Khamenei's daily faults officials over 'lax' hijab enforcement
Iran’s hardline daily Kayhan, run by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative, blamed government bodies for lax enforcement of hijab rules and called for stronger promotion of compulsory veiling in a commentary published on Saturday.
The call came after remarks earlier this week by government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani, who said “hijab cannot be restored to society by force” and that social values should be strengthened through cultural engagement rather than coercion.
“The enemy pretending to care about our women only dreams of removing their headscarves and seeing them naked, with no concern for their real needs,” Kayhan wrote.
The hardline paper argued that the establishment of the Islamic Revolution had “dispelled the illusion that unveiling represents progress or that hijab hinders development and talent.”
The paper portrayed unveiled women as targets of foreign plots and accused senior officials of “passivity and lack of cultural planning.” It said government institutions had failed to act decisively against the promotion of indecency by celebrities and online platforms.
“Purposeful norm-breaking now requires deterrent measures against those leading and promoting it,” the commentary said. “If Iranian women were properly informed, many would consciously choose the Islamic-Iranian lifestyle over Western models.”
It urged cultural bodies to include pro-hijab themes in school curricula, films, and television dramas.
Cultural pressure meets official restraint
Kayhan’s remarks came as Tehran’s Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice headquarters announced plans to deploy 80,000 volunteers to monitor hijab compliance across the capital.
Since the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police, widespread defiance of hijab laws has persisted, turning daily appearances of unveiled women in major cities into a visible act of civil disobedience despite recurring enforcement campaigns.
Iran, Russia and China have told the International Atomic Energy Agency that its monitoring and reporting linked to the 2015 nuclear deal should end following the expiry of the UN resolution that endorsed it, Iranian media said on Friday.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said the three countries sent a joint letter to IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi arguing that Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), formally expired on Oct. 18.
He said the letter followed a previous joint message the countries had sent to the UN secretary-general and the president of the Security Council, declaring the resolution terminated. “All provisions of Resolution 2231 have now lapsed, and attempts by European countries to reactivate sanctions through the so-called snapback mechanism are illegal and without effect,” Gharibabadi said, according to state media.
In their letter, the ambassadors of Iran, Russia and China wrote: “With this termination, the reporting mandate of the Director General of the IAEA concerning verification and monitoring under Security Council Resolution 2231 has come to an end.” The letter added that the IAEA Board of Governors’ decision of Dec. 15, 2015, which authorized verification and monitoring for up to 10 years or until the agency issued a broader conclusion on Iran’s nuclear program, whichever came first, “remains valid and constitutes the sole guidance which the IAEA Secretariat is obliged to follow.”
According to the three governments, “as of 18 October 2025, this matter will be automatically removed from the Board of Governors’ agenda, and no further action will be required in this context.”
Iran, Russia and China have maintained that the resolution’s expiry removes Iran’s nuclear file from the Security Council’s agenda and ends the IAEA’s mandate tied to it.
Grossi urges diplomacy, notes Iran stays in NPT
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said earlier this week that diplomacy must prevail to avoid renewed conflict and noted that Iran had not withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty despite tensions. He said continued cooperation between Iran and the agency was vital to prevent escalation.
Grossi told Le Temps newspaper on Wednesday that Iran holds enough uranium to build ten nuclear weapons if it enriched further, though there is no evidence it seeks to do so. He said Israeli and US airstrikes in June had caused “severe” damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow, but that the country’s technical know-how “has not vanished.”
Tehran and the IAEA have yet to agree on a framework to resume full inspections at the bombed sites. Grossi said Tehran was allowing inspectors access “in dribs and drabs” for security reasons, adding that efforts were continuing to rebuild trust and restore routine monitoring.
Iran is isolated and under pressure but its robust counterattacks in a 12-day war with Israel may embolden it to fight another more deadly conflict, author and former Israeli ambassador to Washington Michael Oren told Eye for Iran.
“The Middle East is at an inflection point,” Oren said. “Iran feels cornered, and that’s when nations become most dangerous.”
Oren said Tehran does not believe it was defeated in the last conflict and may now see little to lose by reigniting hostilities.
