#Hossein Amini

[cinemgc]

Obi-Wan Kenobi (1ª Temp.)

Episodio 3: ''Part III''

• Dirección: Deborah Chow

• Guion: Joby Harold, Hannah Friedman, Hossein Amini, Stuart Beattie

• Cinematografía: Chung-hoon Chung

• Cast: Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor

[cinesludge]

Movie #71 of 2023: Drive

Driver: "My hands are a little dirty."

Bernie Rose: "So are mine."

[flawless-v1ctory]

Oscar Isaac in The Two Faces of January (2014) dir. Hossein Amini

[girlrandomstuff]

Lets see if I can help you, but yeah this is so inconsistent.

Celly is Bail's sister in Legends, and her name is Celly Organa. In Legends Bail gives his family name to Breha and then Leia. In canon, Breha is the to give her last name to Bail and Leia since she's the Queen, in canon, Breha was born from a previous Queen or King, Bail was not, he's Prince Consort or Viceroy through marriage not through blood, family line or right. My guess is that they wanted to bring one of Leia's aunt to screen but they didn't knew how so they just grabed Celly Organa's name and since in canon Organa is Breha's family name they just turned Celly into Breha's sister, which is weird cuz i think it would have been easier if they just took Breha's sister from Legends and just change her last name to Organa.

I really try not to think much about it but thanks for giving me the chance to rant about this topic cuz it makes me ask a lot of questions about the story line 😅

Dagnabit, I don’t want to be one of these people because canon is all made up and none of it matters but…is Celly Breha’s sister or Bail’s? Because she’s Bail’s in Legends material, but the character is named “Duchess Celly Organa” in Obi-Wan Kenobi credits, and I was all ready to just say she’s Breha’s now, but then I made the mistake of picking up my copy of Leia, Princess of Alderaan, in which it is stated that if Breha had died during her fall from that mountain, they would have been without an heir to the throne and, like, surely Celly qualifies if she was her sister???

[brokehorrorfan]

Drive will be released Steelbook 4K Ultra HD (with Blu-ray and Digital) on August 27 via Sony. The 2011 neo-noir action drama is based on James Sallis's 2005 novel of the same name.

Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson, The Neon Demon) directs from a script by Hossein Amini (Snow White and the Huntsman). Ryan Gosling stars with Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, Oscar Isaac, and Albert Brooks.

Drive is presented in 4K with Dolby Vision, approved by Refn. Special features are listed below, where you can also see the full Steelbook layout.

Disc 1 - 4K UHD:

Back in the Driver's Sea – Interviews with actors Christina Hendricks and Ron Perlman, writer Hossein Amini, editor Mat Newman, and composer Cliff Martinez

Theatrical trailer

Disc 2 - Blu-ray:

Interview with director Nicolas Winding Refn Documentary

I Drive: The Driver featurette

Driver and Irene: The Relationship featurette

Under the Hood: Story featurette

Cut to the Chase: Stunts featurette

When the lightning-fast wheelman (Ryan Gosling) incurs the wrath of L.A.'s most dangerous criminal (Albert Brooks), the only way out of the mess is to put the pedal to the metal.

Pre-order Drive.

[mariacallous]

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died on Sunday when a helicopter carrying him and a delegation of other Iranian officials crash-landed in the mountains of northern Iran, throwing the future of the country and the region into further doubt.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other top officials were also killed in the crash as the group was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, the Iranian state-run Islamic Republic News Agency confirmed. Dense fog impeded search and rescue operations for hours before the crash site was found. The fog was so thick that it forced the Iranians to call on the support of European Union satellites to help locate the helicopter. 

Raisi’s death puts a coda on a short but transformative era in Iranian politics that saw the country lurch in a hard-line direction and threatened to bring the Middle East to the brink of regional war. In nearly three years in power, Raisi moved Iran’s domestic politics and social policy in a more conservative direction and pushed the country further into the role of clear U.S. antagonist in the region after his predecessor, Hassan Rouhani—who defeated him in the 2017 presidential election—first sought a detente with the West over Iran’s nuclear program before stepping up proxy attacks.

An Islamic jurist noted for his close relationship with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and considered by many officials and experts as a likely candidate to succeed the aging supreme leader, Raisi’s tenure saw Iran speed up uranium enrichment and slow down negotiations on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action after the United States exited the deal in 2018, three years before he came into office.

Iran under Raisi also supported Russia in its war against Ukraine with extensive exports of Shahed suicide drones and artillery; increased attacks by regional proxy militias against the United States and Israel after Hamas’s October 2023 cross-border attack on Israel; and just a month before his death launched a massive drone and missile attack against Israel. 

Experts say that regardless of who replaces Raisi, the strategy he pursued is unlikely to change, having been solidified among the higher echelons of Iran’s political and clerical leadership. 

“With Raisi, without Raisi, the regime is quite content with the way the post-Oct. 7 Middle East has been shaking out,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow focused on Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). “It’s been able to continue its death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy, firing directly against the U.S. and Israel via proxy and then even directly a few times itself with the tit-for-tat you saw in April, and still look like it won the round.”

Under the Iranian Constitution, First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber is likely to fill in as head of the cabinet for the next 50 days until elections can be called. Recent parliamentary elections drew record-low turnouts, analysts said. What’s more, significant effort was expended by Khamenei and his allies to ensure Raisi’s win during the last presidential election in 2021, disqualifying potential rivals. 

Before becoming president, Raisi served on Iran’s prosecution committee that was responsible for executing an estimated 5,000 dissidents in 1988. He had been accused of crimes against humanity by the United Nations and was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department. And that heavy-handed approach continued with the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police in September 2022 after allegedly not wearing a hijab properly in public, which sparked nationwide protests. 

Beyond the horizon of snap elections and the presidential election set for next year, there is potential for upheaval at the top of Iran’s ruling class. With a short line of possible successors to the 85-year-old Khamenei, other than the head of state’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, Raisi’s death could throw the country’s political future into further turmoil. 

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the largest branch of the Iranian armed forces that controls major swaths of the country’s economy, could also use the upheaval to strengthen its hand.

“There is no heir apparent if he’s gone,” said David Des Roches, a professor at the National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies and retired U.S. Army colonel. “What’s really interesting is to see if the IRGC will basically complete a slow-motion coup.”

