Videos show Iranian women being snatched from the streets by other women under the cover of war with Israel
In Tehran’s Revolution Square, two women clad in long black burqas approach another woman, dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and a hijab, or head scarf.
She tries to walk away, but one of the women in burqas grabs her by her sleeve and pulls her back, yanking her onto the ground. She is surrounded, wrapped in a blanket and bundled into a white van.
The scene is from one of many videos that have been circulating widely on social media in recent weeks, showing incidents of the latest crackdown by Iran’s so-called morality police.
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Source: Iran International
But this time, another enforcement group is more visibly working alongside the regime – and they are also women.
Sky News has analysed dozens of videos showing incidents of authorities’ renewed campaign targeting women for not properly wearing their hijab in accordance with the regime’s strict sharia law.
“Before this new wave of attacks started, I was planning to get rid of some of my longer clothes, because I don’t feel comfortable in them,” said Leila, an Iranian woman in her 20s living in Tehran. She spoke to Sky News on condition of anonymity.
“Now, I find myself wearing those even though I hate them, because I think I wouldn’t feel safe going out of my house wearing something that I could potentially lose my life over, or that I could get arrested for.”
‘Ambassadors of Kindness’
What’s notable about this recent spate of arrests is the increased presence of women in burqas, considered by Iranian leaders as the most modest form of dress, working with authorities.
They are part of a new enforcement group, dubbed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as “Ambassadors of Kindness”, who are helping enforce harsh regulations and silence dissent, one expert said.
Some young Iranians are calling them “bats”.
Leila was recently in the street when she spotted the police and stopped to cover her hair. She was then approached by a woman wearing a full hijab who told her she should “be afraid of God, not the police”.
“The truth is that when someone is wearing full hijab I am afraid that she might be with the police,” she said.
It’s not the first time the IRGC has employed women to help them. But Hadi Ghaemi, director of New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), says they’ve increased in number, as have the physical presence of morality police, white vans and police cars, which are used in the arrests of women on the street.
“They’re not armed, but they’re meant to go intimidate women by politely and kindly warning them. Then if the woman doesn’t listen, they call over security forces,” said Mr Ghaemi.
“What’s really scary is the way [authorities] are recommending citizens turn on citizens.”
War at home
As Iran launched its first ever attack on Israel, it intensified this less-noticed war at home.
Three days before it flew missiles into Israel, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, said that women in the Islamic Republic must obey the dress code, regardless of their beliefs.
Then on Saturday 13 April, Tehran’s police chief Abbas Ali Mohammadian said people who ignored prior warnings faced legal action.
Read the latest on the Israel-Hamas war here
Not long after his statement was released, videos showing white police vans on the streets of cities across Iran went viral.
Iranian authorities say their Nour (Persian for ‘light’) campaign targets businesses and individuals who defy hijab law and responds to demands from devout citizens who are angry about the growing number of unveiled women in public.
“The level of brutality is very, very high right now,” said Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American journalist and activist.
“This time they are more emboldened. You can see it on their faces and see it from the huge number of them.”
In one video analysed by Sky News, at least six officers wearing yellow vests appear to be arresting one woman outside a train station in Tehran. She resists but fails to break free, and is ushered into a white van.
In another video posted the same day authorities announced their campaign, footage shows a cluster of white police cars, vans, and men in uniform in Tehran’s Valiasr Square.
Sky News was able to verify the precise location of the videos and the date each clip first appeared online.
Women and girls arrested
Morality police vans had largely vanished from the streets of Iran since last year, when widespread protests erupted across the country in the wake of the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman who died while being detained for improperly wearing her hijab.
Read more: Who was Mahsa Amini?
Mahsa Amini. Pic: Center for Human Rights in Iran
Police now appear to be back out in force, as a draconian ‘hijab and chastity’ bill is also currently making its way through the country’s parliament. One group of students reported new facial recognition software installed at a university dormitory.
But while street protests have died down, resistance to the regime’s hardline policies has not.
Iranian authorities released footage purporting to show members of the public being rude to, and lashing out at, morality police.
![A video from Iranian authorities, with the subtitle: 'The beating of the oppressed and powerful agents of Faraja [law enforcement] by the female beasts of the Women, Life, Freedom movement'](https://e3.365dm.com/24/04/768x432/skynews-iran-women_6537677.jpg?20240429173946)
A video from Iranian authorities, with the subtitle: ‘The beating of the oppressed and powerful agents of Faraja [law enforcement] by the female beasts of the Women, Life, Freedom movement.’
