Beaten, Blinded, Imprisoned: The IRGC’s Reign of Terror Against Iranian Women

The Architecture of Terror: How the IRGC Wages War on Iranian Women

BY: Amil Imani

Watch the footage closely. On an Iranian street, a man in a Vladimir Putin T-shirt kicks a young woman to the pavement and beats her with the butt of an assault rifle. There is no hesitation in his movements and no fear of consequence. To outside observers, it is a shocking burst of street brutality. To many women in Iran, it is Tuesday.

For decades, the world has framed the struggle of Iranian women around a piece of cloth, a cultural or religious dispute over modest dress. That framing misses what is happening. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its paramilitary arm, the Basij, are not enforcing a moral code. They