Iran's Hijab Enforcement Wavers as War and Economic Strain Mount

In Tehran, women are sitting in outdoor cafes without headscarves, some wearing crop tops. Men in shorts and women in leggings exercise together in parks. At sidewalk concerts, women dance with their hair uncovered. Videos of such scenes, circulating on social media, illustrate how far enforcement of social restrictions has loosened in the Islamic Republic.

The shift traces back to the mass protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, 2022. Amini, 22, had been detained by morality police for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly. Security forces crushed the demonstrations, killing more than 500 people and arresting thousands. To keep the peace, authorities pulled back from enforcing rules that mandate the hijab and modest dress for women.

Now, hard-liners in the ruling establishment are pressing for a renewed clampdown. But top leaders are wary of provoking a public backlash at a time of war, when U.S. attacks, sanctions and a naval blockade are pushing the crippled economy toward collapse.

"We can't enter into that front as we ought to because of wartime conditions," Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, a politician and father-in-law of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said last week in public remarks about headscarves.

Pouran Nazemi, an activist and former political prisoner in Tehran, said disagreements over the hijab sharpened after the war began. "They are afraid of protests," she said by phone.

A university student in her early 20s from an affluent northern district of the capital said she does not wear a headscarf but covers most of her arms and legs. "I feel like I am wearing too much," she said, speaking anonymously out of security fears. Her friends, she added, go out in tops that show their bare shoulders and shorts that stop at the knee.

Iran's theocracy, at its strictest, requires women to cover their hair with a scarf and wear loose clothing that hides the body. Religious police have fined, harassed or arrested women who skirt the rules. Over the past decade, many women pushed the limits, wearing the scarf further back to show more hair and choosing tighter clothes. Since 2022, many have stopped wearing the headscarf entirely. More recently, women in some parts of Tehran have bared their arms, legs or stomachs.

In a piece published Wednesday, four years after Amini's death, a hard-line newspaper overseen by the supreme leader said the removal of headscarves had grown into "promoting nudity and permissiveness" and called it a "security threat." The report in Kayhan added that judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei had called for "prudent and urgent action" on headscarves.

Hard-liners hold nightly rallies across the country, attended by women in black conservative robes and head coverings. Even there, a few women without headscarves can be seen.

Hijab rules have become a lightning-rod issue dividing pragmatists from hard-liners among Iran's ruling theocracy, much like questions of whether to negotiate with the U.S. or escalate the war. Many calls for enforcing headscarves have come from figures linked with the supreme leader's office, though it is not known if they reflect Khamenei's stance. The supreme leader has not appeared in public, nor released any audio or video recordings, since succeeding his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by an Israeli strike on February 28. The elder Khamenei long called for firm enforcement on the hijab.

In a sermon on August 28, a top cleric in the eastern shrine city of Mashhad portrayed women without the hijab and others he described as irreligious as a domestic force the U.S. could use against Iran. Ahmad Alamolhoda, the city's Friday prayer leader and the supreme leader's representative in the province, called on officials to use "all their resources" to curb such behavior.

Some conservative figures and media have blamed pragmatist President Masoud Pezeshkian for preventing a stricter hijab policy. "As soon as we say anything, they say there's a war, let's not make trouble," Abdol Hossein Khosrowpanah told reporters last week after a meeting with officials about headscarves. Khosrowpanah heads a state body overseeing universities and cultural institutions that is controlled by the supreme leader.

Authorities have briefly shuttered some Tehran cafes and public places for violations of hijab rules, but the effort has not expanded. Iranian leaders are cautious, particularly in the face of intensified U.S. sanctions they say aim to foment popular unrest. In January, protests over a currency crash snowballed into nationwide marches calling for the Islamic Republic's overthrow. The ensuing crackdown killed thousands.

Women are finding they can pass with their hair uncovered even in places where they long had to be most wary. One Tehran resident in her mid-30s said she recently went without a headscarf on an errand to a government office, where hijab rules are normally strongly enforced. She spoke by phone on condition of anonymity because of security fears. Three women in Tehran said security forces had not commented on their lack of a hijab while going through street checkpoints, which often include members of the feared Basij, the all-volunteer force that enforces morality rules and is used to crush protests.

The new head of the Basij, hard-line cleric Hossein Taeb, a former intelligence chief, cautioned a gathering of commanders last week that the headscarf issue should be addressed in a way that does not harm "internal cohesion," according to the semiofficial news agency Mehr. That echoed a statement by Khamenei last month that prioritized the war struggle above other issues.

Women are still targeted on morals-related charges. In a video posted to her Instagram page on August 19, singer Hiwa Seyfizade said she had been sentenced to four years in prison after performing a public concert in the capital last year.

Turning points in Iran's modern history have often been linked with the hijab issue. The Iranian monarchy forced women to remove headscarves in its drive to Westernize society in the 1930s. After the shah's overthrow in 1979, the mandatory hijab became a defining tenet of clerical rule.

"Women who don't put it on are, in a way, carrying out civil disobedience toward the government," said Sedigheh Vasmaghi, a lawyer and former political prisoner, speaking by phone from northern Iran. The deaths of Amini and other women targeted for dress violations prompted Vasmaghi to discard the headscarf in 2023, after decades of wearing it. A scholar of Islamic jurisprudence who has written widely on women in Islam, she was detained in 2024 after openly arguing that there was no basis for the mandatory hijab in Islam.

Vasmaghi said she fears authorities could try a new crackdown after the war, but noted that past attempts have failed. "People aren't going to go back to how it was," Nazemi said. "They aren't capable of doing it."