As rescue workers searched for Raisi’s downed helicopter, state media asked the Iranian people to pray for him. Instead, in the wake of reports of the crash, some Iranians appeared to light celebratory fireworks, cheering the demise of the hard-line leader.

“Today’s crash & likely death of president Raisi and his [foreign minister] will shake up Iranian politics,” Afshon Ostovar, an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and a longtime Iran expert, wrote in a post on X before the president’s death had been confirmed. “Regardless of the cause, perceptions of foul play will be rife within the regime. Ambitious elements may press for advantage, compelling reactions from other parts of the regime. Buckle up.” 

While experts said it was unlikely that a liberalizing figure would emerge in either snap elections or Iran’s 2025 presidential election, Raisi’s death could leave a small opening for resurgent protest movements that have persisted under the surface. 

“These movements are not dead,” said Ben Taleblu, the FDD expert. “They operate on the low level, on the periphery—usually strikes, labor unions, that kind of thing. It could lead to a nationwide trigger, and it could be a nothing burger. But the story of the Iranian protest movement is always a matter of when and not if.”

[female-malice]

The Iranian regime has executed more than 127 people, including women and children, since the Hamas attacks of 7 October, according to human rights groups.

According to data collected by Iran Human Rights (IHR) and the Norway-based organisation Hengaw, which have been cross-referenced by the Observer, there has been an alarming rise in executions since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas.

A third group, Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRA), confirmed that there has been a significant increase in executions since the 7 October attacks, stating that on Wednesday last week, the regime executed seven people within a 24-hour period.

Human rights activists and the families of those put to death have accused the regime of using the world’s preoccupation with war in Gaza as a cover to exact revenge on dissidents and put people to death without due judicial process.

“Since the start of the war, there has been little international focus on the human rights situation in Iran, and there has been no substantial response to the significant increase in executions,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of IHR, who added that his organisation has recorded double the number of executions in October and November compared with August and September.

Those who have been put to death in the last two months include a child, 17-year-old Hamidreza Azari, whose death was labelled “deplorable” by the UN last week.

IHR claims that Azari was executed for murder at Sabzevar prison after giving a “forced confession”, and that state media falsely gave his age as 18 when reporting his death.

Iran has also executed 22-year-old Milad Zohrevand, the eighth protester linked to the Women, Life, Freedom movement to face the death penalty for participating in the nationwide anti-regime protests that erupted across Iran last year following the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who died while in police custody after allegedly being arrested for breaching Iran’s strict dress code.

The UN also condemned Zohrevand’s execution, saying that “available information indicates that his trial lacked the basic requirements for due process under international human rights law” and that it was “troubled” by reports that Zohrevand’s parents were arrested following his execution.

In October, the UN condemned the Iranian regime for carrying out executions at an “alarming rate”. It said, according to its data, at least 419 people were put to death between January and July this year, which constitutes a 30% increase compared with the same time period in 2022.

But Iranian human rights groups now say that the surge of executions over the past two months has pushed the total number of death sentences carried out by the regime since the beginning of 2023 to more than 700. Civil rights activists inside the country say the executions come at a time of sustained and brutal repression by the Iranian authorities determined to re-establish their authority after months of protests and unrest.

“We face increasing restrictions due to the dozens of morality police on the streets, and we face harassment or arrests if we even share the news of executions or killings on social media. They are using the silence of the international community to avenge our calls for freedom,” said one political activist inside Iran, who said they have already been detained multiple times.

The regime has faced allegations that it is carrying out death sentences in secret, without informing family members and without giving those facing execution access to legal representation.

The family of 27-year-old Hossein Ali Dil Baluch, who was handed the death penalty for drug offences, say he had reportedly had his sentence reduced due to lack of evidence before he was suddenly executed in secret at Birjand central prison on 19 October. His family say they were not told in advance and did not have the chance to see him before he died.

“In the majority of these cases, at least 95%, the defendants lacked legal representation and didn’t have a lawyer to support them,” said Moein Khazaeli, a human rights lawyer at Dadban, a centre for counselling and legal education of activists.

“In most of the cases in the hands of the revolutionary court, the defendants didn’t even have access to the case files and didn’t even know what the accusations were.”

Activists and protesters who spoke to the Observer said the repression of those critical of the regime and those belonging to minority groups also continues to rise in Sistan-Baluchistan, Kurdish regions and among the Baha’i community.

Since the beginning of October, 38 Baha’i citizens have been collectively sentenced to more than 133 years of imprisonment by judicial authorities, according to human rights groups. The Baha’i community constitutes Iran’s largest non-Muslim minority and has been subjected to mass arrests, abductions and long-term imprisonment.

Human rights activists also say that in recent weeks the regime has been carrying out executions of prisoners who have been detained for years, sometimes decades, as their cases move through the judicial system.

Meysam Chandani was 22 when he was arrested in Sistan-Baluchistan province by the Islamic Republic’s intelligence forces in Saravan in 2011 and charged with “waging war against god”. Activists claim that for years Chandani faced torture and was refused medical help before his death on 11 November.

Many of those put to death in recent weeks had been charged with drug-related offences.

On 15 November, Zarkhaton Mazarzehi, 46, who was a mother and grandmother, was put to death after being charged with drug-related offences. A relative said she was a widow and supporting her whole family when she was arrested, and that after she was charged she was not given access to a lawyer and denied the charges.

“Zarkhaton did not surrender to the pressure [to confess],” they said. “The world shouldn’t doubt that the executions in Baluchistan have increased and will continue to increase in order to create terror among the people.”

The Baluch minority, most of whom are Sunni Muslims, have been disproportionately targeted, accounting for nearly one-third of all executions. The vast majority of Iran’s Muslims are Shia.

In the past few months, there has also been a wave of arrests of dissidents and lengthy sentences handed down to anti-regime protesters.

In November, Mahsa Yazdani, whose son was reportedly killed after being shot by security forces during an anti-regime protest in 2022, was sentenced to 13 years in prison after she demanded justice for her child on social media.

At the end of October, Iranian authorities also arrested Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent lawyer and human rights defender, as she attended the funeral of a teenage girl who died after a disputed metro incident with a member of Iran’s morality police.

[beardedmrbean]

Two British citizens have been detained in Iran, the Foreign Office has said.

British officials are providing consular assistance to both of the individuals, a government spokesperson said.

The Foreign Office said it was in contact with Iranian authorities.

Iranian state media reported that two British nationals – a man and a woman – had been detained on security-related charges and were held in the southeastern city of Kerman.

