In Iran, youth between disobedience and frustration in the face of regime violence

Special Envoy to Tehran, Iran

The scene was unimaginable a year ago. Young Iranian women, without veils or coats, sitting at a trendy bar in Tehran, or smoking cigarettes on the terrace to the rhythm of fashionable Western music. The jeans are tight, some T-shirts too. Rue Iranshahr, in the center of the capital, the Type and its Art Deco style resembles the fashionable bars of Beirut, Tel Aviv or Paris. The scene would be banal if it were not set in the very pious Islamic Republic, where the religious power imposes its dress rigor - veil and coat obligatory for women - for forty-four years. It is, in fact, surreal. The foreign observer purses his lips as he imagines the reaction of the most conservative fringe of power.

"No, I did not believe that we could achieve this result, the girls are really brave," says a woman, in her fifties, who is having dinner with her daughter, bareheaded, both. "I take advantage of it

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