Two young women were detained by police in Iran for posting a video of themselves dancing.
The viral Instagram post features the two girls, who appear to be teenagers, allegedly dancing at the Sacred Defense War Memorial Unknown Martyrs Monument in Tehran.
The monument was built by Italian architect Marcello d’Olivo and honors those killed in the Iran-Iraq war that raged between 1980 and 1982.
Both women wear jeans, and one wears a knit sweater and the other a blue top covered by a cardigan.
Iranian authorities have said the girls’ outfits were “inappropriate” and both girls have blocked their Instagram accounts, according to Iran International.
Dancing has been banned under Iranian law since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 when the secular monarchy in Iran was overthrown and replaced by the theocratic government of cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, who died in 1989. He was succeeded after his death in 1989 by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has served as Iran’s supreme leader for the 35 years since.
It is still unclear what the punishment of the two girls will be, but according to Article 637 of the Iranian Penal Code, dancing in public, whether by women or men, is considered a “crime against public modesty” and can be sentenced to death. flogging, specified by law as 99 tabs.
But the two girls are far from the first to fall foul of Iran’s anti-difference legislation.
The two young women were arrested for doing an Instagram dance together, supposedly at a war memorial

Dancing has been illegal in Iran since 1979 when hardline cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei came to power: he was succeeded after his death in 1989 by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has served as Iran’s supreme leader for the 35 years since. since then
In 2014, authorities sentenced six young men and women to suspended sentences of one year in prison and 91 lashes after they appeared in a video dancing to the Pharrell Williams song ‘Happy.’
Four years later, in 2018, Maedeh Hojabri, then 18, was arrested after posting videos of her dancing to social media.
While some of her posts featured her in a hijab, she also recorded videos of her performing for popular Western artists like Justin Bieber with her hair uncovered.
Iranian state television aired a video in which Ms Hojabri confessed to breaking ‘moral norms’ while insisting that was not her intention, and that she was just trying to gain more followers.
In the wake of Ms Hojabri’s arrest, many Iranian women posted their own videos of themselves dancing in support of the teenager, using hashtags such as #DancToDom and #Dancing_IST_A_Crime.
In November 2024, a 16-year-old girl was tragically removed in Iran after her school threatened her with expulsion after she was recorded dancing without a hijab.
An image of Arezoo Khavari’s final moments, showing him balancing on the edge of a building, circulated on X, with several social media users condemning Iran’s strict dress code laws.
The death of Arezoo, who was an Afghan national living in the Iranian city of Shahrari, was confirmed by the General Department of Education in Tehran in a statement that said the girl was injured due to a fall from the height of a residential building. . ‘.

In 2018, Maedeh Hojabri, then 18, was arrested after posting videos of her dancing to social media, and was forced to apologize on state television.

In 2024, 16-year-old Arezoo Khavari was tragically removed to Iran after she was sent home from school and threatened with expulsion for complying with their dress code.
The teenager had also faced repeated harassment from the school for not complying with its dress code policy, Masih alleged, and also claimed that Arezoo had been threatened with expulsion after she was filmed dancing without a hijab.
Commenting on the teenager’s death, respected Persian human rights activist Masih Alinjad said: ‘Taliban education girls, and Iran’s clerics crush a girl’s spirit by letting her hair flow in the wind, for dancing, for choosing your own clothes.
Arezoo’s voice, like so many others, will be buried beneath the world’s loudest headlines. The shame of Western leaders who shake hands with the Islamic Republic and the Taliban, thinking they can reform this cruelty.
Building on the image of Muslim women as silent victims, Iranian women have been central to protests in Iran in recent times, including using dance as a form of defiance.
In 2022, protests sweeping the Islamic nation videos showed schoolgirls destroying textbooks depicting the supreme leaders of the Islamic Republic.
Other videos showed them wearing turbans on clerics’ heads or twirling their scarves in the air in a rejection of the adjusted moral codes imposed by the Iranian regime.

Women’s marches erupt across Iran in 2022 with protesters at this protest turning heads to protest religious dress codes
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