Iran's crackdown leaves survivors with lasting physical and psychological scars

The bodies remember what the state wants forgotten. In the months since January's crackdowns swept through Iran, survivors carry the physical evidence of what happened in detention centers and makeshift prisons—the scars, the chronic pain, the way certain sounds trigger panic. But the psychological weight may be heavier still. One woman, detained in May 2023, describes being arrested while walking in a park, blindfolded, driven to an Intelligence Ministry facility, and then systematically assaulted by a masked man in a basement cell. She was left bleeding on the floor. When masked women arrived to treat her injuries, men told her she would be released only if she stayed silent about what had occurred. She was driven near her home around 7 p.m. and warned repeatedly during the journey about the consequences of speaking.

For nearly three years, she told no one—not her spouse, who lived with advanced Parkinson's disease. She isolated herself, stopped taking walks in the park. Then, on January 14, 2026, she was arrested again and taken to the same facility. This time she spent 22 days there, consumed by the fear that she would be assaulted again. She objected when men entered the women's detention area and was met with hostility. Officials prevented her from filing formal complaints about the 2023 assault and threatened her into continued silence. She was eventually transferred to Evin prison, where a Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced her to nine years and eight months on charges including propaganda against the system and assembly against national security. Seven months after her latest arrest, the sight of men still causes her anxiety.

Her account is not isolated. In February, Iran International reported that several women and girls detained during January's protests said they had been sexually assaulted or raped in custody. A young woman and a 17-year-old girl described being raped at an unofficial detention facility operated by the Revolutionary Guards. Twenty-two female political and religious prisoners at Evin wrote demanding an investigation into sexual abuse during body searches. A year-long investigation published in 2024 found evidence that security forces had used sexual violence against protesters across several provinces during the 2022 demonstrations. The pattern is systematic, and the silence is enforced.

Victims have often said fear of retaliation and distrust of Iran's judicial system deterred them from filing complaints. Those who did pursue cases frequently said their complaints went nowhere. The woman detained in 2023 tried several times during her later detention to file a formal complaint over the alleged assault, but officials prevented her from doing so and threatened her into silence. She is now speaking publicly in the hope that others who have suffered similar abuse will feel able to tell their stories. "I hope that one day the seeds of our suffering will sprout," she wrote, "and the tree of our demand for justice will grow strong."

Meanwhile, the state apparatus continues its work. Tehran Prosecutor Ali Salehi announced that the judiciary was preparing to move against cafes, restaurants and clothing stores for violations of dress codes. Within weeks, authorities shut cafes, restaurants, shops and sports clubs in more than 15 cities over hijab violations. Women have been blocked from obtaining motorcycle licenses despite a government decision sent to police in February. The reformist daily Shargh noted that the resistance appeared to have little to do with law or road safety, and everything to do with what women would be wearing. Hardline groups have circulated footage of women walking, exercising, dancing and singing in public spaces, demanding that authorities act. One user wrote: "Do you see the widespread wave of hijab tweets? The message is completely clear: the authorities have made up their minds to put an end to this situation."

The Hijab and Chastity law, finalized in 2024, is harsher than anything before it and includes provisions that would let civilian groups confront women over their clothing. It has never been enforced. Implementation was suspended over fears it would set off protests on the scale of those that followed Mahsa Amini's death, and the Supreme National Security Council's decision still stands. Yet the freeze carries the weight of the late supreme leader's authority. Interior Ministry spokesman Ali Zeynivand said this month that it was decided under Ali Khamenei and has not changed, and that President Pezeshkian, too, supports it. Even so, the streets have moved. Unveiled women are far more visible than a year ago, and many now dress in ways that would have been unthinkable in public not long before.

Some see the easing as a product of the war rather than a change of policy, and expect it to end with the fighting. "If the situation becomes more stable, I doubt the authorities will refrain from bringing their repressive forces back onto the streets to enforce hijab on women," one observer wrote. Even among those who support compulsory hijab, some think a crackdown now would backfire. Morteza Panahian, a young cleric, wrote that anyone blaming the spread of unveiling on the law's suspension had evidently never read the law. "This law is so impossible to implement that, if it is promulgated, the pace of unveiling will double," he wrote. The regime stands at a crossroads: enforce the law and risk the kind of uprising that terrifies it, or maintain the freeze and watch the visible boundaries of acceptable behavior shift further beyond its control. For survivors still carrying the marks of detention, the question is whether speaking out will ever lead anywhere but back to a cell.