Zhila, a freelance translator, sits in the bleachers of an ice rink in a Tehran shopping mall and watches her 17-year-old daughter venturing out to skate for the first time.
It’s a proud moment for both of them. But Zhila is even prouder of something else: her daughter’s refusal to wear a headscarf, in defiance of Iran’s strict religious rules.
“This new generation is braver than we are,” she says. “As a mother, I’m happy that my daughter does not have my fears. People are seeking their liberty – they want to express themselves.”
Her daughter, she says, has never worn a headscarf outside the school classroom in her entire life. Zhila herself stopped obeying Iran’s hijab rules in 2022, when large-scale protests erupted in support of women’s rights and against the Islamic regime.
The protests, which continued for months, were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died after police arrested her for allegedly wearing her headscarf too loosely. Zhila estimates that the number of Iranian women who disobey the hijab rule has doubled since then. Even after the authorities killed hundreds of protestors and ruthlessly crushed the demonstrations, she continued to disobey the edict. “We’re saying, ‘We don’t want an Islamic Republic,’” she says.
She admits that she is often afraid of reprisals. But she recalls how she argued fiercely with a policeman who had impounded her car after someone reported her for driving without a headscarf. “I want to live freely,” she told him. “And my hair is my voice.”
A quiet rebellion is underway in Iran. A growing number of women are refusing to accept the rules that have been imposed since the 1979 revolution. Many are punished for it, but there are simply too many to imprison.
For a visitor walking around Tehran and other Iranian cities, the sheer number of defiant women soon becomes clear. On almost every street, in every market, in public buildings and subway cars, in coffee shops and malls, countless women casually ignore the law. They are still a minority of the population, but a growing one.
Because of diplomatic tensions, Iran has long prohibited any Canadian journalists from entering the country, but last month I managed to get permission to visit. For this report on a changing Iran, I spent two weeks in the country, speaking with ordinary women and men, as well as artists, scholars, politicians, independent analysts, government officials and private business owners. The Globe and Mail is withholding the full names of most of the women in this story, since they are at risk of arrest or other reprisals for disobeying the law.
What could be at stake in Iran, ultimately, is the fate of the Islamic theocracy that has ruled the country for 46 years. Some Iranian women are hopeful that their growing resistance to the Islamic dress-code rules will be the trigger for much broader change. The hijab battles are essentially a test of who should hold power in Iran: the people or the rulers.
The death of Mahsa Amini – commemorated at this protest in Berlin – fuelled more discontent within Iran at the authorities that jailed her for the way she allegedly dressed.Ethan Cairns/The Globe and Mail
Despite the rebellion on the street, Iran’s rigid system of religious rule has never been formally liberalized. Women today are still reprimanded, arrested and even imprisoned for their defiance. Surveillance cameras on the streets are calibrated to detect women in cars who fail to wear a headscarf – and they are routinely ticketed and fined. Warning signs in building entrances sternly order women to obey Islamic rules and cover their hair.
But what’s new is that an increasing number of women are willing to accept this risk and pay the price. And the authorities have been unable to stop them. “The police don’t have enough handcuffs for all of them,” says Keywan Karimi, a Kurdish filmmaker in Iran. “The system is the same, the police are the same – but what’s changed is the level of resistance. People are pushing more against the system, and they’re accepting the cost of resistance. Where once it was one person, now it is thousands.”
The growing defiance by fearless women is just one of the mounting pressures on the Islamic regime that has ruled Iran since the overthrow of the monarchy. After a wave of large-scale protests over the past decade, social unrest continues to ferment. Political uncertainty has worsened the situation: Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is now 85 and lacks a clear successor. The election of a new reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has sparked frictions inside the ruling elite as Mr. Pezeshkian tries to placate the population with some limited easing of traditional restrictions.
Outside of its borders, Iran has been weakened by severe blows to its allies in Lebanon and Syria. The election of Donald Trump in the United States has added another level of unpredictability as the regime worries that it might face another round of tough sanctions or even a military attack.
Perhaps most significantly, Iran’s economy is on a downward spiral, battered by the Western sanctions and chronic mismanagement by a heavy-handed state. Iran’s currency, the rial, has lost more than 90 per cent of its value since 2018. Inflation is running at 32 per cent, according to official data, although independent estimates are much higher.
