In a move that women's groups deem evidence of the further oppression of women in Iran, the Iranian mullah-run regime has issued a document specifying that which Iranian women are now allowed to wear. The past decades have seen women's dress in Iran go from more varied - from traditional in rural regions and amongst elderly women, to westernized blue-jeans and t-shirts of university students. This move will encourage the end of such freedom of choice in one's personal attire. National Council of Resistance of Iran's Women’s Committee Chair, Ms. Sarvnaz Chitsaz, reiterated that suppression and discrimination against women form the basis of the ideology, laws and conduct of this medieval regime. "This plan sets the stage for greater suppression of women," she said.

Ms. Chitsaz described such repressive plans and measures as a desperate attempt by the regime to thwart the active presence of women in antigovernment protests.

Such moves are always instituted in the Middle East by male-dominated fundamentalist governments. Iranian activists for women's rights fear that such a move - in light of the increasingly oppressive Iranian government - heralds an eventual Taliban-style implementation of fashion police squads, which publicly insult, beat, and arrest women who they deem have violated the dress code according to Islam. (See also the history of the muttawa in Saudi Arabia.)