Iran's Government Says No Services For Students Without Hijab
Iran’s health and education ministries say their educational centers will not be providing services to students who do not observe the mandatory hijab.
Iran’s health and education ministries say their educational centers will not be providing services to students who do not observe the mandatory hijab.
In a message to congratulate the opening of universities in the new Iranian year on Monday, Deputy Health Minister Abbas Shirojan thanked the students who comply with dress code, and announced the universities of the health ministry will not provide services to students without hijab.
Meanwhile, the education ministry in a separate statement announced that women who do not comply with the compulsory hijab will not be allowed to attend classes.
During the nationwide protests in Iran following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, universities have been the hotbed of protests with hundreds of students were arrested, in addition to targeted poisoning attacks on girls’ schools.
As the regime fights a losing battle against the wave of women participating in a nationwide hijab rebellion, hardliner regime supporters vow more strict measures.
In recent days, dozens of shops and malls where Iranian women continue to flout the regime’s mandatory hijab rules have been closed down across the country with dozens more women arrested.
In the past four decades women generally demonstrated their opposition to compulsory hijab by making their headscarves smaller.
Defiance of hijab rules as a form of civil disobedience ha grown across the country after the death the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in custody of morality police in mid-September.
Mohsen Mirdamadi said in an interview with Etemad newspaper that revolutions and revolutionaries generally know what they don't want, but they do not have a clear idea about what they really want. Many revolutionaries typically find out after several years that many of their ideas and ideals cannot materialize. This is what happened in Iran after the 1979 revolution.
Mirdamadi said that two major shifts happened in Iran after the Islamic revolution. First, a school of thought that did not believe in the people's vote got the upper hand and tried to limit the power of votes and elections. Many of those in the Iranian government belong to this current.
The second shift occurred in the point of the regime's reliance. Gradually the regime began to rely on its military forces rather than on the support of the people.
Elsewhere in the interview, Mirdamadi criticized the Iranian rulers' approach to enforcing hijab. He said that hardliners made hijab a security issue rather than a social issue about lifestyle. These changes, said Mirdamadi, led to the protests in the autumn of 2022 and plunged the country into its most important crisis in four decades.
Mirdamadi added that currently it is the military that makes most decisions in the economy, as well as domestic and foreign policies. The result is an unhappy population.
Like many other commentators, Mirdamadi also believes that recent protests were not simply the result of Mahsa Amini's death in custody. The protests were the outcome of accrued unhappiness and dissatisfaction. He added that the apparent lull in the street protests does not mean the movement has ended. This is a point also shared by others including leading conservative figure and regime insider Mohammad Reza Bahonar, who is a member of the Expediency Council.
Meanwhile, another conservative figure, lawmaker Mostafa Mirsalim in an interview with Khabar Online warned that the next parliamentary elections in less than a year is likely to be adversely affected by political corruption and political factions whose interests can be served only based on lack of transparency in the system and winning illegitimate concessions from the center of power.
In unprecedented comments, the hard-line conservative lawmaker acknowledged that most Iranians lost their hope in the system as a result of regime’s behavior and the only thing that can restore hope in the system is introducing social justice. However, he did not say how social justice can work in a political atmosphere overwhelmed by corruption and concessions for the privileged few and the progeny of men of power.
Meanwhile, international relations analyst Ali Bigdeli said in an interview with ILNA that hardliners who boasted about belittling the United States and turning the White House into a Mausoleum have brought about misery for Iran and made it a backward country.
Bigdeli advised that Iranian rulers should change their attitude toward the world and do away with emotionally charged statements against other country. He said reaching agreement with Saudi Arabia to restore ties is a good example of how flexible Iran needs to be in its foreign policy.
Nonetheless, Bigdeli slammed the Foreign Ministry for making ad hoc decisions rather than following a pre-defined strategic vision. He charged that the Foreign Ministry certainly lacks a roadmap about how to further Iran's relations with what he called "imperialist" countries, presumably the United States, China and Russia, and even the Persian Gulf littoral states. Lack of such a defined policy will do harm to Iran's interests, Bigdeli said.
Hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation, which quickly erodes the value of the local currency -- rial in this case -- while the prices of all goods increase exponentially. In such a situation, people move to minimize their holdings in the national currency and switch to more stable assets.
The Central Bank of Iran announced late in March that the annual inflation rate stands at 46.5 percent. Although the official inflation rate is usually less than what actual prices reflect, even a 46.5-percent inflation is among the highest in Iran in more than 30 years.
The bank did not disclose the point-to-point inflation for the last calendar month, which ended on March 20, but it provided the price index for the month, from which point-to-point inflation can be extracted. The price index was 794.3, which means a 64-percent point-to-point inflation rate compared to the corresponding period of the previous year at 484.6.
It is the second time Iran recorded such a figure since World War II. Considering the devaluation of the rial from 260,000 against one dollar to about 540,000 in the past 12 months, the inflation rate is expected to hit new highs in the coming months. Food prices have been rising much faster, with official figures indicating between 70-100 percent annual inflation for basic food items such as meat and dairy.
Hyperinflation is often associated with some form of stress to the government budget, such as socio-political upheavals, a collapse in aggregate supply of needed commodities, or obstacles in exports, all of which are seen in Iran’s economy.
There are different definitions for hyperinflation, with American economist Phillip Cagan defining it as when the monthly inflation rate exceeds 50 percent -- equivalent to a yearly rate of 12974.63% -- and the International Accounting Standards Board saying that it occurs when a cumulative inflation rate over three years approaches, or exceeds, 100 percent.
The Islamic Republic is currently facing the boldest antiregime protests since its establishment. Rising inflation may also lead to further protests.
The regime grapples with a serious revenue shortage mainly due to US sanctions and the Central Bank is printing more and more money which is aggravating the situation and most probably pushing the country towards hyperinflation.
In an article published on April 1, Khabar Online website cited market analyst Siamak Ghassemi as saying that the data released by the government about market liquidity and money supply bears “important and dangerous information” about the country’s economy in the coming months.
“The growth rate of the monetary base has reached 38 percent and liquidity has reached 34 percent. This unprecedented gap means that the government is printing more money and making up for the budget deficit by heavily borrowing from banks and forcing them to borrow from the central bank,” he said.
Ghassemi highlighted that the sharp growth of the monetary base and the significant budget deficit as well as increasing lack of trust in the government’s ability to bounce back as well as the continued devaluation of the rial will put Iran's economy on the brink of a three-digit inflation rate or hyperinflation.
The former governor of Iran's central bank Abdolnasser Hemmati, who is among the outspoken critics of the current administration, also said last week that “in order to control inflation and rial’s exchange rate, the government should take serious measures to reverse growing liquidity.”
When the central bank resorts to printing money without sufficient economic growth or foreign currency revenues, the money supply increases fast, which in turn leads to more currency devaluation and inflation. The biggest immediate reason for printing money is government borrowing from the Central Bank of Iran to bridge its budget deficit estimated to be 50 percent.
The Islamic Republic has been struggling with high inflation since 2019, but the raging inflation in the past Iranian year was different from previous years. Last May, the government eliminated an annual food import subsidy of at least $10 billion, which immediately led to steep price increases. This was followed by a fall in the value of the national currency, making imports more expensive for the population. Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei has dubbed the new year as “the year of controlling inflation”, a promise also repeated by President Ebrahim Raisi, but reminiscent of similar slogans in previous years.
