Can Iranian women take back their fundamental rights now?

As war rages in the Middle East, with Iran, Israel and the US locked in a widening and dangerous confrontation, it is worth examining what it could mean for Iran’s extraordinarily brave women, who have long protested the country’s abysmal record on women’s rights under the Khamenei regime. Their struggle now faces a grave setback, with fears that any succession under Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei would merely continue a grim continuum of oppression.

These fears are not unfounded. Earlier this week, in the northern Qom province, Iran executed three men accused of killing police officers during anti-government protests in January 2026. Among them was teenage wrestler Saleh Mohammadi. Rights groups allege that the confessions were extracted under torture and that the men were denied a fair trial.

In conversations with Iranian women who participated in the uprisings against the Khamenei regime in September 2022 and January 2026, a clear pattern emerges: the executions are seen as instruments of fear and retaliation, particularly as the regime appears weakened. Many believe the Khamenei regime has lost its legitimacy by repeatedly denying rights and responding with violent crackdowns. “We, in 2026, are not as free as our mothers and grandmothers were in 1936 under the Pahlavi rule,” said Sharareh Rafiei, a teacher now based in Malaysia who left Iran 14 years ago. She pointed to an earlier era under the Pahlavi monarchy, when women had greater access to education and employment and legal reforms had begun to curb practices such as arbitrary divorce, polygamy and child marriage. It was a progressive monarchy for its time, that held its women in high regard. In 1936, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty had outlawed traditional Islamic veils, scarves and chador. 

Cut to the present. Women in Iran must adhere to a strict dress code from the age of nine, requiring hijab in public. Violations can invite fines, arrest, or corporal punishment. Girls can be married at 13 or even younger with the consent of a judge. Women face extensive legal and social restrictions: a ban on co-ed schools and studying engineering, nuclear physics and computer science; barriers to serving as judges; and laws that enable husbands to restrict their movement or employment. In family courts, a woman’s testimony can carry less weight than a man’s, and women can be flogged or given a death sentence for adultery.

“We refuse to live under this regime anymore, and they have massacred us for protesting. We did not want this war, but what choice do we have, as this regime refused to reform or leave?” Rafiei said when asked about the fraught question of whether external, unlawful, and unprovoked conflict can catalyse internal political and social change.

Another Iranian woman living abroad, who requested anonymity, expressed a similar desperation: “We have no other choice but to hope that this war ends the Khamenei regime. Since 2022, we have been demanding our rights and faced brutal repression. Just earlier this year, when there was no war, 40,000 Iranians were killed for protesting.” 

In January 2026, widespread protests erupted amid severe economic crisis and curtailed civil liberties. Iranian women became the face of resistance. Images of defiance spread rapidly, even as the State responded with force. Security agencies, including the IRGC and Basij militias, were reported to have fired indiscriminately into crowds, flogged unarmed protestors, and used tear gas to disrupt protests. Rights organisations like Amnesty International have reported widespread detentions, disappearance and massacres in cities like Rasht and Fardis.

“I was in Kerman, and I saw what the regime did to the protestors,” Rafiei recalled. “They shot them in the head, intimidated doctors, and used tear gas so intensely it caused severe injuries and oozing blisters. After Mahsa Amini’s death, we wanted the regime to change its policies. This time, we wanted the regime gone.”

The September 2022 protests, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police, Gasht-E-Ershad, for not wearing a hijab in public, marked a turning point. Women led from the front – chopping their hair and burning their headscarves. Women as young as 15 and as old as 80 led rallies bareheaded and went chin-to-chin with heavily armed security forces, chanting, “Woman, Life, Freedom”. The State responded with alarming brutality. Armed forces fired live ammunition, metal pellets and tear gas into crowds across Iranian cities. Hundreds were killed and thousands arrested. Several schoolgirls were even poisoned as ‘revenge’ for their role in the protests.

A dystopian nightmare that needs to end, and Iran’s women must be free. The question is how? Given that Khamenei successors are not giving up without a vicious dogfight when it’s clear that at least ideologically their time should be up.  

(The writer is a Bengaluru-based freelance journalist and teaches
journalism at Christ University)