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      Iran’s Onerous Hijab Law for Women Is Now a Campaign Issue

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      In a sign that a women-led movement has gained ground, all of the men running for president have distanced themselves from the harsh tactics used to enforce mandatory hijab.Iranian officials insisted for decades that the law requiring women to cover their hair and dress modestly was sacrosanct and not even worth discussion. They dismissed the struggle by women who challenged the law as a symptom of Western meddling. Now, as Iran holds a presidential election this week, the issue of mandatory hijab, as the hair covering is known, has become a hot campaign topic. And all six of the men running, five of them conservative, have sought to distance themselves from the methods of enforcing the law, which include violence, arrests and monetary fines.“Elections aside, politics aside, under no circumstances should we treat Iranian women with such cruelty,” Mustafa Pourmohammadi, a conservative presidential candidate and cleric with senior roles in intelligence, said in a round-table discussion on state television last week. He has also said that government officials should be punished over the hijab law because it was their duty to educate women about why they should wear hijab, not violently enforce it.The hijab has long been a symbol of religious identity but has also been a political tool in Iran. And women have resisted the law, in different ways, ever since it went into effect after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.It is unlikely that the law will be annulled, and it remains unclear whether a new president can soften enforcement. Different administrations have adopted looser or stricter approaches to hijab. Ebrahim Raisi, the president whose death in a helicopter crash in May prompted emergency elections, had imposed some of the harshest crackdowns on women.Still, some women’s rights activists and analysts in Iran say forcing the issue to the table during elections is in itself an accomplishment. It shows that the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement of civil disobedience, which began nearly two years ago, has become too big to ignore.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Iran’s 2024 Presidential Election: What to Know

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      Iran will hold a special election later this month to replace former President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May.Iran’s election for its next president will take place a year early, on June 28, after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash last month. The vote will usher the Islamic republic into new leadership amid domestic discontent, voter apathy and regional turmoil.While the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has the final say on all state matters, the Iranian president sets domestic policy and has some influence over foreign policy.Watching a presidential debate on a screen this month in Tehran.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesWhy is this election important?The election gives the Iranian leadership the chance to show it can handle a disaster like the unexpected death of a president without destabilizing the country, even as it grapples with internal protests and tension with the United States and Israel.The election also allows the leadership to remind people that while Iran is a theocracy, it also holds elections for government positions such as president, members of Parliament and councils.That said, who is allowed to run for president is carefully controlled. And if, as expected, one of the more conservative candidates, close to the clerical leadership, wins, the government will most likely claim it as a victory for its brand of politics — despite the sharp constraints placed on the competition.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sweden and Iran Exchange Prisoners in a Breakthrough Swap

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      Iran released an E.U. diplomat from Sweden and a dual Iranian-Swedish national, whereas Sweden released a senior former Iranian official serving a life sentence for war crimes.Iran and Sweden exchanged prisoners on Saturday in a major breakthrough, according to the Swedish prime minister.Iran released the European Union diplomat and Swedish national Johan Floderus, who had been arrested in April 2022 in Tehran, as well as the dual national Saeed Azizi, the Swedish prime minister said.“It is with pleasure that I can announce that Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi are now on a plane home to Sweden, and will soon be reunited with their families,” the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said on social media.In exchange, Sweden released Hamid Noury, a high-ranking Iranian official who had been sentenced to life in a Swedish court for war crimes committed in 1988 in Iran.The swap was coordinated with the help of Oman, according to a statement published by the Omani state news agency.Vivian Nereim More

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      Crowds for Raisi Show Support for Iranian State, Supreme Leader Says

