{"id":635174,"date":"2025-12-16T02:41:28","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T02:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/635174\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T02:41:28","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T02:41:28","slug":"cure-for-iran-currency-slide-could-be-worse-than-the-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/635174\/","title":{"rendered":"Cure for Iran currency slide could be worse than the disease"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the 1979 revolution, the holiday replaced the pre-revolution tradition of observing Mother\u2019s Day on December 15 as well as March 8, International Women\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

The official website of Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader published a message praising Fatimah as a model of \u201cpiety, justice-seeking, jihad, guidance, wifehood and motherhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the country this year, state schools and government offices held ceremonies honoring Fatimah\u2019s virtues and celebrating mothers and women, complete with religious speeches. The Social Security Organization also distributed a small cash gift\u2014worth roughly $10\u2014to women covered by retirement support programs.<\/p>\n

But many women \u2014 and some men \u2014 responded to the government\u2019s pageantry with sharp criticism.<\/p>\n

‘Absurd without rights’<\/strong><\/p>\n

A woman named Homa Dokht challenged the very premise of the day, pointing to Fatimah\u2019s childhood marriage in a video posted on X. <\/p>\n

Congratulating Mother\u2019s Day on Fatimah\u2019s birthday is absurd, she argued, because it is tantamount to endorsing child marriage, referring to accounts that place Fatimah\u2019s marriage at age nine and childbirth around age ten.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a country where women and girls are deprived of their most basic rights, congratulating this day is foolish,\u201d she added, highlighting systemic legal inequalities faced by Iranian women<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the smallest things \u2014 like enrolling children in school, opening a bank account for them, or even getting their exam results \u2014 only the father is qualified (legally),\u201d she said. \u201cAnd if a child needs surgery, only the father\u2019s or paternal grandfather\u2019s signature is valid.\u201d<\/p>\n

For activists, the contrast between state-sanctioned celebrations and daily lived realities encapsulates a central grievance: symbolic reverence for motherhood does not translate into legal equality.<\/p>\n

Iran mandates women wear the Islamic face veil, even as enforcement had slackened in recent year. A young woman named Mahsa Amini whose death in morality police custody stoked mass protests in 2022. The unrest was quashed with deadly force.<\/p>\n

Iranian law, which Islamic authorities say is based on religious precepts, systematically prioritizes men in criminal, family and financial cases.<\/p>\n

Gender equality activist Leila Forough Mohammadi wrote on X: \u201cOn a day named for women, a single woman, a divorced woman, a woman without children simply does not exist \u2014 as if she is incomplete. <\/p>\n

“Here, the system defines the woman only as spouses, and bestows the highest status on a woman whose reproductive role serves the population policy,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Iran ranks 143 out of 146 countries in the latest World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report.<\/p>\n

Amnesty International has documented systemic gender discrimination in Iran in its 2024 report, including up to 74 lashes for defying hijab rules and frequent impunity for honor killings.<\/p>\n

Mansoureh Hosseini Yeganeh, a women\u2019s rights activist based in the UK, wrote: \u201cWe want not just Mother\u2019s Day, but child custody rights, the right to obtain a birth certificate for our children, the right to leave the country, government support, citizenship respect, and all the things mothers enjoy in other civilized countries. And we want gifts too!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Mother\u2019s Day?\u201d journalist Maryam Shokrani asked: \u201cwhen mothers and women in this country are deprived of their most basic rights, when you don\u2019t even include their names on their children\u2019s birth certificates, when they have no custody \u2026 You should be ashamed!\u201d<\/p>\n

Men in solidarity<\/strong><\/p>\n

A post on X by Khamenei this month highlighting income inequality<\/a> between women and men in the West stoked criticism by users who pointed to the Islamic theocracy’s record on women’s rights.<\/p>\n

The nearly 50-year-old system over which Khamenei presides views the veil as an emblem of Islamic identity and chastity.<\/p>\n

Some Iranian men voiced support for the current holiday amid the criticism.<\/p>\n

Mehrshad Ahmadian, CEO of a steel company, wrote: \u201cGo sit with your father after you\u2019re done congratulating Mother\u2019s Day, ask him why your mother has no right to divorce? Why doesn\u2019t she have custody of the child she gave birth to? Why does she need permission to obtain a passport?\u201d<\/p>\n

Supporters of the government\u2019s agenda defend the official celebrations and the religious framing. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever we speak of women in the Islamic view, we speak of dignity, not a show,” a user on X asserted. <\/p>\n

“Islam defines women by the Fatimah model, not by the standards of capitalist markets. Today\u2019s Iranian woman is an example of this great truth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the 1979 revolution, the holiday replaced the pre-revolution tradition of observing Mother\u2019s Day on December 15 as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[51,1700,774,192116,192113,192111,14535,192114,83349,192112,192110,192115,839,16,15,24535],"class_list":{"0":"post-635174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-iran-and-china","12":"tag-iran-covid","13":"tag-iran-economy","14":"tag-iran-government","15":"tag-iran-media-iran-and-the-united-states","16":"tag-iran-news","17":"tag-iran-nuclear","18":"tag-iran-politics","19":"tag-iran-us","20":"tag-middle-east","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-united-kingdom","23":"tag-us-sanctions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115726941107090367","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}