Iran’s official news agency Irna published blurred images of the two individuals meeting with the British ambassador at the Kerman prosecutor’s office, supposedly on Wednesday evening.

The individuals were not identified in the photographs or the state media report, and it is unclear when they were detained.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are providing consular assistance to two British Nationals detained in Iran and are in contact with the local authorities.”

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners in recent years, mostly on espionage and security-related charges.

Rights groups and some Western countries have accused Tehran of seeking to win concessions from other countries by detaining individuals on trumped-up security charges. Tehran denies arresting people for political reasons.

British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was held captive in Iran for years on spying charges, after being arrested at Tehran airport in 2016 and taken to Kerman ahead of a sham trial – lasting less than two hours – in which she was sentenced to five years in jail.

After years of uncertainty and extensive efforts by her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, to secure her freedom, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was eventually released in March 2022 alongside fellow dual national and retired businessman Anoosheh Ashoori.

Their release was linked to a 40-year-old debt of nearly £400m relating to an order for British tanks placed by the former Shah of Iran and cancelled midway through after he was toppled in the 1979 revolution.

Confirmation of the detention of two British citizens this week comes just days after the appointment of Tehran’s new ambassador to London, Seyyed Ali Mousavi, at a time when Britain’s allies in Washington have reimposed heavy economic sanctions on Iran.

The domestic security climate in Iran is also fraught with tension, with officials outlawing calls for protests over the 14-year detention of former presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard.

Earlier this week, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also pardoned two female journalists who reported the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022.

Ms Amini’s death sparked nationwide protests posing a major challenge to the Islamic Republic. Rights groups said at least 529 people were killed by security forces, while Tehran has acknowledged that tens of thousands were detained.

[newsinsider]

Who was Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi?

Ebrahim Raisi was an Iranian politician who served as eighth president of Iran from 2021 until his death in 2024.  A Principlist and a Muslim jurist, he became president after the 2021 election. In his early career, Raisi served in several positions in Iran's judicial system, including as Deputy Prosecutor and Prosecutor of Tehran. For his role on the so-called death committee during the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, he became known as the "Butcher of Tehran". He was sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control in accordance with Executive Order 13876. He was accused of crimes against humanity by international human rights organizations and United Nations special rapporteurs. He was later Deputy Chief Justice (2004–2014), Attorney General (2014–2016), and Chief Justice (2019–2021). He was Custodian and Chairman of Astan Quds Razavi, a bonyad, from 2016 until 2019. He was a member of Assembly of Experts from South Khorasan Province, being elected for the first time in the 2006 election. He was the son-in-law of Mashhad Friday prayer leader and Grand Imam of Imam Reza shrine, Ahmad Alamolhoda.

Raisi ran for president in 2017 as the candidate of the conservative Popular Front of Islamic Revolution Forces, losing to moderate incumbent president Hassan Rouhani, 57% to 38.3%. Raisi successfully ran for president a second time in 2021 with 62.9% of the votes, succeeding Hassan Rouhani. According to many observers, the 2021 Iranian presidential election was rigged in favour of Raisi, who was considered an ally of Ali Khamenei. Raisi was often seen as a frontrunner to succeed Khamenei as Supreme Leader, but he died in the 2024 Varzaqan helicopter crash. Considered a hardliner in Iranian politics, Raisi's presidency saw deadlock in negotiations with the U.S. over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and large-scale protests throughout the country in late 2022, triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini on 16 September. During Raisi's term, Iran intensified uranium enrichment, hindered international inspections, and supported Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Additionally, Iran launched a missile and drone attack on Israel during the Gaza conflict and continued arming proxy groups like Hezbollah and the Houthi movement.

Early life and education

Ebrahim Raisi was born on 14 December 1960 to a clerical family in the Noghan district of Mashhad. His father, Seyed Haji, died when he was 5. Ancestrally, Raisi was among Husayn ibn Ali (Hussaini) Sayyids, and he was connected to Ali ibn Husayn Zayn al-Abidin Sayyids. Raisi passed his primary-education in "Javadiyeh school"; then started studying in the Hawza (Islamic seminary). In 1975, he went to "Ayatollah Boroujerdi School" in order to continue his education in Qom Seminary.[citation needed] He has claimed to have received a doctorate degree in private law from Motahari University; however, this has been disputed. 

Clerical credentials

Raisi began his studies at the Qom Seminary at the age of 15. He then decided to study in the Navvab school for a short time. After that, he went to Ayatollah Sayyed Muhammad Mousavi Nezhad school, where he studied while also teaching other students. In 1976, he went to Qom to continue his studies at the Ayatollah Borujerdi school. He was a student of Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, Morteza Motahhari, Abolghasem Khazali, Hossein Noori Hamedani, Ali Meshkini and Morteza Pasandideh. Raisi also passed his "KharejeFeqh" (external-Fiqh) to Seyyed Ali Khamenei and Mojtaba Tehrani.  According to Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute, Raisi's "exact religious qualification" is a "sore point". "For a while" prior to investigation by the Iranian media, he "referred to himself" as "Ayatollah" on his personal website. However, according to Vatanka, the media "publicized his lack of formal religious education" and credentials, after which Raisi ceased claiming to hold the aforementioned rank. After this investigation and criticism he "refer[ed] to himself as hojat-ol-eslam", a clerical rank immediately beneath that of Ayatollah. Raisi subsequently again declared himself an Ayatollah shortly before the 2021 presidential election. The decree by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointing him as President, refers to him as a hojat-ol-eslam. 

Judicial career

Early years

In 1981, he was appointed the prosecutor of Karaj. Later on, he was also appointed Prosecutor of Hamadan and served both positions together. He was simultaneously active in two cities more than 300 km away from each other. After four months, he was appointed Prosecutor of Hamadan Province. 

Tehran deputy prosecutor

He was appointed Deputy prosecutor of Tehran in 1985 and moved to the capital.  After three years and in early 1988, he was placed in the attention of Ruhollah Khomeini and received special provisions (independent from judiciary) from him to address legal issues in some provinces like Lorestan, Semnan and Kermanshah.

Source : Wikipedia

[cinemgc]

Obi-Wan Kenobi (1ª Temp.)

