Ten cafes and restaurants, 28 motorcycles, and 70 cars have been targeted by judicial and police enforcement in South Khorasan Province since the beginning of the Persian calendar year (starting March 20) solely due to reasons related to sealing businesses over mandatory hijab and women driving.
According to the state-run Mehr News Agency on August 20, 2026, Ahmad Ghasemi, the prosecutor of South Khorasan’s provincial capital, announced these figures, acknowledging new dimensions of coercive pressure exerted on women and local businesses.
Ahmad Ghasemi confessed that since the beginning of the year, 28 motorcycles have been impounded in connection with compulsory veiling regulations. He specified that 9 motorcycles were impounded by the State Security Forces (SSF) and 19 others by the traffic police. According to him, these actions were taken in cases where women were driving the motorcycles or female passengers did not comply with the regime’s imposed dress code.
Ghasemi added that in 25 other cases, female passengers received formal police warnings regarding dress code rules without their motorcycles being impounded.
The provincial prosecutor further reported that the details of 70 cars were registered in the system for failure to observe compulsory veiling, stating that this measure was taken to track and potentially impound these vehicles.
He also announced that 10 cafes and restaurants in the province have been shut down since the beginning of the Persian year due to reasons linked to sealing businesses over mandatory hijab. Without disclosing the exact names or locations of these business units, Ghasemi claimed that 18 other cafes and restaurants had previously been shut down during recent protests for similar reasons.
The publication of these official statistics in state-run media highlights the broad scope of escalating security pressures, strict controls on women’s freedom of movement, and deliberate damage to the livelihoods of private sector businesses.
Sealing Sports Clubs; Continued Pressure on Women-Only Spaces
These coercive measures are not limited to South Khorasan Province and continue extensively across other provinces. Previously, four women’s sports clubs in the city of Yazd were sealed off by the Public Places Supervision Police.
According to the state-run Mehr News Agency on August 2, 2026, the chief of Yazd’s Public Places Supervision Police announced that these four women’s sports clubs were sealed off due to “disciplinary violations,” and judicial cases were opened against their managers.
This vague label is a well-known tactic of the repressive apparatus to find pretexts against women’s independent activities and to forcibly impose a state-mandated lifestyle. In fact, a significant portion of such crackdowns is carried out under the guise of “failure to comply with mandatory hijab,” and fabricated charges such as “violating norms,” “acts against chastity,” and “non-compliance with Islamic codes.”