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      Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pointed to the turnout at memorials for Iran’s president at a time when external critics say popular backing for the Islamic Republic has weakened.Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Saturday that the large crowds of mourners who took to the streets of Iranian cities this past week to honor the country’s deceased president, Ebrahim Raisi, were proof of widespread popular support for the Islamic Republic and its system of religious governance.Ayatollah Khamenei had declared five days of mourning after Mr. Raisi, 63, was killed in a helicopter crash along with Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, and five others last weekend. Video from the Iranian news media in recent days showed large processions in honor of the dead, and crowds packed in to listen outside the University of Tehran on loudspeakers as Mr. Khamenei led the funeral service for Mr. Raisi on Wednesday.“This mourning has proved to the world that the people are loyal to the president of the republic and to all who embody the principles of the Islamic Revolution,” Al Mayadeen, a Lebanese news channel, quoted Ayatollah Khamenei as saying on Saturday of Mr. Raisi, who had been considered a likely successor as supreme leader.“The majestic funeral that Iran witnessed proved that the people are alive,” the ayatollah added, according to Al Mayadeen, which has long reported closely on Iran and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group.The Iranian state news agency IRNA also reported sentiments to that effect by Mr. Khamenei, although it did not directly quote him. The ayatollah was speaking at a memorial event for Mr. Raisi and the other victims at the Imam Khomeini Hosseinieh, an important religious site in the capital, Tehran, where Mr. Khamenei regularly holds meetings.Funeral observances for Mr. Raisi and the others began on Tuesday with a procession in Tabriz, the closest large city to the crash site in northwestern Iran. Their bodies were then taken to the holy city of Qom and to Tehran before the funeral.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Helicopter Crash Increases Pressure as U.S. and Iran Face Crises

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      Even before the announcement on Sunday of the crash of a helicopter believed to be carrying Iran’s president, relations between Tehran and the United States had come perilously close to open conflict. What unfolds in the next few days — whether President Ebrahim Raisi and other leaders survive, and what Iran declares was the cause of the crash — could well determine whether the two countries are able to grope their way out of several simultaneous crises.Over the long term, the struggle that matters most is the one that centers on Iran’s nuclear program. The program had largely been contained after the Obama administration negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015. But President Donald J. Trump denounced and abandoned the deal six years ago, and eventually Iran resumed production of nuclear fuel — enriched to a level just short of what would be needed to produce several bombs.Exactly what role Mr. Raisi has played in critical decision-making in Tehran about Iran’s nuclear strategy was always a matter of dispute; the program is under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iran, a power center unto itself. But American officials say that after nearly reaching an agreement with Iran through European intermediaries two years ago, efforts to negotiate have all but collapsed.Just last week, the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, who is also believed to have been on the helicopter, met with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, who was demanding better access to Iran’s sprawling nuclear facilities.The nuclear program, and the question of whether Iran will seek a weapon or leverage its status as a threshold power that could produce one quickly, looms over other, more regional confrontations. When Iran shot 300 missiles and drones at Israel last month, the United States coordinated with Israeli and other regional forces to take them down. But the whole exchange, which calmed after a relatively modest Israeli response, was a reminder that the country has sharply expanded its missile program, and its reach, under Mr. Raisi — and is turning to techniques meant to overwhelm Israeli defenses, likely a lesson of the war in Ukraine.Meanwhile, Iran is arming the Houthis — Shiite militants who have taken over most of northern Yemen and attacked shipping in the Red Sea — and providing them with intelligence from at least one Iranian ship. It is providing arms and technology to Hamas and Hezbollah, efforts that also expanded under Mr. Raisi’s rule. And U.S. officials warned recently that as the presidential election approaches, they expect an increase in Iranian hacking attempts.“Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their efforts,” Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week. It seeks “to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions, as we have seen them do in prior election cycles.” More

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      Helicopter Carrying Iran’s President Has Crashed, State Media Reports

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      Rescuers are trying to locate the helicopter on which President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian were traveling, state media reported. Their status is unknown.A helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi crashed on Sunday, according to Iran’s state media and the country’s mission to the United Nations, but has yet to be found by search-and-rescue workers because of heavy fog.The helicopter was also carrying Hossein Amir Abdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister.The state news agency IRNA reported that an enormous search operation involving 16 teams was underway to locate the helicopter. Inclement weather, the reports said, was hampering the effort. The teams had yet to locate the crash site after almost five hours.State media has yet to report on casualties or confirm the whereabouts or condition of the president. The cause of the crash is also unknown.“Given the complexities of the region, connection has been difficult, and we are hoping that the rescue teams reach the helicopter and can give us more information,” Ahmad Vahidi, Iran’s interior minister, told state television.Mr. Raisi was on an official visit to the province of Eastern Azerbaijan, a mountainous region in northwestern Iran.A delegation of ministers traveled with him in a convoy of three helicopters, state media reported, adding that the two other aircraft had reached their destinations.In addition to the president and the foreign minister, the governor of the province was also in the helicopter, which crashed in an area called Varzaghan, state media reported. More