Episodio 1: ''Part I''

• Dirección: Deborah Chow

• Guion: Joby Harold, Hossein Amini, Stuart Beattie

• Cinematografía: Chung-hoon Chung

• Cast: Ewan McGregor

[thedeathofmahsaaminion16sep]

The death of Mahsa Amini on 16 September 2022, while in police custody for wearing an “improper” hijab, has triggered what has become the most severe and sustained political upheaval ever faced by the Islamist regime in Iran. Waves of protests, led mostly by women, broke out immediately, sending some two-million people into the streets of 160 cities and small towns, inspiring extraordinary international support.1 The Twitter hashtag #MahsaAmini broke the world record of 284 million tweets, and the UN Human Rights Commission voted on November 24 to investigate the regime’s deadly repression, which has claimed five-hundred lives and put thousands of people under arrest and eleven hundred on trial. The regime’s suppression and the opponents’ exhaustion are likely to slow down the protests, but unlikely to end the uprising. For political life in Iran has embarked on an uncharted and irreversible course.

How do we make sense of this extraordinary political happening? This is neither a “feminist revolution” per se, nor simply the revolt of Generation Z, nor merely a protest against the mandatory hijab. This is a movement to reclaim life, a struggle to liberate free and dignified existence from an internal colonization. As the primary objects of this colonization, women have become the major protagonists of the liberation movement.

About the Author

Asef Bayat is professor of sociology, and Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His latest books include Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring (2021).

View all work by Asef Bayat

Since its establishment in 1979 Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s, the Islamic Republic has been a battlefield between hardline Islamists who wished to enforce theocracy in the form of clerical rule (velayat-e faqih), and those who believed in popular will and emphasized the republican tenets of the constitution. This ideological battle has produced decades of political and cultural strife within state institutions, during elections, and in the streets in daily life. The hardline Islamists in the nonelected institutions of the velayat-e faqih have been determined to enforce their “divine values” in political, social, and cultural domains. Only popular resistance from below and the reformists’ electoral victories could curb the hardliners’ drive for total subjugation of the state, society, and culture.

For two decades after the 1990s, elections gave most Iranians hope that a reformist path could gradually democratize the system. The 1997 election of the moderate Mohammad Khatami as president, following a notable social and cultural openness, was seen as a hopeful sign. But the hardliners saw the reform project as an existential threat to clerical rule, and they fought back fiercely. They sabotaged Khatami’s government, suppressed the student movement, shut down the critical press, and detained activists. After 2005, they went on banning reformist parties, meddling in the polls, and barring rival candidates from participating in the elections. The Green Movement—protesting the fraud against the reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in the 2009 presidential election—was the popular response to such a counterreform onslaught.

The Green revolt and the subsequent nationwide uprisings in 2017 and 2019 against socioeconomic ills and authoritarian rule profoundly challenged the Islamist regime but failed to alter it. The uprisings caused not a revolution but the fear of revolution—a fear that was compounded by the revolutionary uprisings against the allied regimes in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, which Iran helped to quell.2 Against such critical challenges, one would expect the Islamist regime to reinvent itself through a series of reforms to restore hegemony. But instead, the hardliners tightened their grip on political power in a bid to ensure their unrestrained hold over power after the supreme leader expires. Thus, once they took over the presidency in 2021 and the parliament in 2022 through rigged elections—specifically, through the arbitrary vetoing of credible rival candidates—the hardliners moved to subjugate a defiant people once again. Extending the “morality police” into the streets and institutions to enforce the “proper hijab” has been only one measure—but it was the one that unleashed a nationwide uprising in which women came to occupy a central place.

Women did not rise up suddenly to spearhead a revolt after Mahsa Amini’s death. Rather, it was the culmination of years of steady struggles against a systemic misogyny that the postrevolution regime established. When that regime abolished the relatively liberal Family Protection Laws of 1967, women overnight lost their right to initiate divorce, to assume child custody, to become judges, and to travel abroad without the permission of a male guardian. Polygamy came back, sex segregation was imposed, and all women were forced to wear the hijab in public. Social control and discriminatory quotas in education and employment compelled many women to stay at home, take early retirement, or work in informal or family businesses.

A segment of Muslim women did support the Islamic state, but others fought back. They took to the streets to protest the mandatory hijab, organized collective campaigns, and lobbied “liberal clerics” to secure a women-centered reinterpretation of religious texts. But when the regime extended its repression, women resorted to the “art of presence”—by which I mean the ability to assert collective will in spite of all odds, by circumventing constraints, utilizing what exists, and discovering new spaces within which to make themselves heard, seen, felt, and realized. Simply, women refused to exit public life, not through collective protests but through such ordinary things as pursuing higher education, working outside the home, engaging in the arts, music, and filmmaking, or practicing sports. The hardship of sweating under a long dress and veil did not deter many women from jogging, cycling, or playing basketball. And in the courts, they battled against discriminatory judgments on matters of divorce, child custody, inheritance, work, and access to public spaces. “Why do we have to get permission from Edareh-e Amaken [morality police] to get a hotel room, whereas men do not need such authorization?” a woman wrote in rage to the women’s magazine Zanan in 1988.3 Then, scores of unmarried women began to leave their family homes to live on their own. By 2010, one in three women between the ages of 20 and 35 had their own household. Many of them undertook what came to be known as “white marriage” (ezdevaj-e sefid), that is, moving in with their partners without formally marrying. These seemingly mundane desires and demands, however, were deemed to redefine the status of women under the Islamic Republic. Each step forward would establish a trench for a further advance against the patriarchy. The effect could snowball.

While many women, including my mother, wore the hijab voluntarily, for others it represented a coercive moralizing that had to be subverted. Those women began to push back their headscarves, allowing some of their hair to show in public. Over the years, headscarves gradually inched back further and further until finally they fell to the shoulders. Officials felt, time and again, paralyzed by this steady spread of bad-hijabi among millions of women who had to endure daily humiliation and punishment. With the initial jail penalty between ten days and two months, showing inches of hair had ignited decades of daily street battles between defiant women and multiple morality enforcers such as Sarallah(wrath of Allah), Amre beh Ma’ruf va Nahye az Monker(command good and forbid wrong), and Edareh Amaken(management of public places). According to a police report during the crackdown on bad-hijabis in 2013, some 3.6 million women were stopped and humiliated in the streets and issued formal citations. Of these, 180,000 were detained. But despite such treatment, women did not relent and eventually demanded an end to the mandatory hijab. Thus, over the years and through daily struggles, women established new norms in private and public life and taught them to their children, who have taken the mantle of their elders to push the struggle forward. The hardliners now want to halt that forward march.

