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Markus Feldenkirchen, Der SPIEGEL
“Where do you think this change comes from? And what is happening in Iranian society right now?”
Jasmin Tabatabai, actress
“People are just so fed up. I think these, these, these are not only. It's not just about a headscarf or some kind of... It's about so many things. That you always have to be afraid when you kiss. That you always somehow... kiss in public. That you, that you want to dance in the street. For the girls who think they're boys or feel like boys. People are taking to the streets for all these people. Maybe now is the time to listen to women. Because Muslim women who don't want to wear a veil and who otherwise always somehow, where you just always look the other way. Because that's the way it is, it's not just the veil. As Omid rightly said, women are systematically discriminated against in Iran, in many aspects of everyday life: in inheritance law. Why should I automatically only inherit half of what my brother inherits? Divorce law: very big problem. The children automatically go straight to the man, no matter what."
Markus Feldenkirchen, Der SPIEGEL
»Just a few weeks ago, the Iranian government under President Raisi passed a stricter new law on the wearing of the hijab. What do you think, Mr Nouripour, why this tightening? Couldn't the regime have guessed that this highly symbolic topic would also lead to demonstrations?"
Omid Nouripour, co-head of Bündnis90/Die Grünen
“Two reasons. One is the complete decoupling of the system from the reality of the people. The second is... No sense of it anymore... Not at all anymore. That's now - you know that from the late Soviet period. People take to the streets and say: milk is too expensive. Then it says: You are all spies and provocateurs of the West. And the second reason is: They mean it that way! Especially the people around Raisi and they are now the mainstream of the regime. There used to be reformers. All of them don't exist anymore. These people are all hardcore fundamentalists, they mean it like that, they are people who sometimes come from very strange sects, who then talk about it... I've experienced that myself, yes. Pistachios that are not open. Some pistachios are closed you take a mixture and then you can't get it open. They weren't blessed by Ali's eye, and that's what they mean, they're totally crazy people, if I may put it in German, and they're hardcore undamentalists, and they live it out at the expense of the people and, above all, live it up expense of women.«
Markus Feldenkirchen, Der SPIEGEL
“This morality police, which we have already discussed, sounds like something from the Middle Ages to us. Have any of you had contact with this vice squad?”
Jasmin Tabatabai, actress
»When I was still going to Iran, that was until I was 19. In the 80's she was also very active and very, very strict, the vice squad. We were all afraid that a hair would come out somewhere. In the eighties you took the women with you if a hair came out. Yes, and I once had, too, when my mother in the north of Iran tied her headscarf at the back in the evening. Then someone came and rebuked us. My cousins wanted to arrest her because she's too provocative. That can happen to you too. Yes, you, you, you, you, you go too provocative. Whereupon she said with Iranian quick-wittedness: What should I do? He's big."
Omid Nouripour, co-head of Bündnis90/Die Grünen
»I was traveling with my grandma. You have an elderly wife and it has been a hot summer. One woman picked out, an older woman, she was over 60. Her stockings were too thin."
Markus Feldenkirchen, Der SPIEGEL
"When was it?"
Omid Nouripour, co-head of Bündnis90/Die Grünen
»84/85. And she was publicly flogged. I saw that myself. My sister is 87 when she was 17, arrested for going to a birthday party for a girl in her class. And there was her brother and one of her brother's friends, they were twelve. So it was a mixed party. So it was immoral. My sister was in solitary confinement for a few days. And that was the darkest 80's. It's been gradually improved, Raisi is going back there and people think that..."
Jasmin Tabatabai, actress
"People get whipped if they somehow meet their girlfriend in a café, or if they go to a party somewhere..."
Markus Feldenkirchen, Der SPIEGEL
"Not in the eighties today?"
Jasmin Tabatabai, actress
“Even now, when alcohol is being consumed and maybe you didn’t bribe the right people and then there is a raid, then the house is stormed and then there are people I know who are in prison for a very long time and then they are deal and then they get their lashes.”
Markus Feldenkirchen, Der SPIEGEL
“What do you think this President is really up to?”
Omid Nouripour, co-head of Bündnis90/Die Grünen
“I think he's up to his neck in water and that he's slowly realizing it. But the problem is not, as I said, the headscarf legislation, but that is the symbol for so many other moments of pressure that people experience and accordingly he would have to introduce the most massive reforms that the system would not survive and which the people would not either always believes."
Markus Feldenkirchen, Der SPIEGEL
“You could open discussion centers, for example,” he suggests.
Omid Nouripour, co-head of Bündnis90/Die Grünen
“When people are then allowed to say what they believe and what they think in the discussion centers. But to be honest, I don't know that people buy it.«
Jasmin Tabatabai, actress
"Like most Iranians, I don't think this regime can be reformed."
Omid Nouripour, co-head of Bündnis90/Die Grünen
"I think... I feel like I thought that a few years ago and I feel the same way now."
Markus Feldenkirchen, Der SPIEGEL
"Would you like a stronger sign of solidarity from the federal government these days with those who are taking to the streets there, for example from our Foreign Minister Ms. Baerbock?"
Jasmin Tabatabai, actress
'Your direct message to Raisi would be most welcome. And she has to keep at it. She must. She raised great hopes in all of us with her promise of feminist foreign policy. And I also firmly believe that she can do it, that she can make a difference. And I hope that she will keep at it and that it won't stop with the well-intentioned and affected words, but that there will also be actions. Stop this policy of appeasement!«