TEHRAN, 20 April 2005 — Iranian police have vowed to crack down on the way women dress this summer when soaring temperatures typically tempt many to flout the country’s strict Islamic dress code, newspapers reported yesterday. Iran’s Islamic dress code obliges women to cover all but their face and hands and to disguise the shape of their bodies. Violators can receive lashes, fines or imprisonment.
But many women, especially in the capital Tehran, shun the traditional head-to-toe black chador to don calf-length Capri pants, tight-fitting, thigh-length coats and brightly-colored scarves pushed back to expose plenty of hair.
Tehran Police Chief Morteza Talaei said the crackdown would form part of an all-out war against social vices, the Hambastegi newspaper quoted him as saying. “In accordance with the law, the police will confront those who appear in public in an indecent and inappropriate way,” Talaei said.
Meanwhile, Iran expects Europe to respond at a meeting today to its proposal to allow uranium enrichment, despite Western demands that it abandon such nuclear fuel work to guarantee it will not make atomic weapons, a senior Iranian diplomat said. “We are waiting to hear what the Europeans have to say about our ideas on our fuel production program,” senior Iranian negotiator Cyrus Nasseri told AFP ahead of the EU-Iran talks in Geneva.
In another development, eight students have been handed suspended prison terms for insulting President Mohammad Khatami and acting against Iran’s national security, a leading reformist student union member said yesterday. “Four students from Sistan-Baluchistan (in southeast Iran) received suspended prison terms of a year each,” said Abdollah Momeni, head of the Office of Consolidating Unity (OCU), told AFP. “Another four students from Tabriz Sahand University (northwest Iran) received a collective suspended prison term of 99 months and are barred from studying for a year.”
