Efforts to tighten restrictions on women in Iran have reignited the protest movement that saw the country’s streets flooded with furious Iranians for more than half a year.
Calls to commemorate Mahsa Jina Amini, the Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in police custody last year, have rocketed on social media in the wake of announcements strengthening the country’s morality police.
The hashtag which means “the anniversary of Mahsa” has been posted almost 350,000 times since mid-June, according to Sky News analysis of data from Talkwalker, a social listening platform.
Amini’s death prompted almost daily demonstrations across the country, with protesters calling for regime change in what has become known as the Women Life Freedom movement or the #MahsaAminimovement.
Amini, 22, died just days before her birthday in September last year after being arrested for reportedly not wearing her hijab (head covering) correctly.
By December, in an apparent concession to the protesters, Iran reduced the role of the country’s morality police, who enforce religious rules, such as the compulsory wearing of head coverings.
But earlier this month, patrols monitoring women’s clothing resumed publicly. Women not wearing a hijab can be potentially detained.
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Although the large-scale protests have dwindled under the force of the state’s violent crackdown, many Iranian women are still refusing to wear a head covering in public.
Videos showing the treatment of women in Iran have begun to circulate more widely once again after the news broke on Sunday that the morality police’s position would be strengthened.
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In this clip, a young woman in jeans and a white top is being physically grabbed and pushed by a woman dressed in conservative clothing in a side street of a trendy Tehran neighbourhood.
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Another video shows a similar confrontation, this time in the city of Karaj.
The young woman has been challenged because she is not wearing a head covering. She tells the person filming: “I’m not afraid of you, or anybody else.”
Protesters’ faces are usually blurred in videos like these, but this time the woman’s face is visible. Sky News has decided to obscure her identity for the woman’s safety.
The watermark on the video suggests it was first circulated among groups linked to the Iranian security force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), and Sky News has found the video has been shared in regime-linked groups on messaging app Telegram.
However, it has since been widely shared by protesters who praise her bravery.
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4:03
British-Iranian journalist Sahar Zand spoke to protesters, and found out what happened to the demonstrations.
Videos like these are shared online by Iranian protesters in the hope of drawing the attention of the international community.
Professor Ali Ansari, director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews, explains that the “armed peace” between the regime and the protesters has now shifted.
He said: “The protesters have felt that they’ve gone as far as they could for that particular time and they needed to regroup.
“The regime felt it needed to ‘calm things down’. Over the past few months they’ve built up this narrative that it’s time to bring this back but actually adherence to the veil in a lot of the big cities has really fallen away very, very badly as far as they’re concerned.”
Professor Ansari said it’s been estimated that around 20% of women in Tehran aren’t wearing the veil at all, which he describes as “an astonishing level” of the population.
Image: A woman walks down a street in Iran with her hair uncovered
He said: “I suspect what will happen is that you’re going to see these things will go viral and things will pick up again and anger will build up. The likelihood is it will generate further riots or demonstrations. Perhaps not immediately, but it’ll be a matter of time before someone else is killed by the morality police.”
The regime has regularly throttled internet access within the country in an attempt to limit its citizen’s connection to the wider world, something Netblocks, an organisation that monitors internet freedom, says is still happening now.
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Diana Nammi, the executive director of the UK-based Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO), told Sky News the Iranian government is attempting to suppress the movement, using violence and intimidation, but that women will continue to protest.
She said: “In spite of the danger, women in Iran will not stand down.
“So many are demonstrating their defiance against the repression by going out, without wearing the hijab. The movement is like a continuous fire burning under the ashes, with sparks flying all across the country.”
More than 500 demonstrators have lost their lives and thousands have been arrested, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). Several protesters have been executed by the state.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
It was one sentence among the many words Donald Trump spoke this week that caught my attention.
Midway through a jaw-dropping news conference where he sensationally claimed to have “found an answer on autism”, he said: “Bobby (Kennedy) wants to be very careful with what he says, but I’m not so careful with what I say.”
The US president has gone from pushing the envelope to completely unfiltered.
Last Sunday, moments after Charlie Kirk‘s widow Erika had publicly forgiven her husband’s killer, Mr Trump told the congregation at his memorial service that he “hates his opponents”.
Image: President Donald Trump embraces Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika. Pic: AP
The president treats professional disapproval not as a liability but as evidence of authenticity, fuelling the aura that he is a challenger of conventions.
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“I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell,” he told his audience, deriding Europe’s approach to immigration as a “failed experiment of open borders”.
Image: Mr Trump addresses the UN General Assembly in New York. Pic: Reuters
Then came a U-turn on Ukraine, suggesting the country could win back all the land it has lost to Russia.
Most politicians would be punished for inconsistency, but Mr Trump recasts this as strategic genius – framing himself as dictating the terms.