As a result, Iran’s women are far from the only source of resistance these days: street protests have been launched also by shopkeepers, pensioners, workers and university students.
The mounting dissent has forced the political system to respond. Iran’s new president, Mr. Pezeshkian, who was elected last July on promises to relax the harsh social restrictions and hijab laws, has been trying to ease tensions with minor reforms. When hardliners tried to toughen the dress-code rules with a law imposing new punishments, tens of thousands of Iranians signed petitions against it, and Mr. Pezeshkian succeeded in suspending the proposed law, at least temporarily. In December, he lifted the longstanding ban on some internet sites, including the popular WhatsApp social media platform.
The official censorship system is increasingly irrelevant. Iranians have found ways to bypass the bans, usually by installing cheap VPNs (virtual private networks) on their phones to manoeuvre around the internet restrictions. For young Iranians, officially banned sites such as Instagram are hugely popular as sources of news and social trends.
The arrival of a reformist president in Iran and another round of limited reforms, evokes vivid memories of an earlier attempt at change. I made my first visits to Iran in 1998 and 2000, when Mohammad Khatami was president. Like Mr. Pezeshkian, he had been elected as a reformist with a liberalization agenda. He soon brought improvements in media freedom and cultural openness, sparking a surge of national excitement.
I reported optimistically on Mr. Khatami’s diplomatic overtures to Washington, including his “wrestling diplomacy” – the decision to allow a U.S. wrestling team to enter a tournament in Tehran, the first visit by U.S. athletes in nearly two decades. There was even speculation that Mr. Khatami’s reforms, like those in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, would trigger a collapse of the regime.
But by 2004, the Iranian authorities were rolling back the reforms. Thousands of reformists were barred from running in the parliamentary elections, and conservative politicians were soon at the helm again. Since then, Mr. Khatami has been largely banned from Iranian television and public appearances – a fate that could befall the new president if he goes beyond the prescribed limits of reform.
Other reformists have sometimes been elected in the years following the Khatami presidency. But the cycle of a temporary opening up followed by harsh repression has seemed endless.
Rather than waiting for official permission, many Iranians today just ignore the rules and go ahead with their own quiet acts of defiance. In Tehran, I attended an unofficial screening of a banned documentary by Mr. Karimi, the Kurdish filmmaker. About 50 people – including many young women ignoring the religious dress-code law – crowded into a screening room to watch his film, Writing on the City.
Back in 2013, the film had angered the authorities so much that they arrested Mr. Karimi and imprisoned him on charges of “insulting the regime.” The documentary told the story of the evolution of anti-government graffiti – from the 1979 Islamic Revolution to the street protests of recent years – and it dared to suggest that the political truth could be found on the city’s walls, not in the official state media.
Last month’s screening was the first time the film had ever been shown in Iran, and it was followed by a spirited discussion between the 39-year-old filmmaker and the audience.
Afterwards, most of the audience moved to a nearby coffee shop. In an evocative moment that was almost too on the nose, the 1964 Bob Dylan song The Times They Are a-Changin’ was playing in the café as filmmakers and artists chatted about Iran’s cultural trends. “Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command,” Dylan sang. “The battle outside ragin’ will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls.”
In 2015, the Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced Mr. Karimi to six years imprisonment and 223 lashes for making the film. He appealed the ruling and eventually spent seven months in jail.
Today, while living mainly in France, he often visits Iran and admires the dramatic growth in the number of unofficial films that are produced in the country. More than 70 Iranian films – including features, short films and documentaries – were reportedly submitted to the Cannes Film Festival last year without government permission. In many cases, they are filmed with actresses who do not follow the religious dress code.
“People are not afraid to talk any more, to say what they think,” Mr. Karimi told me as we strolled on a Tehran street full of art galleries. “Now you can be talking with anyone at a café and they criticize the system. They don’t accept being repressed.”
While the proliferating street protests of recent years have always been crushed by the Iranian authorities – often with dozens or hundreds of deaths – each protest has opened the way for more, Mr. Karimi says. “The limits expanded each time. People are standing up and saying, ‘Enough is enough.’”
The protests have even reached into Iran’s prisons, where hunger strikes have been held in 35 prisons to protest the use of capital punishment. The weekly protests, known as “No to Execution Tuesdays,” began in January, 2024, and have continued for more than a year.