This is the story of women’s “non-movement”—the collective and connective actions of non-collective actors who pursue not a politics of protest but of redress, through direct actions. Its aim is not a deliberate defiance of authorities but to establish alternative norms and life-making practices—practices that are necessary for a desired and dignified life but are denied to women. It is a slow but steady process of incremental claim-making that ultimately challenges the patriarchal-political authority.4 And now, that very “non-movement,” impelled by the murder of one of its own, Mahsa Amini, has given rise to an extraordinary political upheaval in which woman and her dignity, indeed human dignity, has become a rallying point.

Reclaiming Life

Today, the uprising is no longer limited to the mandatory hijab and women’s rights. It has grown to include wider concerns and constituencies—young people, students and teachers, middle-class families and workers, residents of some rural and poor communities, and those religious and ethnic minorities (Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, and Baluchis) who, like women, feel like second-class citizens and seem to identify with “Woman, Life, Freedom.” For these diverse constituencies, Mahsa Amini and her death embody the suffering that they have endured in their own lives—in their stolen youth, suppressed joy, and constant insecurity; in their poverty, debt, and drought; in their loss of land and livelihoods.

The thousands of tweets describing why people are protesting point time and again to the longing for a humble normal life denied to them by a regime of clerical and military patriarchs. For these dissenters, the regime appears like a colonial entity—with its alien thinking, feeling, and ruling—that has little to do with the lives and worldviews of the majority. This alien entity, they feel, has usurped the country and its resources, and continues to subjugate its people and their mode of living. “Woman, Life, Freedom” is a movement of liberation from this internal colonization. It is a movement to reclaim life. Its language is secular, wholly devoid of religion. Its peculiarity lies in its feminist facet.

But the feminism of the movement is not antagonistic to men. Rather, it embraces the subaltern, humiliated, and suffering men. Nor is this feminism reducible to the control of one’s body and the forced hijab—many traditional veiled women also identify with “Woman, Life, Freedom.” The feminism of the movement, rather, is antisystem; it challenges the systemic control of everyday life and the women at its core. It is precisely this antisystemic feminism that promises to liberate not only women but also the oppressed men—the marginalized, the minorities, and those who are demeaned and emasculatedby their failure to provide for their families due to economic misfortune. “Woman, Life, Freedom,” then, signifies a paradigm shift in Iranian subjectivity—recognition that the liberation of women may also bring the liberation of all other oppressed, excluded, and dejected people. This makes “Woman, Life, Freedom” an extraordinary movement.

Movement or Moment

Extraordinary yes, but is this a movement or a passing moment? Postrevolution Iran has witnessed numerous waves of nationwide protests. But this current episode seems fundamentally different. The Green revolt of 2009 was a powerful prodemocracy drive for an accountable government. It was largely a movement of the urban middle class and other discontented citizens. Almost a decade later, in the protests of 2017, tens of thousands of Iranian workers, students, farmers, middle-class poor, creditors, and women took to the streets in more than 85 cities for ten days before the government’s crackdown halted the rebellion.5 Some observers at the time considered the events a prelude to revolution. They were not. For although connected and concurrent, the protests were mostly concerned with sectoral claims—delayed wages for workers, drought for farmers, lost savings for creditors, and jobs for the young. As such, theirs was not a collective action of a united movement but connective actions of parallel concerns—a simultaneity of disparate protest actions that only the new information technologies could facilitate.A larger uprising in December 2019, which was triggered by a 200 percent rise in the price of gasoline, did see a measure of collective action, as different protesting groups—in particular the urban poor and the middle-class poor as well as the educated unemployed and underemployed—displayed a good degree of unity. Their central grievances concerned not only cost-of-living issues but also the absence of any prospects for the future. The protesters came largely from the marginalized areas of the cities and the provinces and followed radical tactics such as setting banks and government offices on fire and chanting antiregime slogans.

The current uprising has gone substantially further in message, size, and make-up. It has taken on a qualitatively different character and dynamics. This uprising has brought together the urban middle class, the middle-class poor, slum dwellers, and different ethnicities, including Kurds, Fars, Lors, Azeri Turks, and Baluchis—all under the banner of “Woman, Life, Freedom.” A collective claim has been created—one that has united diverse social groups to not only feel and share it, but also to act on it. With the emergence of the “people,” a super-collective in which differences of class, gender, ethnicity, and religion temporarily disappear in favor of a greater good, the uprising has assumed a revolutionary character. The abolition of the morality police and the mandatory hijab will no longer suffice. For the first time, a nationwide protest movement has called for a regime change and structural socioeconomic transformation.

Does all this mean that Iran is on the verge of another revolution? At this point in time, Iran is far from a “revolutionary situation,” meaning a condition of “dual power,” where an organized revolutionary force backed by millions would come to confront a crumbling government and divided security forces. What we are witnessing today, however, is the rise of a revolutionary movement—with its own protest repertoires, language, and identity—that may open Iranian society to a “revolutionary course.”

In the first three months after Mahsa Amini’s death, two-million Iranians from all walks of life staged some 1,200 protest actions that spilled over 160 cities and small towns. Friday prayer sermons in the poor province of Sistan and Baluchistan, as well as funerals and burials for victims of the regime’s crackdown in Kurdistan, have brought the most diverse crowds into the streets. University and high-school students have staged sit-ins, defied the mandatory hijab and sex segregation, and performed other courageous acts of resistance, while lawyers, professors, teachers, doctors, artists, and athletes expressed public support and sometimes joined the dissent.6 In cities and small towns, political graffiti decorated building walls before being repainted by municipality agents. The evening chants from balconies and rooftops in the residential neighborhoods continued to reverberate in the dark sky of the cities.