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      U.S. and Iranian Officials Held Indirect Talks in Oman on Risks of a Wider War

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      The talks were the first since Iran attacked Israel last month in retaliation for its killing of an Iranian general.Senior American and Iranian officials held talks through intermediaries in Oman this past week, the first such conversations since Iran launched a retaliatory attack on Israel with hundreds of missiles and drones last month, according to a person familiar with the recent meetings.Brett McGurk, the top White House official on Middle East policy, and Abram Paley, the deputy special envoy for Iran, attended the talks in Oman. The goal was to try to get Iran, which supplies weapons and training to militias across the Middle East, to move to rein in its partners. Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, several Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria have stepped up attacks on American troops, raising fears of a wider war.The most powerful of the regional militias, Lebanon-based Hezbollah, has been exchanging fire with the Israeli military in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. However, U.S. intelligence officials assess that neither Hezbollah nor Iran wants to engage in a wider war.The United States has had no diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979, and discussions are often conducted through intermediaries and back channels. The format of the talks in Oman was similar to ones held in January: The Americans sat in one room while their Iranian counterparts sat in another, and Omani officials shuttled between the rooms. The new set of talks was first reported by Axios.Iran carried out the retaliatory attack last month using more than 300 missiles and drones after Israel killed Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a commander of Iran’s Quds Force, in a strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus. Iran equated that to a strike on Iranian soil, and responded with its first direct attack on Israeli territory.The militaries of the United States and Israel worked with those of several European and Arab allies and partners to foil the assault.For years, Israel has been striking at Iranian forces and partner militias in Syria, where the government is aligned with that of Iran. That “shadow war” is now an open conflict.Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, said in a news conference this week that “the threat posed by Iran and its proxies to Israel, to regional stability and to American interests is clear.”“We are working with Israel and other partners to protect against these threats and to prevent escalation into an all-out regional war through a calibrated combination of diplomacy, deterrence, force posture adjustments and use of force when necessary to protect our people and to defend our interests and our allies,” he added.Mr. Sullivan was expected to travel to Saudi Arabia and Israel this weekend to discuss issues involving the Israel-Hamas war; a potential broad diplomatic and security deal involving the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel; and the threat of Iran. More

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      Rafael Grossi of the IAEA Acts as the West’s Mediator With Putin and Iran

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      Rafael Grossi slipped into Moscow a few weeks ago to meet quietly with the man most Westerners never engage with these days: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Mr. Grossi is the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, and his purpose was to warn Mr. Putin about the dangers of moving too fast to restart the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been occupied by Russian troops since soon after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.But as the two men talked, the conversation veered off into Mr. Putin’s declarations that he was open to a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine — but only if President Volodymyr Zelensky was prepared to give up nearly 20 percent of his country.A few weeks later, Mr. Grossi, an Argentine with a taste for Italian suits, was in Tehran, this time talking to the country’s foreign minister and the head of its civilian nuclear program. At a moment when senior Iranian officials are hinting that new confrontations with Israel may lead them to build a bomb, the Iranians signaled that they, too, were open to a negotiation — suspecting, just as Mr. Putin did, that Mr. Grossi would soon be reporting details of his conversation to the White House.In an era of new nuclear fears, Mr. Grossi suddenly finds himself at the center of two of the world’s most critical geopolitical standoffs. In Ukraine, one of the six nuclear reactors in the line of fire on the Dnipro River could be hit by artillery and spew radiation. And Iran is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear-armed state.“I am an inspector, not a mediator,” Mr. Grossi said in an interview this week. “But maybe, in some way, I can be useful around the edges.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More