Late last month, I attended the opening ceremony of Iran’s Fajr International Film Festival, where a prominent sign at the entrance warned women: “Please observe the Islamic rules.” Since it was a government event, with senior officials in attendance, most women covered their hair – but even here, some disobeyed the rule.
On the festival stage during the ceremony, filmmaker Marzieh Boroumand and actor Reza Babak violated another Iranian law by shaking hands. Physical contact between unrelated men and women is prohibited in Iran, and the judiciary swiftly announced that it was opening a case against the filmmaker and actor. The push and pull of defiance and repression was continuing.
Under Iranian law, shops and restaurants are required to enforce the hijab laws, evicting anyone who does not conform to the religious dress code. But they are increasingly unwilling to enforce the law, knowing they would lose too much business. Some escape punishment by paying bribes to government inspectors.
At Iran’s biggest shopping mall, the giant Iran Mall on the outskirts of Tehran, many women openly defy the hijab law. “We don’t care,” says Zahra, a 17-year-old student who is not wearing a headscarf. “I don’t like hijab, and why should we have it? Boys and girls both have hair and it’s the same material.”
In a cosmetics shop in Tehran’s historic bazaar, store clerk Samira has a scarf around her neck, ready to pull it up over her hair if challenged by the police, but she rarely wears it. “Why should I wear something extra on my head?” she says. “I feel more comfortable without it, more free.”
Mohammad Javad Zarif, one of Iran’s vice-presidents, caused a furor in religious circles for his speech about hijab laws at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images
The trend against the hijab has become so irreversible that the government itself has been obliged to acknowledge it – and has even tried to take credit for it.
“If you go to the streets of Tehran, you see that there are women who are not covering their hair,” Iranian vice-president Mohammad Javad Zarif told a television interviewer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month.
“It’s against the law, but the government has decided not to put women under pressure,” Mr. Zarif said. “This was a promise that President Pezeshkian made. He did not implement the law, with the consent of the leadership. So we are moving in the right direction.”
The interview provoked an angry reaction from all sides. Hardliners demanded the arrest of Mr. Zarif, accusing the government of deliberately flouting the law. Iranian women, on the other hand, said Mr. Zarif was ignoring the frequent arrests, warnings, reprimands and traffic tickets imposed on those who refuse to cover their hair. They said he was boasting about something that women themselves had achieved, at great personal risk, by defying the law.
“If the authorities could have enforced the law, they would have done it,” said Azadeh, a Tehran data analyst who does not wear a headscarf. “They saw that women were not going to conform to it. They want to take credit for not enforcing the law, but the truth is that they cannot enforce the law, so what can they do?”
The turning point, she said, was in 2022, after the protests by women were brutally suppressed. Many women decided to keep defying the law. “They said, ‘We’ve come this far, we’re not wearing the headscarf, let’s not go back, let’s fight,’” Azadeh said.
“I’m so happy and hopeful about this. The police and the revolutionary guards are not everywhere, and they can’t arrest everyone.”
Men, too, are becoming more supportive of the resistance by women. “They’re more sensitive to women’s rights now,” Azadeh said. “Before 2022, men used to harass us or say something to us if we didn’t wear the hijab. But they look at us differently now. They’re learning to respect us, because they witnessed that women were dying and tortured during the protests and we weren’t defeated. Men are much more accepting when I don’t wear hijab now.”
Her friend, an Iranian-Canadian filmmaker, sees the hijab battles as a symbol of a deeper conflict in Iran. “Tradition and religion are very powerful, but there’s also a movement towards modernity, and these forces are fighting each other,” she told me as we chatted at a Tehran café with classic rock music blaring.
“We want to have a normal life, economically, politically, everything,” she said. “And our society is very intelligent. The hijab issue is a way to fight back, in an intelligent way.”
The social and religious conflict is aggravated by Iran’s growing economic crisis. With the currency collapsing and inflation soaring, millions of Iranians are suffering daily hardship. Western sanctions – imposed by the United States, Britain, Canada and the European Union, and tightened by Washington in 2018 – have heavily damaged Iran’s oil revenue and severed its access to international banking. But many Iranians blame the government itself for mismanaging the situation.
To get a glimpse of the crisis, I visited Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar, with its 10 kilometres of shops and stores, where merchants have recently held demonstrations to protest the declining economy.