But this has backfired, said Ms Alinejad: “Now that video is going viral because people are so proud of the young women.”
Mina, another Iranian woman, had her car confiscated for three weeks last year because of her hijab. But she remains defiant.
Read more: Death sentence imposed on Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi
“We fight not only to have the right to choose coverage, but to have the right to choose a lifestyle,” she said.
Another video showed the arrest of a woman for allegedly not wearing her hijab in Haft Tir metro station in Tehran.
But a crowd surrounded her, chanting “free her” and calling the police “dishonoured.” Not long after the noise began, the police released the woman.
The ‘war against women’
As these videos went viral, so did talk about Iran’s “war on women”. Since 12 April there has been a steady rise in the number of times the Farsi for ‘mandatory hijab’ (حجاب اجباری) was used across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
On 11 April the phrase was used 585 times – but by 22 April it was mentioned in almost 10,000 posts, according to social listening platform Talkwalker.
The hashtag #IRGCTerrorists was also repeatedly used to accompany posts about discrimination against women. This peaked on 16 April, when more than 234,000 posts used this hashtag.
Farsi for ‘War against women’ (جنگ_علیه_زنان) then surged the following day and was used almost 30,000 times. Some 42% of these posts came from Iran itself.
What is next for the women of Iran?
“The anger among Iranians is much stronger and heavier than before,” Mina said.
“I don’t think they are going to give up that fight. The flame of revolution is still burning in Iran.”
Some women, she said, are willing to risk imprisonment: “They would rather get arrested but not live in humiliation and not live under these barbaric officers walking in the streets.”
Additional reporting by John Sparks, International correspondent, Sam Doak, OSINT producer
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.
World
Donald Trump says Vladimir Putin wants to meet – and that he and Barack Obama ‘probably’ like each other
Donald Trump says a meeting is being set up between himself and Vladimir Putin – and that he and Barack Obama “probably” like each other.
Republican US president-elect Mr Trump spoke to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday, saying Russian president Mr Putin “wants to meet, and we are setting it up”.
“He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess,” Mr Trump said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday there was a “mutual desire” to set up a meeting – but added no details had been confirmed yet and that there may be progress once Mr Trump is inaugurated on 20 January.
“Moscow has repeatedly declared its openness to contacts with international leaders, including the US president, including Donald Trump,” Mr Peskov added.
“What is required is a mutual desire and political will to conduct dialogue and resolve existing problems through dialogue. We see that Mr Trump also declares his readiness to resolve problems through dialogue. We welcome this. There are still no specifics, we proceed from the mutual readiness for the meeting.”
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in July 2017. Pic: AP
Trump on Obama: ‘We just got along’
Mr Trump also made some lighter remarks regarding a viral exchange between himself and former Democrat President Barack Obama at Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Thursday.
The pair sat together for the late president’s service in Washington DC on Thursday, and could be seen speaking for several minutes as the remaining mourners filed in before it began.
Mr Obama was seen nodding as his successor spoke before breaking into a grin.
Asked about the exchange, Mr Trump said: “I didn’t realise how friendly it looked.
“I said, ‘boy, they look like two people that like each other’. And we probably do.
“We have a little different philosophies, right? But we probably do. I don’t know. We just got along. But I got along with just about everybody.”
The amicable exchange comes after years of criticising each other in the public eye; it was Mr Trump who spread the so-called “birther” conspiracy theory about Mr Obama in 2011, falsely asserting that he was not born in the United States.
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Insults continued for years, with Mr Obama famously dedicating much of his final White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech in 2016 to jokes at his political rival’s expense.
Mr Trump has repeatedly attacked the Obamas, saying the former president was “ineffective” and “terrible” and calling former first lady Michelle Obama “nasty” as recently as October last year.
On Kamala Harris’s campaign trail last year, Mr Obama said Mr Trump was a “78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago”, while the former first lady said that “the consequences of him ever being president again are brutally serious.”
World
‘The future is in our hands’ scientists say, as 2024 becomes first year to pass 1.5C global warming threshold
Last year was the warmest on record, the first to breach a symbolic threshold, and brought with it deadly impacts like flooding and drought, scientists have said.
Two new datasets found 2024 was the first calendar year when average global temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – before humans started burning fossil fuels at scale.
The record heat has not only has real-world implications, as it contributed to deadly flooding in Spain and vicious drought in places like Zambia in southern Africa.