Security forces were frustrated by a mode of protest that combined street showdowns and guerrilla tactics—the sudden and simultaneous outbreak of multiple evening demonstrations in different urban quarters able to disappear, regroup, and reappear again. The fearlessness of these street rebels, many of them young women, overwhelmed the authorities. A revealing video of a security agent showed his astonishment about backstreet young protesters who “are no longer afraid of us” and the neighbors who “attack us with a barrage of rocks, chairs, benches, flowerpots,” or anything heavy from their windows or balconies.7

The disproportionate presence of the young—women and men, university and high school students—in the streets of the uprising has led some to interpret it as the revolt of Generation Z against a regime that is woefully out of touch. But this view overlooks the dissidence of older generations, the parents and families that have raised, if not politicized, these children and mostly share their sentiments. A leaked government survey from November 2022 found that 84 percent of Iranians expressed a positive view of the uprising.8 If the regime allowed peaceful public protests, we would likely see more older people on the streets. But it has not. The extraordinary presence of youth in the street protests has largely to do with the “youth affordances”—that is, energy, agility, education, dreams of a better future, and relative freedom from family responsibilities—which make the young more inclined to street politics and radical activism. But these extraordinary young people cannot cause a political breakthrough on their own. The breakthrough comes only when ordinary people—parents, children, workers, shopkeepers, professionals, and the like—join in to bring the spectacular protests into the social mainstream.

Although some workers have joined the protests through demonstrations and labor strikes, a widespread labor showdown has yet to materialize. This may not be easy, because the neoliberal restructuring of the 2000s has fragmented the working class, undermined workers’ job security (including in the oil sector), and diminished much of their collective power. In their place, teachers have emerged as a potentially powerful dissenting force with a good degree of organization and protest experience. On 14 February 2023, twenty civil and professional associations, led by the teachers’ syndicate, issued a joint “charter of minimum demands” that included the release of all political prisoners, free speech and assembly, abolition of the death penalty, and “complete gender equality.”9 Shopkeepers and bazaar merchants have also joined the opposition. In fact, they surprised the authorities when at least 70 percent of them, according to a leaked official report, went on strike in Tehran and 21 provinces on 15 November 2022 to mark the 2019 uprising.10 Not surprisingly, security forces have increasingly been threatening to shut down their businesses.

The Regime’s Response

The regime is acutely aware and apprehensive of the power of the social mainstream. It has made every effort to prevent mass congregations on the scale of Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring when protesters could see, feel, and show the rulers the enormity of their social power. Protesters in the Arab Spring fully utilized existing cultural resources, such as religious rituals and funeral processions, to sustain mass protests. Most critical were the Friday prayers, with their fixed times and places, from which the largest rallies and demonstrations originated. But Friday prayer is not part of the current culture of Iran’s Shia Muslims (unlike the Sunni Baluchies). Most Iranian Muslims rarely even pray at noon, whether on Fridays or any day. In Iran, the Friday prayer sermons are the invented ritual of the Islamist regime and thus the theater of the regime’s power. Consequently, protesters would have to turn to other cultural and religious spaces such as funerals and mourning ceremonies or the Shia rituals of Moharram and Ramadan.

But the clerical regime would not hesitate to prohibit even the most revered cultural and religious traditions if it deemed them a threat to the “system.” During the Green revolt of 2009, the ruling hardliners banned funerals and prevented families from holding mourning ceremonies for their loved ones. On occasion, authorities even prohibited Shia rituals. This is not surprising. Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founding father, had already decreed that the supreme faqih held “absolute authority” to disregard any precept or law, including the constitution or religious obligations such as daily prayers “in the interest of the state.”11 Iran’s clerical rulers would not hesitate to prohibit these cultural and religious rituals, precisely because of their exclusive claim on them. Under this perverse authority, the regime would delegitimize and discard values and practices from which it derives its own legitimacy. For it views itself as the sole legitimate body able to determine what is sacred and what is sin, what is authentic, what is fake, what is right, and what is wrong.

For the regime agents,mass demonstrations of spectacular scale would sound the call of revolution. They do not wish to hear it but cannot help feeling it. For a hum and whisper of revolution is already in the air. It can be heard and felt in homes, at private gatherings, and in the streets; in the rich body of art, literature, poetry, and music borne of the uprising; and in the media and intellectual debates about the meaning of the current moment, organization and strategy, the question of violence, and the way forward.12 The regime has responded with denial, ridicule, anger, appeasement, and widespread violence.

The daily Keyhan, close to the office of the supreme leader, has charged the protesters with wanting to establish “forced de-veiling” and warned that the “Islamic revolution will not go away. . . . So, be angry and die of your fury.”13 The commanders of the key security forces—the military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij militia, and the police—issued a joint statement on 5 October 2022 declaring their loyalty to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And the hardline parliament passed an emergency bill on 9 October 2022 “adjusting” the salaries of civil servants, including 700,000 pensioners who in late 2017 had turned out in force during a wave of protests. Newly employed teachers were to receive more secure contracts, sugarcane workers their unpaid wages, and poor families a 50 percent increase in the basic-needs subsidy. Meanwhile, the speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, confirmed that he was prepared to implement “any reform and change for public interest,” including “change in the system of governance” if the protesters abandoned demands for “regime change.”14

Appeasing the population with “salary adjustments” and fiscal measures has gone hand-in-hand with a brutal repression of the protesters. This includes beating, killing, mass detention, torture, execution, drone surveillance, and marking the businesses and homes of dissenters. The regime’s clampdown has reportedly left 525 dead, including 71 minors, 1,100 on trial, and some 30,000 detained. The security forces and Basij militia have lost 68 members in the unrest.15 The regime blames “hooligans” for causing disorder, the internet for misleading the youth, and the Western governments for plotting to topple the government.

A Revolutionary Course

The regime’s suppression and the protesters’ pauseare likely to diminish the protests. But this does not mean the end of the movement. It means the end of a cycle of protest before a trigger ignites a new one. We have seen these cycles at least since 2017. What is distinct about this time is that it has set Iranian society on a “revolutionary course,” meaning that a large part of society continues to think, imagine, talk, and act in terms of a different future. Here, people’s judgment about public matters is often shaped by a lingering echo of “revolution” and a brewing belief that “they [the regime] will go.” So, any trouble or crisis—for instance, a water shortage—is considered a failure of the regime, and any show of discontent—say, over delayed wages—a revolutionary act. In such a mindset, the status quo is temporary and change only a matter of time. Consequently, intermittent periods of calm and contention could continue to possibly evolve into a revolutionary situation. We have witnessed such a revolutionary course before—in Poland, for instance, after martial law was declared and the Solidarity movement outlawed in 1982 until the military regime agreed to negotiate a transition to a new order in 1988. More recently, Sudan experienced a similar course after the dictator Omar al-Bashir declared a state of emergency and dissolved the national and regional governments in February 2019 until the military signed an agreement on the transition to civilian democratic rule with the opposition Forces of Freedom and Change after seven months.