“Toward the end of the war, the percentage of interceptions went down,” he recalled. “The Shahab rockets didn’t take down a room; they took down a neighborhood. I don’t know how many nights we could have gone on.”
He said Iran’s ability to adapt under fire—learning Israel’s missile defense systems in real time—was one reason Israel accepted a ceasefire sooner than expected.
“They were learning how to get through our umbrella,” Oren said. “They were causing us some very severe damage.”
Redefining the Middle East
The former envoy said the aftermath of the conflict has already begun reshaping the region. The Six-Day War of 1967 saw Israel capture vast territory and redraw the Middle East map. Oren, who has written extensively about that war, said the current transformation could be even more consequential.
“The Middle East has been transformed in ways more far-reaching than even the changes after the Six-Day War,” he said.
Oren pointed to Iran’s growing isolation and new alignments forming around Israel. He said some governments that publicly criticized Israel during the fighting are now quietly engaging with it, drawn by shared concerns about Tehran’s role in the region.
“Peace in the Middle East is made through strength,” he said. “Soft power alone has never worked.”
Iran's nuclear file and new fault lines
Oren’s comments come amid renewed tension over Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran, backed by Moscow and Beijing, has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that European efforts to reimpose sanctions are illegitimate, arguing that UN Resolution 2231 has expired.
In Jerusalem earlier this week, US Vice President JD Vance said Washington will continue to pursue diplomacy to ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.
“President Trump actually wants Iran to be prosperous,” Vance said, “but they cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
According to the IAEA, Iran holds about 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent—enough for roughly ten bombs if refined further—but there is no evidence Tehran intends to build one. Agency chief Rafael Grossi has warned, however, that if diplomacy fails, “a renewed resort to force cannot be ruled out.”
Inside Iran, Friday sermons reflected a defiant tone. Senior clerics denounced Washington and praised what they called the country’s resilience. Ahmad Khatami vowed to “break the horn of this wild bull,” while Mohammad Saeedi in Qom thanked Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for “crushing the arrogance of the US president.”
Despite speculation that Israel’s prime minister might pursue another strike, Oren said Israel understands the risks. He noted that the previous conflict could have been far more costly and that few in Israel want to test those limits again.
“Iran is isolated,” he said. “And it may feel that it has nothing to lose by triggering a second round.”
Still, Oren said he remains cautiously optimistic that the region could ultimately move toward a new equilibrium.
“If cards are played right,” he said, “the Middle East could look unrecognizable in two years.”
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Eight hundred Iranian activists including political prisoners on Friday condemned as a "tool of repression" a steep uptick in Tehran's use of the death penalty after rights groups reported 280 hangings in Iran in October alone.
In a joint statement, the civil, cultural and political activists of diverse affiliations denounced the Islamic Republic for “turning executions into a tool of control and repression with unprecedented intensity."
Twenty-eight inmates were executed nationwide on October 22, bringing the total number of executions that month to 280, the Iran Human Rights Society wrote on Wednesday.
The group called October “the bloodiest month for prisoners since the mass executions of 1988.” The deaths, it said, mostly linked to drug offenses or murder, included several Afghan nationals and were sometimes carried out without notifying families or allowing final visits.
The statement on Friday, signed by several political prisoners, described the wave of executions, particularly in Ghezel Hesar Prison west of Tehran, as evidence of the “moral and legal collapse of the judiciary and its blatant disregard for human dignity.”
The signatories praised the more than year-long Tuesdays Against Executions campaign launched by Ghezel Hesar political prisoners, calling it a spontaneous act of resistance in which inmates “protest every week through hunger strikes against the culture of death.”
Amnesty International on October 16 urged an immediate halt to executions, saying more than 1,000 had been recorded so far in 2025, many following unfair trials aimed at silencing dissent and persecuting minorities.
“UN Member States must confront the Iranian authorities’ shocking execution spree with the urgency it demands. More than 1,000 people have already been executed in Iran since the beginning of 2025 -- an average of four a day,” Amnesty said.
A court in the Iranian holy city of Qom sentenced a 26-year-old man to rewrite a religious book by hand as punishment for wearing shorts while skateboarding.