“There’s no hope for any change with this government,” carpet dealer Sadegh Shoar told me. “For 46 years, they’ve shown that they’re not good listeners. They’ve closed all possibilities for change.”
A decade ago, he said, he sold about 30 carpets a month. These days, he sells only about two carpets a month, and usually only the cheaper kind.
Because of inflation and the deteriorating currency, his raw materials and wage costs are increasingly expensive. Two years ago, Mr. Shoar shut down his carpet workshop, where he once employed 100 workers. His sales to foreigners have declined, and most Iranians cannot afford to buy carpets any more, he says. “It’s the last thing they think of buying.”
He blames the government for destroying the value of Iran’s currency by meddling in the market and trying to fix rates. “The government is corrupt,” he says. “It’s a kind of mafia.”
Akbar Jalilvand, a cosmetics vendor at the bazaar, has to cut costs and restock less due to inflation.
At a shop selling cosmetics and perfume, the staff say their salaries are often delayed, and their business is sometimes disrupted by electricity shortages. But the biggest problem is that their customers are cutting back. “People have less money to spend, and they’re buying cheaper items now,” said 25-year-old Akbar Jalilvand, a worker in the shop.
Because of inflation, his nominal income is higher than before, but it buys fewer goods, he said. He has been forced to cut back on his own purchases. He buys clothes every eight months, instead of every four months. He travels less often. He goes on social outings with his friends every three months, instead of every month.
One of the bazaar’s traditional sectors, gold jewelry, is equally suffering. “The price of gold has gone up, but our income has gone down,” says Amin Bidogli, a gold dealer.
A few years ago, he said, his shop would sell 100 grams of gold every day. Now he sometimes sells only 30 or 40 grams in a week. Instead he is often buying gold from Iranians who are selling their earrings or other small pieces of jewelry to survive.
Mr. Bidogli’s partner in the gold business, Iman Shahi, blames the hardship on rising inflation and Western sanctions against Iran. “When there’s no stability, customers aren’t willing to buy or sell,” he told me.
“Because of inflation, people aren’t buying. And the sanctions are hurting the people, not the government.”
Gold vendors in the bazaar are feeling the pinch as prices go up but demand goes down.
One evening, I went to a monthly meeting of Iranian tour guides. Few foreign tourists travel to Iran these days, so the guides are searching for ways to drum up interest from domestic tourists.
“We’re not in a good economic or social situation, and young people lack hope, so we are trying to inform them of what we have inside Iran,” said Maryam Kazemi, a travel journalist and organizer of the monthly meetings.
The tour guides listened to enthusiastic lectures about the attractions of Iranian cities and historic sites. In between the talks, they watched a video of a University of Tehran professor, who urged them not to leave the country, despite the rising rate of emigration among students and other young people. “Please do not emigrate,” the professor said. “Please stay here and help build our country.”
While the economy slumps and discontent spreads, Iran is struggling with another major challenge: climate change. Rising temperatures, dwindling rainfall and frequent droughts have inflicted huge damage on agriculture and other sectors. The economy is distorted by heavily subsidized oil and gas-guzzling vehicles, bringing massive smog to the skies of Tehran and threatening the health of its people. Temperatures climb as high as 55 degrees in some parts of the country.
“It’s making life very difficult,” says Masoumeh Ebtekar, a former vice-president who headed Iran’s environment department for 11 years.
“This impacts everything. We’re seeing the devastating effects not only of droughts but also floods and dust storms and heat waves.”
Massoumeh Ebtekar, a politician turned academic, is pressing her country to wean itself off fossil fuels as environmental threats to health and the economy grow worse.Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
Dr. Ebtekar first gained global notoriety in 1979 as spokesperson for the Iranian students who took hostages at the U.S. embassy. Later, she became a prominent ally of Mr. Khatami and other reformist leaders. Today she is a professor at Tarbiat Modares University, where her office in a campus tower commands a spectacular view of snow-capped mountains near Tehran – but only on days when the smog has lifted. Those days are so rare that she documents them by posting photos on social media.