Only radical political reform and meaningful improvement in people’s lives can disrupt a revolutionary course. For instance, holding a referendum about the form of government, changing the constitution to be more inclusive, or implementing serious social programs can dissuade people from seeking regime change. Otherwise, one should expect either a state of perpetual crisis and ungovernability or a possible move toward a revolutionary situation. But a revolutionary situation is unlikely until the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement grows into a credible alternative, a practical substitute, to the incumbent regime. A credible alternative means no less than a leadership organization and a strategic vision capable of garnering popular confidence. It means a collective force, a tangible entity, that is able to embody a coalition of diverse dissenting groups and constituencies and to articulate what kind of future it wants.

There are, of course, local leaders and ad hoc collectives that communicate ideas and coordinate actions in the neighborhoods, workplaces, and universities. Thanks to their horizontal, networked, and fluid character, their operations are less prone to police repression than a conventional movement organization would be. This kind of decentralized networked activism is also more versatile, allows for multiple voices and ideas, and can use digital media to mobilize larger crowds in less time. But networked movements can also suffer from weaker commitment, unruly decisionmaking, and tenuous structure and sustainability. For instance, who will address a wrongdoing, such as violence, committed in the name of the movement? As a result, movements tend to deploy a hybrid structure by linking the decentralized and fluid activism to a central body. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement has yet to take up this consideration.

Civil society and imprisoned activists who currently enjoy wide recognition and respect for their extraordinary commitment and political intelligence may eventually form a kind of moral-intellectual leadership. But that too needs to be part of a broader national leadership organization. For a leadership organization—in the vein of Polish Solidarity, South Africa’s ANC, or Sudan’s Forces of Freedom and Change—is not just about articulating a strategic vision and coordinating actions. It also signals responsibility, representation, popular trust, and tactical unity.

This is perhaps the most challenging task ahead for “Woman, Life, Freedom,” but remains acutely indispensable. Because, first, a political breakthrough is unlikely without a broad-based organized opposition. Second, a negotiated transition to a new political order is impossible in the absence of a leadership organization. Who is the incumbent supposed to negotiate with if there is no representation from the opposition? And third, if political collapse occurs and there is no credible organized alternative to an incumbent regime, other organized, entrenched, and opportunistic forces—for example, the military, political parties, sectarian groups, or religious organizations—will move in to shape the course and outcome of a transition. Such forces could claim to represent the opposition and make unwanted deals or might simply fill the power vacuum when authority collapses. Hannah Arendt was correct in observing that the collapse of authority and power becomes a revolution “only when there are people willing and capable of picking up the power, of moving into and penetrating, so to speak, the power vacuum.”16 In other words, if the revolutionary movement is unwilling or unable to pick up the power, others will. This, in fact, is the story of most of the Arab Spring uprisings—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, for instance. In these experiences, the protagonists, those who had initiated and carried the uprisings forward, remained mostly marginal to the process of critical decisionmaking while the free-riders, counterrevolutionaries, and custodians of the status quo moved to the center.17

No one knows where exactly the uprising in Iran will lead. Thus far, the ruling circle remains united even though signs of doubt and discord have appeared within the lower ranks.18 The traditional leaders and grand ayatollahs have mostly stayed silent. But reformist groups have increasingly been voicing their dissent, urging the rulers to undertake serious reforms to restore calm. None of them say that they want a regime change, but they seem to see themselves mediating a transition should such a time arrive. Former president Mohammad Khatami has admitted that the reformist path which he championed has reached a dead end, yet finds the remedy for the current crisis in amending and enforcing the constitution. But a growing number of reformist figures, led by former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, are calling for a referendum and a new constitution. The hardline rulers, however, remain defiant and show no sign of revisiting their policies let alone undertaking serious reforms. Resting on the support of their “people on the stage,” they aim to hold on to power through pacification, control, and coercion.19

NOTES

1. Azam Khatam, “Street Politics and Hijab in the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ Movement,” Naqd-e Eqtesad-e Siyasi, 12 November 2022, in Persian.

2. Danny Postel, “Iran’s Role in the Shifting Political Landscape of the Middle East,” New Politics, 7 July 2021, https://newpol.org/the-other-regional-counter-revolution-irans-role-in-the-shifting-political-landscape-of-the-middle-east/.

3. A woman’s letter to Zanan, no. 35 (June 1988), 26.

4. For a detailed discussion of “non-movements,” see Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013). For an elaboration of how “non-movements” may merge into larger movements and revolutions, see Asef Bayat, Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021).

5. Asef Bayat, “The Fire That Fueled the Iran Protests,” Atlantic, 27 January 2018, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/iran-protest-mashaad-green-class-labor-economy/551690.

6. Miriam Berger, “Students in Iran Are Risking Everything to Rise Up Against the Government,” Washington Post, 5 January 2023; Deepa Parent and Anna Kelly, “Iranian Schoolgirl ‘Beaten to Death’ for Refusing to Sing Pro-Regime Anthem,” Guardian, 18 October 2022; Celine Alkhaldi and Adam Pourahmadi, “Iranian Teachers Call for Nationwide Strike in Protest over Deaths and Detention of Students,” CNN, 21 October 2022.

7. Video clip circulated on social media of the speech of a security agent, Syed Pouyan Hosseinpour, at the 31 October 2022 funeral ceremony of a Basij member killed during the protests.

8. According to a leaked confidential bulletin of Fars News Agency and a government survey, reported on the Radio Farda website, 30 November 2022, www.radiofarda.com/a/black-reward-files/32155427.html.

9. Radio Farda, 15 February 2023; www.radiofarda.com/a/the-minimum-demands-of-independent-organizations-in-iran-were-announced/32272456.html

10. Reported in a leaked audio of a security official, Qasem Ghoreishi, speaking to a group of journalists from the Pars News Agency, close to the Revolutionary Guards. Reported also on the Khabar Nameh Gooyawebsite on 29 December 2022.

11. Asghar Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran: Politics and the State in the Islamic Republic (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998).

