Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian vowed on Monday, September 16, to work to ensure that moral police do not “disturbs” nor women who do not wear the mandatory veil in public, during his first press conference since his election in July. “The moral police are not supposed to confront [les femmes]I’ll make sure she doesn’t [les] don’t bother”the reformist president promised the media in Tehran.
Pezeshkian made the remarks two years after the death on September 16, 2022, of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd arrested by the morality police for violating Iran’s strict dress code for women. “Even the Attorney General said they had no right to confront” women, the president added.
During his campaign, Mr. Pezeshkian had already declared that his “ the government will oppose[it] to the moral police » and who opposed “firmly against any form of coercion against a human being; We have no right to coerce women and young girls, and I am ashamed of this behaviour towards them.” He He had also promised to remove the moral police, the unit charged with enforcing the mandatory use of the veil for women, from the streets.
Easing restrictions on the Internet and social media
The death of Mahsa Amini sparked a large protest movement in Iran in 2022, leaving several hundred dead and arresting thousands of people. Authorities described the protests as “unrest” orchestrated by Western countries. Pezeshkian, then a member of the Iranian Parliament, harshly criticised the police in September 2022 over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.
On Monday, the Iranian president also said that his government was working to ease draconian restrictions imposed on the internet, particularly on social media. During the 2022 protests, Iran blocked Instagram and WhatsApp, the most widely used apps, as in recent years YouTube, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and TikTok have all been blocked.
However, the new president has very little room for manoeuvre, with the judiciary and parliament in the hands of hardliners, as are all other centres of power, including the Revolutionary Guard (the country’s ideological army). All his predecessors who were not hardliners were hampered in their domestic and foreign policies. “Internally, Massoud Pezeshkian can negotiate with the hard core of power certain demands of the population that are not considered red lines, which affect social freedoms, explained to World Meysam Sharifi, a member of the president-elect’s election campaign, is relatively optimistic. Without being radical, it has the ability to interact with those in power and make itself heard.