His father, a practicing attorney, said that officers had handcuffed his son and transferred him to the local police station, where he was held overnight, legal advocacy website Dadban reported on Thursday without providing their names.
The young man was released on bail during a preliminary investigation but a judge on Friday sentenced him to write out the whole text of the religious book “Thirty Minutes in the Afterlife” as part of his sentence.
The book is reportedly used to illustrate Islamic concepts of the afterlife, divine judgment and personal accountability, often drawing from Shi'ite religious teachings and narratives about the Day of Judgment.
“Wearing shorts is not a crime and cannot be considered as provoking public sentiment,” the father said. “I have filed a complaint against the police station and the prosecutor for their unlawful behavior.”
“Iranian law contains no provision criminalizing the wearing of shorts by men. The act also does not fall under articles of the Islamic Penal Code, which addresses public acts of immorality, and therefore cannot be legally classified as a crime,” Dadban reported.
Iran enforces Islamic dress codes primarily through mandatory hijab regulations for women and girls, while men are also expected to observe modesty standards, such as avoiding shorts and keeping their shoulders and knees covered — although there is no written law prescribing specific clothing rules for men.
Iran's Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of Manouchehr Fallah, a 42-year-old laborer from northern Iran who now faces imminent execution for allegedly detonating a small sound bomb outside a local courthouse.
The explosion caused minor damage estimated at 150 million Iranian rials or about $138 to a metal door and the building's stone facade. No injuries were reported, and public services were not disrupted.
Fallah, currently held in Lakan Prison in the town of Rasht in Gilan province where the incident occurred, was sentenced to death in February by an Islamic revolutionary court. Earlier this week, Iran's Supreme Court rejected his lawyer's appeal.
His lawyer, Milad Panahipour, has condemned the ruling as a "clear violation of proportional justice," arguing that the punishment far exceeds the severity of the alleged offense.
"The court relied on an article in the penal code which penalizes damage to vital public infrastructure. The judiciary building was not classified as a vital facility, and the explosion occurred at midnight when no one was present. This was a small sound firecracker, not a weapon of war," Panahipour said.
'War against God' charge
Fallah was arrested at Rasht Airport in July 2023 and initially sentenced to 15 months in prison of insulting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.
Despite completing that sentence, authorities filed a new case against him with charges of "moharebeh" or war against God, a charge that carries the death penalty.
Reza Akvanian, a human rights activist based in Brussels, criticized the legal basis of the ruling, saying that even under the Islamic Republic's own laws, the charge of moharebeh is unjustified.
"The law clearly defines a mohareb as someone who takes up arms, which Fallah did not do," Akvanian said. "The court's claim that this act qualifies as moharebeh is unprecedented even within Iran's judicial system."
He said that Fallah has denied all charges against him, asserting his innocence.
"These days, they’re once again looking for necks to fit their nooses," US-based activist Masih Alinejad wrote on her Instagram, referring to Fallah's case.
"There’s no proportion between the act and the punishment, but these people see killing a prisoner as a show of power," Alinejad said.
Forced confessions
Throughout the legal proceedings, Fallah was denied access to a lawyer and subjected to coercive interrogation tactics, including threats against family members.
Sources familiar with the cased told Iran International that Fallah had no access to legal counsel during his 18 months in detention. His death sentence was delivered via video conference, raising further concerns about the fairness of the judicial process.
Religious scholars in Qom, the sources added, have been urged to intervene and help overturn the sentence.
While Fallah's case has not yet been highlighted by major international human rights organizations, it reflects broader patterns documented in Iran's judicial system.
According to Iran Human Rights and other advocacy groups, more than 70 political prisoners currently face confirmed or pending death sentences, while over 100 others are at risk of receiving similar verdicts.
The Iran Human Rights Society called October “the bloodiest month for prisoners since the mass executions of 1988.” The deaths, it said, mostly linked to drug offenses or murder, included several Afghan nationals and were sometimes carried out without notifying families or allowing final visits.
Amnesty International on October 16 also urged an immediate halt to executions, saying more than 1,000 had been recorded so far in 2025, many following unfair trials aimed at silencing dissent and persecuting minorities.