12. For a discussion on poetry, see www.radiozamaneh.com/742605/.

13. Keyhan, editorial, 6 October 2022.

14. Khabarbaan, 23 October 2022, https://36300290.khabarban.com/.

15. Iranian Organization of Human Rights, Hrana, www.hra-news.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Mahsa-Amini-82-Days-Protest-HRA.pdf; https://twitter.com/hra_news/status/1617296099148025857/photo/1. The number of 30,000 detainees is based on a leaked official document reported in Rouydad 24, 28 January, www.rouydad24.ir/fa/news/330219/%D9%87%D8%B2%DB%8C%D9%86%D9%87-%D9%87%D8%B1-%D8%B2%D9%86%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86%DB%8C-%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86-%DA%86%D9%82%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AA.

16. Hannah Arendt, “The Lecture: Thoughts on Poverty, Misery and the Great Revolutions of History,” New England Review,June 2017, 12, available athttps://lithub.com/never-before-published-hannah-arendt-on-what-freedom-and-revolution-really-mean/.

17. This predicament resulted partly from the “refo-lutionary” character of the Arab Spring. “Refo-lution” refers to the revolutionary movements that emerge to compel the incumbent regimes to reform themselves on behalf of revolution, without picking up the power or intervening effectively in shaping the outcome. See Asef Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017).

[asian-heart-92]

Shūsaku Endō's Silence fancast (part 1)

Directed, produced and written by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Produced by James W. Skotchdopole,

Arnon Milchan

and John Lesher

Written by Hossein Amini,

Mark L. Smith

and Armando Bó

Cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki

Edited by Stephen Mirrione

Composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto

For the production companies, there would be

and

Distributed by 20th Century Fox

Diogo Morgado as Sebastião Rodrigues

Domhnall Gleeson as Francisco Garupe

Andrew Koji as The Interpreter

Chazz Palmintieri as Alessandro Valignano

Willem Dafoe as Cristóvão Ferreira/Sawano Chūan

Ario Bayu as Mokichi

Tao Okamoto as Kiku

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Inoue Masashige

Hiro Tanagawa as the Old Man

Shun Oguri as Okada Saemon

James Duval as Kichijirō

Anna Sawai as Mónica/Haru

Eddie Peng as João/Chokichi

George Takei as Ichizo

Hiroshi Abe as the Samurai

Hiroyuki Sanada as the Samurai commander

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

THE FACE OF ANCIENT JAPANESE WITCHERY & DARK SORCERY.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on published & textless poster art of actress Rubio Kikuchi as "the Witch," the secondary antagonist in a character poster for the ill-fated 2013 American fantasy action film, "47 Ronin," directed by Carl Rinsch in his directorial debut. Universal Pictures.

Resolution at 3158x5000 & 736x1165

[opening lines]

"Ancient feudal Japan, a land shrouded in mystery, forbidden to foreigners. A group of magical islands home to witches and demons."

-- "47 RONIN," screenplay by Chris Morgan & Hossein Amini

Source: https://collider.com/47-ronin-posters-keanu-reeves.

[trustednewstribune]

Iran To Bring Tougher Hijab Law Ahead Of Mahsa Amini Protests Anniversary

Experts said the Bill, which has yet to be passed, was a reminder to Iranians that the regime will not back down from its stance on the hijab despite the country's enormous protests last year, according to CNN.

Tehran: Just weeks before the one-year anniversary of the major protests caused by Mahsa Amini's death, Iranian authorities are preparing a new Bill on hijab-wearing that experts fear would put unprecedentedly harsh punitive measures into law, according to CNN.

The 70-article draft law sets out a range of proposals, including much longer prison terms for women who refuse to wear the veil, stiff new penalties for celebrities and businesses who flout the rules, and the use of artificial intelligence to identify women in breach of the dress code.

Experts said the Bill, which has yet to be passed, was a reminder to Iranians that the regime will not back down from its stance on the hijab despite the country's enormous protests last year, according to CNN.

The Bill was submitted by the judiciary to the government for consideration earlier this year, then forwarded to the parliament and subsequently approved by the Legal and Judicial Commission. It is set to be submitted to the Board of Governors this Sunday before it is introduced on the floor of parliament, state-aligned news agency Mehr reported Tuesday.

Iran's parliament would work on finalising the text and voting on the Bill "in the next two months," Mehr said.

Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died last September after being detained by the regime's infamous morality police and taken to a "re-education centre," allegedly for not abiding by the country's conservative dress code, CNN reported.

While not officially disbanded, the morality police had largely pulled back following last year's protests, which have gradually waned. But earlier this month, police spokesman General Saeed Montazerolmahdi said the morality police would resume notifying and then detaining women who are caught without the Islamic headscarf in public.

The hijab has long been a point of contention in Iran. It was barred in 1936 during leader Reza Shah's emancipation of women until his successor lifted the ban in 1941. In 1983 the hijab became mandatory after the last shah was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, CNN reported.

Iran has traditionally considered Article 368 of its Islamic penal code as the hijab law, which states that those in breach of the dress code face between 10 days to two months in prison, or a fine between 50,000 to 500,000 Iranian rials, what is today between USD 1.18 to USD 11.82.

The new Bill would reclassify failure to wear the hijab as a more severe offence, punishable by a five-to-ten-year prison sentence as well as a higher fine of up to 360 million Iranian rials (USD 8,508).

That fine is far beyond what the average Iranian could pay, as millions are below the poverty line, Hossein Raeesi, an Iranian human rights lawyer and adjunct professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, told CNN.

Another section states that in order to enforce the new law, Iranian police must "create and strengthen AI systems to identify perpetrators of illegal behaviour using tools such as fixed and mobile cameras."

Earlier this year, state media reported that cameras would be installed in public places to identify women who violate the country's hijab law, CNN reported.

Under the new draft law, business owners, who do not enforce the hijab requirement, will face steeper fines, potentially amounting to three months of their business profit, and face bans on leaving the country or participating in public or cyber-activity for up to two years.

[tctmp]

The Two Faces of January: Directed by Hossein Amini. With Oscar Isaac, Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, Daisy Bevan. A thriller centered on a con artist, his wife, and a stranger who flee Athens after one of them is caught up in the death of a private detective.

[vfxexpress]

Obi-Wan Kenobi - Episode 1VFX Breakdown By Hybride Technologies

“Part I” is the first episode of the American streaming television series Obi-Wan Kenobi, based on Star Wars created by George Lucas. It follows Obi-Wan Kenobi in a self-imposed exile on Tatooine a decade after the events of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2003) as he monitors Luke Skywalker on Tatooine to ensure his safety. It was written by Stuart Beattie, Hossein Amini, and Joby…