It is hard to keep track when his expressed hopes for peace in Ukraine and Gaza are peppered with social media posts condemning the return of Jimmy Kimmel to late-night television.
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2:29
Trump’s major shift in Ukraine policy
Perhaps most striking of all is his reaction to the indictment of James Comey, the FBI director he fired during his first term.
In theory, this should raise questions about the president’s past conflicts with law enforcement, but he frames it as vindication, proof that his enemies fall while he survives.
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0:49
Ex-FBI chief: ‘Costs to standing up to Trump’
Mr Trump has spent much of his political career cultivating an image of a man above the normal consequences of politics, law or diplomacy, but he appears to feel more invincible than ever.
Russia has launched a massive drone attack on Ukraine’s capital this morning, injuring at least six people, Kyiv’s military administration has said.
Poland closed the airspace near two of its southeastern cities, Lublin and Rzeszow, as its air force scrambled jets in response to Russia’s attack on Kyiv.
Drones flew over Kyiv and anti-aircraft fire rang out through the night in what independent monitors said was one of the biggest strikes on the city since the Ukraine war began in February 2022.
The attack started at around 6am local time and many regions across the country are under air raid alert.
Some residents have fled to metro stations deep underground for safety as the attack continues.
Poland said it had closed its airspace near the two cities until at least 4am GMT due to “unplanned military activity related to ensuring state security”, flight tracking service Flightradar24 said.
“In connection with the activity of the Russian Federation’s long-range aviation carrying out strikes on the territory of Ukraine, Polish and allied aircraft have begun operating in our airspace,” the military said in a post on X.
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It described the actions as preventive and aimed at securing airspace and protecting citizens.
It comes as Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was expected to address allegations made against Moscow that it has violated the airspace of several of its neighbours in recent weeks, as he spoke in New York at the 80th UN General Assembly.
During his address, Mr Lavrov, who has been Russia’s foreign minister for 21 years, says his country had no intention of attacking any NATO or EU member state but warned of a “decisive response” if any “aggression” was directed towards Moscow.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Vladimir Putin’s top diplomat says Russia has no intention of attacking any NATO or EU member state but warned of a “decisive response” if any “aggression” was directed towards Moscow.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia‘s foreign minister of 21 years, was speaking in New York at the 80th UN General Assembly, where he said threats against his country by Western nations were becoming “increasingly common”.
He was expected to address allegations made against Moscow that it has violated the airspace of several of its neighbours in recent weeks, heightening tensions across Europe.
Romania and Latvia also reported that single Russian drones had violated their airspace this month.
“Threats of force against Russia, accused of practically planning an attack on the North Atlantic Alliance and the European Union, are becoming increasingly common,” Mr Lavrov said in New York.
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“President Putin has repeatedly debunked such provocations. Russia has never had and does not have such intentions, but any aggression against my country will be met with a decisive response.”
At the start of the week, US President Donald Trump told the UN that NATO nations should shoot down Russian planes in their airspace.
‘They will regret it’
After his UN address, Mr Lavrov held a news conference, where he insisted again that Moscow “has nothing to hide” over the allegations against it.
He was then asked by US correspondent Mark Stone what the Kremlin’s response would be if a nation shot down a Russian drone or plane in Russian airspace.
“Try to understand that a drone, when it is flying not over our territory, but if it crosses someone’s border but has left our airspace, probably everyone has the right to do with that drone whatever they consider necessary to ensure their security.
“But if there are attempts to shoot down any flying object, or indeed any object at all, on our territory, in our airspace, then I think people will seriously regret it, undertaking such a gross violation of our territorial integrity, our sovereignty.”
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2:11
Watch: Sergei Lavrov answers Sky News question in New York
‘Hypocrisy’ over Gaza comments
At the start of his UN speech, Mr Lavrov took time to criticise Israel’s actions in the Middle East, accusing it of trying to “blow up” the region and saying it had “no justification” for the “brutal killings” of Palestinians in Gaza.
“The illegal use of force against the Palestinians and aggressive actions against Iran, Qatar, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq today threaten to blow up the entire Middle East.”
He also hit out at Israeli plans to annex the West Bank: “There is no justification for plans to annex the West Bank. This is essentially a coup d’etat in diplomatic terms.”
Israel has repeatedly claimed that it does not target civilians in Gaza and says its military actions across the Middle East are strategically vital for its self-defence.
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2:44
Mark Stone reflects on Sergei Lavrov’s UN address
Mark Stone said Mr Lavrov’s comments on Israel’s actions will be seen as highly hypocritical given Russia’s war in Ukraine which began in February 2022.
“Lavrov said Israel is bombing schools, it is bombing hospitals in Gaza,” Stone said.
“Well, remember Mariupol and the rest of those cities in Ukraine, where Russia has and continues to do just the same thing? There’s a certain hypocrisy there, for sure.”