The Iranian authorities have signalled ominously that this summer's crackdown against those deemed to be dressed or behaving immodestly will be particularly harsh. The annual "anti-vice" campaign kicked off just over a week ago with a novel new twist: police have been seizing cars driven by men whom they say are "harassing women". To humiliate the car owners, state media have shown pictures of their vehicles lined up along Tehran streets in several locations bedecked with placards declaring: "Combating harassment of women."
Mashhad, Iran's second biggest city, announced plans to massively increase fines for women who fail to observe the obligatory dress code, from 50,000 tomans (Dh180) to 1.3 million tomans (Dh4,780) - roughly US$1,300 - a significant sum in a country where a teacher's monthly salary is around $500. And the interior minister, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, declared recently that enforcement of the "Modesty and Hijab" plan would be pursued more seriously this year.
The government has orchestrated demonstrations in support of the dress code while state-controlled television is plugging the same theme. Dictating public behaviour and enforcing the dress code, especially for women, have long been a way for the regime to demonstrate its control. This year's tougher summer crackdown appears intended to reinforce that message as Iran braces for the June 12 anniversary of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election as president, which ignited Iran's worst internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
But, analysts say, the clampdown risks heightening social tensions at a time when much of the populace is already seething, whether from economic or political dissatisfaction - or both. "Ahmadinejad had promised social justice and a better standard of living, not just enforcing values that hardliners sought," said an analyst in Tehran who declined to be named. "Hate and hatred are brewing in the pot. People, at least here in Tehran, have become so nervous and edgy - fights over the simplest things erupt in the street all the time."
Before his first term as president in 2005, Mr Ahmadinejad suggested he would be lenient on the dress code for women, memorably declaring that he did not care about "hair sticking out of a young girl's headscarf". But he did a U-turn in office. The drive against liberal tendencies on the streets is fronted by police and members of the Basij militia. The latter played a key role in crushing last summer's post-election unrest.
Hardliners have alleged that resistance to the dress code is being encouraged by the opposition "green movement". Tehran's police chief, Hossein Sajedinia, was quoted by Iran's Mehr news agency last Tuesday saying that "street mannequins and harassers" are "organised and they must be seriously dealt with". Mannequin is the authorities' scornful term for women who flout the dress code by wearing figure-hugging coats and thrust-back headscarves, sporting a dash of make-up or flashing a bare ankle.
Mr Sajedinia said police have been equipped this year with cameras to film immodestly attired women, with the footage to be used as irrefutable evidence in court. Meanwhile, more than 3,000km away in fashionable Cannes, a beautiful French actor who has become an international star by appearing before cameras of a more illustrious kind was upbraided by Iran last week for her dress code. Juliette Binoche won Cannes' best actress award for her role in Certified Copy, a film by Iran's most celebrated director, Abbas Kiorostami. But she wears a "certain kind of costume throughout the film that prevents it from being screened in Iran", said Javad Shamaqdari, Iran's deputy culture minister for cinematic affairs.
Binoche remains fully clothed in the film - which has not always been the case in her long, Oscar-winning career - but is seen in a plunging neckline in some scenes. A far more likely reason for the film's ban in Iran, analysts say, is that Binoche and Kiorostami lobbied hard in Cannes for the release of another dissident Iranian director, Jafar Panahi, a supporter of the "green movement". Mr Panahi was arrested for alleged plans to make a film about last year's presidential election, which he denies. He was released on bail last Tuesday, days after the Cannes festival ended.
Meanwhile, a prominent ayatollah, Mahyeddin Shirazi, instructed the wives of Revolutionary Guard members at a recent meeting that they should adopt a withering expression to make inappropriately dressed women feel "humiliated". Certainly, students at Shiraz Medical University are likely to have found humiliating personal hygiene tips on the university's updated dress code, issued last week. According to a report by Tahavole Sabz, a website run by "green" movement supporters, they were advised to shower and brush their teeth daily and wear clean, ironed clothes. Both sexes were also told to avoid wearing "strong smelling fragrances" - and that laughing aloud anywhere on campus is prohibited.
Iranian women are required to cover their hair and bodily contours in public under Sharia-based law. Enforcement of the dress code is always stepped up in early summer as temperatures soar and many people wear cooler clothing. Police also target young men with elaborate hairstyles, tight or sleeveless T-shirts and low-slung jeans. Confiscating their cars, however, is new. And what the guardians of morality deem to be "harassment" - the reason given for the vehicle seizures - is far from clear.
"They caught me with my girlfriend in my car and they seized my car [a Peugeot 206] and my driver's licence," fumed a young man in north Tehran who did not want to be named. "The music was a bit loud, but that's all." An angry resident in north Tehran, an area home to the sprawling capital's wealthier suburbs, said the move was simply another way to humiliate young people. "Police are acting as judges on the streets. On what criteria they find someone guilty of this so-called crime of harassment I have no idea," said the man, a well-educated father in his 40s who also did not want to be identified.
Owners of seized cars, which state-run news agencies said can be held for up to thee months, have to pay a fine on collecting them from police parking lots. The vibrant Iranian blogosphere is rife with reports that female drivers also have been stopped and had their cars branded with the "harasser" sign, although state media have not reported on this. If true, they were probably found guilty of resembling "mannequins", observers say.
Real mannequins - dummies in the windows of women's clothes shops - are also under fire: those with curves are outlawed. Dutiful shopkeepers saw off heads and breasts. There has also been a crackdown on shops selling figure-hugging or short coats for women. In a tub-thumping sermon in Mashhad recently, a hard-line ayatollah, Ahmad Alam al Hoda, declared: "Badly veiled women and girls are like the foot soldiers of the United States."
Knowingly or unknowingly, he added, such women were "fighting on the enemy's front". mtheodoulou@thenational.ae
