In November 2024, a woman walked through the grounds of Tehran’s Islamic Azad University wearing only her underwear.
The images traveled around the world. To many viewers, the woman appeared extraordinarily calm. She walked through the university grounds while people watched, seemingly transforming her own body into a protest against a state that had spent decades claiming authority over women’s bodies.
Her name was Ahoo Daryaei, a university student and mother of two.
At the time, much of the international attention focused on the few extraordinary minutes captured on camera. But almost two years later, new allegations about what happened after the cameras stopped recording are considerably more disturbing.
According to a friend quoted in recent reporting, Daryaei was beaten, forcibly restrained, taken to a psychiatric institution and compelled to receive psychiatric medication. The friend alleges that the treatment did not end when Daryaei was released: she is reportedly still being subjected to monthly injections of the antipsychotic flupentixol. These new claims have not been independently verified, so they should be treated as allegations rather than established facts.
Having experienced voluntary psychiatric hospitalization myself, I am thankful that it happened in the Czech Republic rather than under an authoritarian system such as Iran’s or China’s.
If accurate, her story is no longer merely about Iran’s compulsory hijab.
It is about something even darker: the potential use of psychiatry as an instrument of political control.
A protest that lasted only minutes
On November 2, 2024, Daryaei was confronted at the Science and Research Branch of Islamic Azad University in Tehran.
Accounts of precisely what happened initially differed. Human-rights organizations reported that university security personnel confronted her over compulsory veiling and that her clothing was torn during the confrontation. Daryaei responded by removing more of her clothes, eventually appearing publicly in her underwear. Iranian officials subsequently disputed elements of this account and portrayed her behavior as the consequence of psychological problems.
Videos showed her walking outside before plainclothes officers detained her.
The contrast was striking. Daryaei appeared almost serene while doing something that could bring severe consequences in the Islamic Republic.
Iran’s authorities have required women to comply with compulsory veiling rules since the years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The death of Mahsa Jina Amini in custody in 2022 after her detention by morality police over her hijab triggered the enormous Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
Two years later, Daryaei turned clothing itself into a political weapon.
The state told her what she had to wear.
Her answer was effectively to wear almost nothing at all.
Then she disappeared
The viral video ended, but Daryaei’s ordeal apparently did not.
Human-rights organizations raised alarms almost immediately. Amnesty International called for her unconditional release and an investigation into allegations that she had been violently arrested. Reports subsequently indicated that she had been transferred to a psychiatric facility.
That detail was particularly disturbing.
Instead of simply portraying Daryaei as a political dissident or prosecuting her for violating Iran’s dress requirements, authorities characterized her behavior in psychiatric terms.
An Islamic Azad University official said after her detention that medical evaluations indicated that she had been under severe mental pressure and had psychological problems. Government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani similarly presented the matter as one requiring treatment rather than primarily as a security case.
This conveniently transformed an act that millions of people around the world interpreted as political protest into evidence of illness.
The dissident did not have to be answered politically if she could instead be declared a patient.
She was eventually released—or so it seemed
On November 19, 2024, Iranian authorities announced that Daryaei had been discharged and returned to her family.
Judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said that no judicial case had been filed against her. According to the official account, she had been considered unwell, sent to a hospital and subsequently released into her family’s care.
At first glance, this appeared to be a relatively fortunate ending.
A woman had committed an extraordinary act of defiance, attracted worldwide attention and escaped the long prison sentence many feared might follow.
But freedom has a strange meaning if the state can determine what medication enters your body.
New reporting now presents a much darker account of what allegedly followed.
The disturbing new allegations
According to a friend of Daryaei cited in reporting published this weekend, authorities did considerably more than temporarily hospitalize her.
The friend alleges that Daryaei was beaten and restrained following her arrest, then forced into psychiatric treatment. After her release, she was allegedly warned that authorities would monitor her and tap her phone. (ynetglobal)
Most disturbing is the allegation concerning medication.
According to the account, Daryaei initially had to obtain antipsychotic medication herself. Authorities subsequently suspected that she was not taking it because she appeared to be behaving too normally, the friend claims. She was then allegedly moved to monthly injections of flupentixol, an antipsychotic medication used in psychiatric treatment.
The allegation is extraordinary.
It also requires caution. The current information comes through a friend speaking to the media rather than independently accessible medical records or a transparent legal process. In a country where information concerning dissidents is exceptionally difficult to verify, certainty would be irresponsible.
But if the account is accurate, the implications are horrifying.
A woman protested against the state’s control over her clothes.
The state’s answer may have been to assert control over her mind and body through forced psychiatric treatment.
Psychiatry can heal people—or become a weapon
Psychiatric medicine exists to treat illness and alleviate suffering. Antipsychotic medications can be enormously valuable for people who need them.
That is precisely why their alleged use for political purposes is so disturbing.
There is an enormous ethical difference between treating a patient because an independently assessed medical condition requires treatment and forcing psychiatric medication upon somebody because authorities find her behavior politically unacceptable.
Medicine ceases to function as medicine when diagnosis becomes punishment.
The Soviet Union became notorious for abusing psychiatry against dissidents. Political opposition could be interpreted as evidence of mental abnormality, allowing people who challenged the state to be confined in psychiatric institutions rather than treated as conventional political prisoners.
