Profiting from National Strife
On the Establishment of the 'Hijab Situation Room'
“When the 12-day conflict ended, a hopeful breeze of national unity began to blow, but suddenly it was cut short.” This observation from former president Hassan Rouhani captured a tragic squandering of national solidarity. During hours of acute danger, the Iranian populace rallied to defend the homeland rather than the ruling elite. Yet certain factions—who derive influence and funding from perpetuating social conflict—appear incapable of tolerating domestic reconciliation, persistently reviving discredited coercive policies.
The announcement of a "Hijab and Chastity Situation Room" and the mobilization of 80,000 enforcement personnel in Tehran exemplifies this regression. Changing the terminology from "command base" to "situation room" cannot conceal the identical coercive machinery beneath.
Proponents frame this initiative as a "data-driven, cultural persuasion" endeavor. Yet deploying an apparatus of 80,000 personnel—backed by state prosecutors, cyber police, and administrative penalties—contradicts any genuine notion of cultural dialogue. Calculating even a minimal stipend for such a force represents a staggering misallocation of national wealth toward a project that has repeatedly proven socially catastrophic.
Reviving domestic confrontation carries grave strategic dangers:
First, it suggests an illusion within state circles that foreign military threats have permanently vanished, treating domestic unity merely as a disposable tactical convenience rather than a strategic imperative.
Second, it risks walking straight into a strategic trap. Regional adversaries contemplating future confrontations may deliberately lower external military pressure to allow hardline factions to resume internal repression. By turning state machinery against its own youth, domestic cohesion is steadily hollowed out. When future crises emerge, external adversaries would face not a unified nation, but an alienated, exhausted, and bitter society.
The "Hijab Situation Room" reflects acute strategic confusion. Instead of surveilling public squares and policing citizens' personal lives, policymakers in the nation's true strategic chambers must ask: Are we not actively engineering the conditions for our adversaries' geopolitical ambitions to succeed?