to the Körber Foundation and its parent company, Körber AG, were not returned. Körber was founded by the former Nazi, Kurt Adolf Körber (1909-1992), who exploited concentration camp victims to advance the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler’s war goals.
Cyber security company XPOZ, through the use of a large-scale analysis of factual evidence and data that’s collected on social networks, came to the conclusion that Iran was behind the campus protests at McGill university in Montreal.
Analysts working for the American cyber company, which monitors social media, use AI technology to unmask the networks and campaigns behind “inauthentic” users interacting on a large scale.
They dug deeper into inauthentic accounts, which could be defined as either bots or fake users managed by a foreign power, operating in a highly coordinated matter on social platforms. They said the coordination aspect is key because that’s how social media algorithms work to push a certain narrative. The analysts also used technology to investigate the content such users post.
What they found was that there was a high-percentage of inauthentic accounts primarily written in Farsi, coming from Iranians inside Iran linked to the regime and IRGC, fueling the campus protests at McGill. Analysts told Iran International they are confident based on analysis of which group inauthentic users belong to and the type of narrative they are producing over time within those groups.
XPOZ analysts, came up with their results after one month by identifying the language used in the posts, where it was coming from, and how much of it was coordinated among inauthentic accounts linking back to Iran.
Iran International is not identifying the XPOZ analysts by name for security reasons.
“The primary takeaway is that there is a massive activity, funded, coordinated and organized by a foreign government that is influencing Canadians in Canada and driving incitement to violence and real-world activity,” said one of the XPOZ analysts.
Their analysis of the alleged coordinated activity at McGill reveals 60 percent of Pro-Palestine campus protestors were not authentic online users. The data indicates the presence of coordinated Farsi-speaking accounts, suggesting a targeted campaign. By comparison, 75% of commentators critical of the encampment were authentic.
The data drew on nearly 150,000 posts on X, over 500,000 likes and more than 65,000 comments. The analysts emphasized that their data does not identify whether the Pro-Palestine protesters are aware or unaware of Iran’s alleged role and may be acting in good faith.
The analysts revealed to Iran International that the network driving the McGill protests had been promoting narratives supporting the IRGC and the government of Iran while proliferating rhetoric against Israel and US.
“When you look at something that is happening in Montreal, Canada, you expect most of the users to be writing in English or French. Or you would expect most of them to be primarily engaging in other posts in English or French. It’s natural to see other languages but up to a certain point. What we saw here were users that were primarily writing in Farsi or that their followers were writing in Farsi.”
They added the users were not Iranians living in Canada and not regular citizens in Iran but rather tied to the Islamic Republic.
“In addition to their history of what they were writing and what they were engaging with, we also see that they're highly intertwined with one another in the sense that they're following one another,” which the analysts said indicated coordination.
“They share a very abnormally high proportion of followers amongst one another,” said another XPOZ analyst.
Foreign interference and national security
XPOZ analysts said their data demonstrate that Canada is subject to the use of deceptive mass influence campaigns coordinated by foreign governments, like Iran, to target Canadian society through proxies to deepen divides and threaten national security.
In June, Canada named Iran as one of the top four countries, along with China, Russia and North Korea, that engage in extensive campaigns to compromise government and private sector computer systems.
"Foreign interference, enabled by sophisticated cyber tools, poses one of the most serious threats to Canada’s national security, economic prosperity and sovereignty, as well as our way of life," the statement read.
In its annual report released in May, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) highlighted the cyber-attacks by the Islamic Republic that target Canada.
A foreign interference report also in May concluded that Iran, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, are key threats against Canada.
Iran International’s exclusive report comes on the heels of US intelligence report that Iran is funding and emboldening anti-Israel protests in the US to sow discord.
US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said on July 9 that Iran harnessed social media to warp domestic debates and create more division. She issued an official statement warning that the Islamic Republic of Iran was boosting anti-Israel protests online.
Neil Oberman, a Canadian lawyer who recently represented students who filed an injunction against the McGill encampment, said the XPOZ data suggesting Iran’s role in the protests proves “foreign interference.”
“In Canada we do not tolerate and should not tolerate foreign countries interfering, meddling, creating disruption for the purposes of basically trying to influence young students who are the future of our country, from not being able to study, not being able to interact, and more importantly, not being able to be safe on their own campus,” he said.
Sources with XPOZ released the data to Oberman, who became the face of injunctions against the encampments in Canada.
Oberman said the students he represented were subject to aggression and hate on campus. The court had rejected his application, but he believes the outcome would have been different if he had the XPOZ documentation.
“Do I think for a moment that the courts would have known that evidence existed to establish that a foreign country with very evil intentions was attempting to influence good Canadians and Quebeckers so that they could fight with each other to have an encampment, I think the outcome might have been different, and I would even beg to say maybe McGill might have acted differently,” he added.
In July, McGill's campus security dismantled the school's encampment.
Oberman said he’s bound by lawyer-client privileges and can’t discuss litigation but hinted that he will be using the evidence for a future legal proceeding.
“Evidence that does exist will be used. The form of its usage would probably be in the form of a legal proceeding.”
For Oberman, this is not an issue of antisemitism or the Jewish and Iranian communities but rather about Canada and the safety of all Canadians.