For decades, she has tried to reverse Iran’s dependence on fossil fuels, despite resistance from conservative factions. A few solar energy and wind projects have emerged, but the country is still dependent on what she calls “high-intensity, low-efficiency” energy use – badly polluting cars, over-heated buildings – that contribute to the energy shortages that have damaged the economy. Every week, she says, the government discovers new cryptocurrency mining farms that have sprung up illegally to exploit Iran’s cheap energy.
Iranian buildings are typically heated to 24 degrees in the winter, on the assumption that costs are minimal. The government is campaigning for a voluntary reduction in heating levels. In Dr. Ebtekar’s own office on the day of my visit, the temperature was set at 21 degrees and she sheepishly acknowledged it should be lower.
The fossil-fuel subsidies have led to energy-draining projects to pump water to farms and orchards from underground reservoirs and lakes, she says. She describes the drastic shrinking of Iran’s biggest lake, Lake Urmia, and other lakes and rivers across the country, as a result of increasingly frequent droughts and widespread irrigation projects that pump water excessively to thousands of large farms.
For much of the year – like this July day in 2018 – the Zayanderud River does not flow through Isfahan, as it had since antiquity. Rising demand from agriculture and industry takes up most of the water upstream.Vahid Salemi/The Associated Press
Even when the dams are open, the flow through Isfahan is meagre. On this February day in 2019, a man passes the Si-o-Se Pol Bridge in ankle-deep water.Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
A few days later, I saw what she meant. I travelled by road to the ancient city of Isfahan, the third-largest city in the country. The city is famed for its historic bridges over the Zayanderud, one of Iran’s biggest rivers. But today the river is gone.
The riverbed is bone dry, a victim of drought and water guzzling by farms and industries upstream. For a few days a year, during Iranian New Year celebrations, the authorities sometimes open enough dams to allow water to flow in Isfahan, but then the river goes dry again.
“I feel sad and a little angry about it,” says Mohammad Reza Kiani, who works in a tea shop on the banks of the river.
“Water should be running through the middle of our city. It brings life to the city. Water is our right.”
In 2021, thousands of people held daily rallies on the dried riverbed for more than two weeks, protesting the government’s handling of the water shortages. The police tolerated the protests at first but eventually cracked down and dispersed the protestors with tear gas and batons.
The disappearance of the river has hurt Mr. Kiani’s business. He estimates that the tea shop gets twice as many customers when the water is running. The shop is also badly hurt by Iran’s economic crisis. Even the customers that it manages to attract these days have difficulty in paying their bills. Inflation has increased their cost of living, and their incomes have failed to keep pace.
“My salary is only enough for half of the month,” Mr. Kiani tells me. “It’s a common problem for people here. I try to cope by borrowing or other means. It’s because of the economic mismanagement by the government.”
As we talk, a customer is leaving the tea shop. “May I pay later?” he asks Mr. Kiani, who nods in agreement. Many customers can’t afford to pay their bills, Mr. Kiani says. “We trust them to pay later.”
Outside the tea shop, locals are strolling along the historic Khaju Bridge, a stunning double-tiered stone structure of arches and tiled alcoves. By tradition, men gather here on holidays to recite poetry or sing Persian songs under the arches. But this time there is something different: I watch as women, too, clap their hands rhythmically and joyously sing traditional songs – in defiance of the religious laws.
Iran’s dress code is as restrictive as ever, but increasing public willingness to disobey it, and the regime’s inability to enforce it everywhere, has buoyed hopes for change.
Back in Tehran, I read fresh reports about the arrest of women for singing or dancing on social media, or for trying to watch soccer matches, where they are only occasionally permitted to attend. In a city park, I talk to Maryam, a 22-year-old student who says she never wears a headscarf, except when the police spot her and order her to wear it.
“I always want to be free, in everything,” she says. “My parents don’t mind it any more. Girls and women are really defying the rules now, for their rights.”
In our conversation in the Tehran café, Azadeh told me that she anticipates years of hardship ahead. “The situation is completely hopeless right now, economically and politically,” she said. “I think we’ll have very tough years ahead in Iran. But I’m hopeful about the new generation.”
Her friend, the Iranian-Canadian filmmaker, is convinced that the battle over hijab is far more than a side issue – it is central to the entire future of the country. “The suppression of women was one of the foundations of the Islamic regime,” she says.
“They pushed women to the margins. But ideas come from the feminine mind, and they’re scared that these ideas will grow. I think the way to freedom passes through women. This country will be saved by women.”
