International Women's Day in Iran

It was International Women's Day earlier this week.

An appropriate time to be reminded that Iran executed approximately 64 women in 2025. 

Reasons for execution do include murder, but also such outrages as: 

• not wearing the Islamic veil ;
• not wanting to marry their relatives;
• not accepting beatings from their husband;
• having different political beliefs.

"Fortunately," being stoned to death for "crimes" such as adultery has not happened since 2000. Too late for 20-year-old Zoleykhah Kadkhoda, sentenced to be stoned to death in August 1997 after being convicted of "sexual relations outside marriage." But she was one of the "lucky" ones. After a botched execution, Zoleykhah was found alive in a morgue. (And following international pressure, her death sentence was lifted, and Iranian authorities informed Amnesty International she was released on November 26, 1997.)

Reasons for threatened executions today include not singing the regimes' National Anthem in the women's Asian Cup soccer tournament in Australia, following which the whole team of non-vocalisers were branded as “wartime traitors” and threatened with execution -- with their families being held hostage against their return.

Given these multiple and still ongoing horrors, an Iranian-born expat feminist "want[s] to clarify a few things for people in the West about the current war."

1. We don't expect you to be pro-war. There are many reasons to oppose it, and we can discuss them. ... But don't use Iranians' lives and wellbeing as a reason to oppose the war. Inclusion 101: listen to our voices (and amplify them if you truly care). Don't assume you know our lived experiences better than we do. 

2. The general sentiment among Iranians, both inside and outside Iran, is still positive as of now. Of course there’s nuance and many different views on specific aspects. But that doesn't make us "pro-war." 

3. We’ve been calling for humanitarian military intervention because every other method has simply failed over decades, leaving far more casualties than some wars. It’s not an easy choice. We believe it’s the only one left. 

4. We don't blindly or naively support these operations. We support them only to the extent that we believe they serve as the humanitarian intervention we've been calling for. (Sure, some naive people exist, but don't cherry-pick them to paint all of us.) 

5. Iranians generally understand what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria far better than most in the West. They’re our neighbours. Think about whether you may come off as condescending when you “whitesplain” these things to us. 

6. If you oppose the war, you must do so without supporting the Islamic Regime. It may feel easy to just oppose everything, but if you offer no real, effective way to end the oppression, your opposition effectively supports the regime. 

7. If you doubt Iranians support intervention against the Islamic Regime, remember: the regime’s very first response to the war was to shut down the internet. Their propaganda machine still has full access, while only a small fraction of Iranians have unstable, unreliable ways to get online.

PS: Masih Alinejad reports [confirmed by AFP]: 

This is the first reaction from inside Iran to the news that Mojtaba Khamenei has replaced his father as 'Supreme Leader.'
People are standing on their balconies chanting: 'Death to Mojtaba.' A nation is telling the world: we will not accept another inherited dictatorship.