One would think that, in an autocratic regime like Iran’s, headed by a figure whose title is “Supreme Leader” and who is said to be God’s chosen deputy on earth, identifying who is in charge would be a simple and straightforward task. In one sense it is: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sits atop the greasy pole of Iranian politics and has the responsibility to ensure the Islamic Republic chugs along faithfully on the proper Islamic tracks. The problem is pious folks tend to expect God’s viceroy to be close to infallible, and Khamenei is only human. He’s not going to bat 1.000. So instead, Iran’s political system has become a marvelous machine for obscuring and diffusing responsibility. And when that doesn’t work, one can always resort to outright lies. The Nezam was Orwellian before such behavior became all the vogue.
A case in point is the apparent resumption this month of the despised “morality patrols” to police women’s adherence to traditional fashion dictates on the streets of Tehran and other cities. As reported in the PersuMedia Daily Summary, Iranian principlist officials have been tying themselves in knots for the past six months trying to find a way to enforce the hated hijab regulations without reigniting the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests that shook Iran last fall. Adding to the complexity of the problem for Iranian decisionmakers is the approaching Majles election, and most politicians do not want to be closely tied to a manifestly unpopular policy. Traditional and pragmatic conservatives, in particular, worry that the harsh enforcement of hijab would so alienate and already disgruntled electorate that only the most extreme principlists would turn out to vote next year, putting the parliament in the hands of the Paydari Front and similar hardliners. The Majles has been struggling to revise the hijab laws so as to encourage and uphold adherence to hijab without resorting to direct policing of women, but despite the legislation’s “double urgency” status, it has yet to be passed by the parliament. Two weeks ago, Majles Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf estimated it would require another two months of debate and drafting before the bill would be passed.
The reason the legislation is so difficult is that, first of all, no one other than the hardliners want to be associated with an unpopular law. But perhaps more importantly, Qalibaf and other more pragmatic conservatives are trying to somehow pass a law while relieving the government of the responsibility of enforcing it. That is, rather than having the police or IRGC enforce the dress code, they are trying to slough the responsibility off on to the public itself—in effect, to make the people enforce a law they no longer accept. The Nezam has already been applying such tactics despite the lack of legislation by closing businesses caught serving women flouting the hijab laws. Just this week Iranian authorities closed the main offices of Iran’s biggest e-commerce company, Digikala, after pictures emerged on social media showing female employees there working sans headscarves.
Hardliners, such as members of the Paydari Front and media figures like Kayhan’s Hosein Shariatmadari, for months have been baying for a return to coercive policing of the dress code. As the Majles dithered—and Qalibaf perhaps slow-walked the hijab legislation with an eye to the upcoming elections—hardline elements have acted to force the issue. Drawing on tactics used to good effect in the 1990s against former presidents Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, at the beginning of July Ansar-e Hezbollah—a rightwing vigilante group composed mainly of veterans and Basijis—began ten days of protests outside the Judiciary demanding a return to strict enforcement of hijab. Especially after some of these protesters were arrested, the voices calling for strict enforcement increased: Interior Minister IRGC Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi, and the deputy chief of the IRGC Intelligence Organization both warned that women flouting hijab were essentially following an agenda promoted and exploited by foreign enemies, a theme picked up by many Friday Prayer Leaders. The principlist news outlet Hamshahri published a survey in which a large minority of respondents claimed that compliance with hijab laws had worsened in recent months—an accusation likely true as the summer heat rises. Soon thereafter the morality patrols returned—in low-profile, unmarked vehicles this time—with the police justifying the move as a response to “public demand.”
The pattern of events suggests that a politically powerful alliance of hardline IRGC officers and clerics pressed the government to enforce hijab more vigorously as the Shia mourning month of Muharram commenced on 19 July—and perhaps in anticipation of the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in September—and President Ebrahim Ra’isi caved. Indeed, early announcements about the reinstatement of the patrols—in Tasnim and by a police spokesman—cited orders by Ra’isi and the Judiciary. But as public attention on the issue was directed their way, senior officials scurried like cockroaches fleeing a spotlight. The president’s office denied he had issued any orders and the Tasnim report to the contrary was removed from its website. For several days, no one would own up, until Judiciary Chief Gholamhosein Mohseni-Eje’i publicly explained that until new legislation was passed (thus deftly shifting blame to the Majles) the Judiciary had no choice but to enforce existing law on the books. Ra’isi has yet openly to take responsibility for the order, despite public calls that he do so from hardline figures and media reports that he spoke approvingly of “promoting virtue and preventing vice”—the Islamic principle used to justify the morality patrols—in a recent speech. The reformist publication E’temad Online, like Diogenes, finally found an unnamed honest man who explained why Ra’isi would not take responsibility for the return of the patrols: “It is clear that the gentlemen are throwing the ball in the court of the police so they can avoid any future criticism.”
And where, one might ask, was Khamenei during all this? Crickets. His pronouncement on the topic of hijab a few months ago was predictably mealy-mouthed, in which he insisted that hijab was an important Islamic principle to be upheld—but cautioned against assuming that women who did not adhere to hijab were necessarily unIslamic. Well, the Aqa did not get to be Supreme Leader by openly choosing sides in a no-win dispute. Better to let subordinates try to translate his oracular pronouncements into some sort of policy that he can either embrace or disown depending on its success and reception by the public and elites.
It is possible, as some expatriate Iranian media have claimed, that Khamenei quietly and behind the scenes pushed Ra’isi and Eje’i to resume the morality patrols. He would be sensitive to conservative clergy agitating to end public “nakedness” by females during Muharram—the Supreme Leader, after all, is supposed to keep society on the straight and narrow—and the argument put forward by Vahidi and IRGC-IO that foreign “enemies” were promoting nonadherence to hijab would resonate with Khamenei’s anti-Western paranoia. But that is speculation, and one would expect that eventually someone would let the cat out of the bag that it was the Leader who wanted the patrols reinstated. More likely, Ra’isi and Eje’i acquiesced to hardline pressure before the demand could get bucked up to Khamenei—and now Ra’isi is bobbing and weaving to avoid owning the deed. It is doubtful that Ra’isi will be able to escape blame, although he probably will continue to deny his role just as he apparently has presented doctored statistics to hide the extent of his failure to rein in inflation and unemployment. But he’s not fooling anybody.
Such lack of accountability is baked into the system. It is hard to challenge an autocracy when the autocrat won’t accept responsibility for the actions of the system he controls. In The Persians, the excellent history of Iran by Homa Katouzian, the author notes that such ducking of responsibility is a recurring pattern in Iran’s long history of arbitrary state power. “Since the people had no independent or intrinsic rights, they did not accept any independent and intrinsic responsibility.” Katouzian in this passage was referring to the subjects of the Shahs, but it could just as well apply to the followers of the Rahbar. Plus ça change…
