TEHRAN — On a cold Tuesday morning on Valiasr Street, Tehran's longest boulevard, a group of women in their twenties walked past a police checkpoint wearing loosely draped headscarves that barely covered their hair. An officer watched. Nobody stopped them.

Such scenes, which would have been unthinkable five years ago, are now common in the Iranian capital and in most other large cities. The enforcement of Iran's compulsory hijab law — mandatory for all women in public spaces since 1983 — has become visibly inconsistent, reflecting the government's difficulty in restoring a social order that was fundamentally challenged by the 2022 protest movement sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.

Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in morality police custody in September 2022 after being detained for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly. The nationwide protests that followed — the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic since its founding — were suppressed after months of unrest. Hundreds were killed; thousands arrested. But the protests left a lasting mark on public behaviour, particularly among younger women who concluded that the cost of defiance had been paid and the ground had shifted.

A Cat-and-Mouse Enforcement Regime

The authorities have not abandoned enforcement. Iran's parliament passed a new "Hijab and Chastity" law in late 2023, which introduced higher fines, longer jail sentences, and new social penalties — including restrictions on bank accounts, travel, and business licences — for women who repeatedly violate dress codes. The judiciary began enforcing it selectively in 2024.

But enforcement remains inconsistent in practice. Tehran Prosecutor Ali Salehi warned this week that the city would "not tolerate open violations," and prosecutors in several provinces have announced renewed crackdowns. Video clips regularly circulate on social media showing confrontations between police and women who refuse to comply.

At the same time, many women report that officers are often reluctant to escalate encounters, particularly when bystanders are filming. The viral nature of confrontation videos — many of which portray officers in an unflattering light — appears to have changed the calculus for some frontline enforcers.

"They can pass all the laws they want. But you cannot put half the population in prison. They know this. We know this. That is why things are different now." — 27-year-old teacher in Tehran, interviewed for this article

Generational Divide

Sociologists who study Iranian society describe a deepening generational divide over the hijab. Older women — many of whom grew up during the revolutionary period and associate the hijab with religious identity and family values rather than state coercion — are often unsympathetic to younger women's defiance, which they view as provocative or politically manipulated.

Younger women, by contrast, overwhelmingly describe the compulsory hijab as a symbol of state control over their bodies, one that is inseparable from a broader system of laws that restrict their mobility, employment, and legal rights relative to men.

A survey by the Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) — one of the few domestic pollsters that asks sensitive questions about social attitudes — found in late 2025 that 58% of respondents aged 18–35 believed the compulsory hijab law should be abolished, while only 22% of those aged 55 and over agreed.

Economic Dimensions

The new Hijab and Chastity Law's economic penalties have created a novel dynamic. Several women who have received warnings under the law describe being caught between financial pressure to comply and social pressure — from peers and sometimes employers — not to. Small business owners, in particular, have complained that enforcement is being applied selectively and sometimes used as a pretext for commercial harassment.

Some cafes and restaurants in northern Tehran — whose clientele tends to be more affluent and socially liberal — have been fined or temporarily closed after being reported for not enforcing hijab rules on their female customers. Owners describe an impossible position: alienating their customers by enforcing rules, or risking closure by not doing so.

Men's Involvement

The resistance has not been solely female. Videos shared on Iranian social media have repeatedly shown men intervening — sometimes physically — when morality police attempt to arrest women. Mixed-gender solidarity, unusual in previous iterations of the hijab debate, has been a feature of the post-2022 landscape.

The government has taken note. State media has portrayed male "bystander interventions" as evidence of a foreign-orchestrated conspiracy to destabilise the country, a framing that few observers outside official circles take seriously but which provides legal cover for prosecuting those who intervene.

Where Things Stand

International human rights organisations — including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — continue to document arrests, prosecutions, and in some cases the mistreatment of women detained for dress code violations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran has called the new hijab law a form of systematic gender-based persecution.

Inside Iran, the mood is more ambivalent. The resistance continues, but so does the repression. For many women, the question is no longer whether they will comply — increasing numbers have decided they will not — but what price they may be asked to pay, and whether the cumulative effect of millions of individual acts of defiance will eventually produce systemic change.

"We are not naive," said one Tehran university lecturer. "We know this does not end quickly. But the country has changed. You can feel it. Whatever happens next, we are not going back to what was."