The technique offers an authoritarian government an additional advantage: it attacks the dissident’s credibility.
A prisoner can become a martyr.
A “patient” can be dismissed as irrational.
Iran has faced this accusation before
Concern about the psychiatric treatment of Daryaei did not emerge from nowhere.
Human-rights observers had already documented cases in which Iranian women opposing compulsory hijab requirements were ordered to undergo psychological treatment. That history was one reason activists immediately became alarmed when Iranian authorities characterized Daryaei’s protest as evidence of mental-health problems.
The political utility is obvious.
Suppose a woman removes her hijab and declares that the government has no right to dictate what she wears.
Authorities have several possible responses.
They can admit that she is making a political argument and punish her for dissent. They can ignore her. Or they can deny the premise altogether by declaring that a psychologically healthy woman would never behave that way.
The third option is particularly sinister because it converts disagreement into pathology.
You are not protesting.
You are ill.
Women have not surrendered
Yet Iran’s broader struggle over compulsory hijab has moved in a direction the government has struggled to reverse.
Nearly four years after Mahsa Amini’s death, many Iranian women continue appearing publicly without hijab despite the possibility of fines, arrest and other punishment.
Fresh reporting from Iran indicates that morality-police activity is again intensifying. Patrols have reportedly returned to streets in several cities, while authorities have closed cafés over alleged violations of compulsory hijab requirements. Yet women continue openly defying the rules.
One activist told The Sunday Times that she had received 74 lashes after posting a photograph of herself without a hijab. Others described summonses, fines and continuing surveillance. At the same time, women in Tehran increasingly appear publicly with uncovered hair and clothing that would once have been almost unimaginable under strict enforcement.
This produces a remarkable situation.
The law remains.
The state retains enormous coercive power.
But millions of women increasingly behave as though the government has lost moral authority over their appearance.
A regime fighting women’s hair
Iran is a country of almost 90 million people with extraordinary human capital, major universities, sophisticated industries, substantial natural resources and one of the world’s oldest civilizations.
It also faces serious economic problems, international isolation and regional insecurity.
Yet the Islamic Republic continues devoting state power to women’s hair.
That tells us something about the political importance of compulsory hijab to the system itself.
The requirement is not merely a dress regulation. It represents the government’s claim that Islamic law, as interpreted by the state, overrides individual choice.
Allow women openly to disregard it, and the question quickly becomes larger.
If the state cannot tell a woman what to put on her head, what else can she refuse?
That is why a piece of fabric can become politically explosive.
Daryaei understood the symbolism perfectly
Whether Daryaei planned every element of her protest in advance is less important than what the images ultimately communicated.
The state demanded modesty.
She removed her clothes.
The state demanded obedience.
She walked calmly through the university.
The state claimed authority over the female body.
She transformed that body into the protest itself.
That is why the video traveled around the world.
A complicated political argument had been reduced to a visual image anyone could understand.
Who owns this woman’s body?
The Iranian state, or Ahoo Daryaei?
The allegation changes the meaning of her story
In 2024, Daryaei’s story seemed to be about compulsory clothing.
In 2026, it may also be about compulsory medication.
That distinction matters.
Forcing someone to cover her hair is an assault on personal autonomy. Forcing psychiatric treatment upon a mentally competent political dissident for the purpose of suppressing dissent would cross another boundary entirely.
Again, the newest allegations require independent corroboration. We should not transform the testimony of an unnamed friend into an established medical history.
But they deserve investigation precisely because the original psychiatric confinement is not disputed: Iranian authorities themselves said Daryaei had been hospitalized and framed her actions in terms of mental health. Human-rights organizations were concerned about that explanation from the beginning.
The unanswered question is what happened afterward.
This is bigger than the hijab
People outside Iran sometimes discuss compulsory hijab as though the central question were whether covering one’s hair is good or bad.
It isn’t.
Millions of Muslim women freely choose to wear hijab. Their right to do so deserves exactly the same protection as another woman’s right to reject it.
The issue is coercion.
Religious freedom means that a woman can cover her hair because she believes God wants her to.
Freedom also means that another woman can uncover it because she does not.
Once police, courts or psychiatric institutions determine which choice she must make, freedom has disappeared.
Woman, life, freedom: She is fortunately unfortunate
Ahoo Daryaei’s protest lasted minutes. Its consequences may have lasted years.
She wasn’t brutally tortured or she didn’t end up dead.
We still do not know enough about her current circumstances, and the latest allegations about forced medication need independent verification. That uncertainty should be stated openly rather than filled with speculation.
What we do know is already disturbing enough.
A woman was confronted over clothing. She stripped in defiance. Security personnel detained her. She was transferred to a psychiatric institution. Authorities publicly characterized her behavior as a mental-health matter rather than simply acknowledging the obvious political meaning that millions saw in her protest.
And now someone described as her friend says the psychiatric intervention never truly ended.
If that allegation is true, Daryaei’s story becomes an especially chilling illustration of authoritarian power.
First the state tells a woman what she must put on her body.
Then, when she refuses, it allegedly tells her what must be put into her body.
Ahoo Daryaei’s protest asked a question that the Islamic Republic still seems unable to answer without coercion:
Who owns an Iranian woman’s body—the woman herself, or the state?