It is also highly symbolic.
Countries agreed in the landmark Paris Agreement to limit warming ideally to 1.5C, because after that the impacts would be much more dangerous.
The news arrives as California battles “hell on earth” wildfires, suspected to have been exacerbated by climate change.
And it comes as experts warn support for the Paris goals is “more fragile than ever” – with Donald Trump and the Argentinian president poised to row back on climate action.
What caused 2024 record heat – and is it here to stay?
Friends of the Earth called today’s findings from both the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change service and the Met Office “deeply disturbing”.
The “primary driver” of heat in the last two years was climate change from human activity, but the temporary El Nino weather phenomenon also contributed, they said.
The breach in 2024 does not mean the world has forever passed 1.5C of warming – as that would only be declared after several years of doing so, and warming may slightly ease this year as El Nino has faded.
But the world is “teetering on the edge” of doing so, Copernicus said.
Prof Piers Forster, chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, called it a “foretaste of life at 1.5C”.
Dr Gabriel Pollen, Zambia’s national coordinator for disasters, said “no area of life and the economy is untouched” by the country’s worst drought in more than 100 years.
Six million people face starvation, critical hydropower has plummeted, blackouts are frequent, industry is “decimated”, and growth has halved, he said.
Paris goal ‘not obsolete’
Scientists were at pains to point out it is not too late to curb worse climate change, urging leaders to maintain and step up climate action.
Professor Forster said temporarily breaching 1.5C “does not mean the goal is obsolete”, but that we should “double down” on slashing greenhouse gas emissions and on adapting to a hotter world.
The Met Office said “every fraction of a degree” still makes a difference to the severity of extreme weather.
The California fires were whipped up by strong, dry winds and likely worsened by climate change. Pic: Reuters
Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo added: “The future is in our hands: swift and decisive action can still alter the trajectory of our future climate”.
Climate action is ‘economic opportunity’
Copernicus found that global temperatures in 2024 averaged 15.10°C, the hottest in records going back to 1850, making it 1.60°C above the pre-industrial level during 1850-1900.
The Met Office’s data found 2024 was 1.53C above pre-industrial levels.
The figures are global averages, which smooth out extremes from around the world into one number. That is why it still might have felt cold in some parts of the world last year.
Greenpeace campaigner Philip Evans said as “the world’s most powerful climate denier” Donald Trump returns to the White House, others must “take up the mantle of global climate leadership”.
The UK’s climate minister Kerry McCarthy said the UK has been working with other countries to cut global emissions, as well as greening the economy at home.
“Not only is this crucial for our planet, it is the economic opportunity of the 21st century… tackling the climate crisis while creating new jobs, delivering energy security and attracting new investment into the UK.”
World
Picture shows baby girl moments after birth on packed migrant dinghy heading for Canary Islands
Photographs have captured the moments after a baby girl was born on a packed migrant dinghy heading for the Canary Islands.
The small boat was carrying 60 people and had embarked from Tan-Tan – a Moroccan province 135 nautical miles (250km) away.
One image shows the baby lying on her mother’s lap as other passengers help the pair.
The boat’s passengers – a total of 60 people, including 14 women and four children – were rescued by a Spanish coastguard ship.
Coastguard captain Domingo Trujillo said: “The baby was crying, which indicated to us that it was alive and there were no problems, and we asked the woman’s permission to undress her and clean her.
“The umbilical cord had already been cut by one of her fellow passengers. The only thing we did was to check the child, give her to her mother and wrap them up for the trip.”
Coastguards rescued all 60 people aboard the boat. Pic: Salvmento Maritimo/Reuters
The mother and baby were taken for medical checks and treated with antibiotics, medical authorities said.
Dr Maria Sabalich, an emergency coordinator of the Molina Orosa University Hospital in Lanzarote, said: “They are still in the hospital, but they are doing well.”
When they are discharged from hospital, the pair will be moved to a humanitarian centre for migrants, a government official said.
They will then most likely be relocated to a reception centre for mothers and children on another of the Canary Islands, they added.
Thousands of migrants board boats attempting to make the perilous journey from the African coast to the Spanish Canaries each year.
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In 2024, a total of 9,757 people died on the route, according to Spanish migration charity Walking Borders.
Mr Trujillo said: “Almost every night we leave at dawn and arrive back late.
“This case is very positive, because it was with a newborn, but in all the services we do, even if we are tired, we know we are helping people in distress.”
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