Who let the dogs out? Not Iran
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Hello, it's Hannah Gelbart here. Welcome to this episode of What's in the World from the BBC World Service.

Here in the studio with me is Goncai Hababiazadeh from BBC Persian. Hi. Today we're talking about a ban that is being brought in in different cities in Iran in the Middle East and this is a ban on walking your dog. Yes. So in recent weeks we have seen like a major escalation, a wave of official bans on dog walking that has swept across multiple Iranian cities, at least 20 cities. And

It has ignited a debate on public order, cultural and religious values in Iran. So Gonshe, you were in Tehran when a ban was first introduced on dog walking back in 2019. What was that like? Well, when it was introduced in Tehran, I was there, I was living there. And this was something that people saw it coming.

Because, you know, according to Iran's strict Sharia law, dogs are considered as what the term is called, najis. They're considered as being unclean.

And they shouldn't be kept at homes. They shouldn't like if a dog touches like your prayer mat, according to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has issued a religious decree on it, that prayer mat should be washed and it cannot be used. And if a dog touches anything, that object is unclean.

So that that is like the baseline of it. And when I was in Tehran, that that was a thing. My friends who kept dogs and they were seeing that there is a ban, they couldn't take out their dogs. And they were thinking of other ways. How can we walk the dogs? Because that's the thing. Dogs need to be taken out. You need to walk with them. So how do they get around it?

So the way that they got around it at that time, they went to like some remote places outside Tehran or out in different cities. Like when they could drive, they would take out their dogs and do it. But with the recent ban, although we haven't seen it imposed in the capital in Tehran yet...

But the recent ban says that you cannot even carry your dog inside your vehicle. So that has caused like some other issues and problems for people like how can we do that because we cannot carry the dog even if we want to take it to the vet. So this ban is even stricter than previous bans and it spreads to, as you say, more than 20 different cities. Why has it been brought in now?

That's a very good question that we don't have an answer to it yet. And the terms about the ban has been very vague because usually like what they're saying is they're mentioning why dogs shouldn't be allowed outside. They are mentioning some different reasons saying that the dogs cause uncleanness in public.

They are causing threats to people and they are not regulated. But that's the issue with many social issues in Iran. With dogs, with alcohol, with underground parties, Iran does recognise that many people have pets in their homes, but it doesn't have like a straight up law on it. So what will this mean for dog owners if they won't be able to walk their dogs in the cities, if they won't be able to drive outside the city to walk their dogs? Will people have to get rid of their pets?

That's the question that no one has answered to yet because this was just a very, very swift wave that has happened and it's like we saw daily that more cities and more cities were being added but Iran's judiciary said that we don't have any laws on it. But this is something needed and we need to act against people taking out their dogs in public. What would happen to people if they did take their dogs out in public, if they defied it?

Because this has happened very recently. We are yet to see what the fine is going to be, what they're going to impose on the dog owners. But previously in years, we have seen people being fined. Someone even said from Iran that their driving license was taken away because they were carrying a dog. This was something that we got from inside Iran. BBC Persian has got it from inside Iran. But we haven't seen anything being imposed or any like detention, but

This is kind of like the same pattern that has happened in Tehran in 2019. When we saw it, there were some reports saying that people are going to be arrested if they carry their dogs around, but we didn't see anything concrete about it. That's the thing about this banning. It's very vague banning.

And some people have interpreted that it's a way to meddle in people's private lives and it's a way of the establishment to cause fear for the public because the establishment doesn't want people to get closer and closer to the Western norms and Western ideologies. Talk me through the history and the relationship between Iran and the West.

Well, Iran is an Islamic republic ruled by religious leaders and they govern according to the laws of Islam. This has been the case since 1979 when Iran's monarchy, Shah, was overthrown in the Islamic revolution.

And it brought some major changes to Iran. One of the restrictions that women face is a very strict dress code as well. Like when it comes to dogs, you don't have a straight up police on that yet. But with women, you have morality police in Iran. And women have to wear a hijab, headscarf.

And there's surveillance, harsh penalties and informers, including prison sentence if you break the law. In terms of politics, Iran has got two leaders. It's the elected president and the unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which we spoke about earlier about his religious decree that so many people also in Iran, they abide by his religious decrees as well.

and he sees the West, especially the US, being imperialistic and also corrupt. What has the reaction been like in Iran? What have dog owners said? The reaction is very much divided. Those who support the establishment on social media, they say that these dogs are unclean, they're causing harm to public safety, they're causing harm to children.

From the other side, we have those who oppose the law and they say this is meddling in people's private lives. And like the dogs need to be walked out and you have to take them. You have to take them to vet. You have to walk them out. How can people do it? You don't have any specific regulations on it. They say Iran has lots of more important issues.

to tackle, like the authorities should spend their time tackling more important issues such as

Iran is battling a very, very difficult financial situation at the moment, partly because of the sanctions imposed by West because of Iran's nuclear activities mostly, but also those who oppose the ban. They say it's because of Iran's mismanagement when it comes to its own economy. And there has been power cuts in Iran as well. Some people in different cities in Iran have been given timetables that say

Like from this time to this time, your electricity will be cut off because of savings. So some people who oppose the ban, they say Iran should focus on more important issues rather than dogs. And yet more young people in Iran are getting dogs as pets. True, true. That's true. There are some unofficial statistics that one in 10 people in Iran has a pet at home. That includes dogs as well.

And there are many reasons why people in Iran could be keeping pets at home. Some say that pets are a means like to the Western influence that it's sweeping across Iran. And it's very much in contrast with what the establishment is trying to promote. But we see people using like VPNs or using other methods to access Western culture. And some people see it as being closer to West.

But at the same time, it's in a way for some people to fill out their loneliness. Like when I talk to some of my friends, they're not planning to get married. They're not planning to have children. And they feel like having a pet can help them a lot. So Gonshe, tell me about some of the other quote unquote Western influences in Iran that have been restricted or are being cracked down on what kind of activities people aren't allowed to do there.

There are some activities that Iran says that go against Islamic laws. One of them is drinking alcohol.

And it's also very non-regulated in Iran that drinking alcohol and moonshine market has thrived. And you see so many younger people drinking homemade alcohol, which carries its own risks. Some people have gone blind and even deaths have been reported. And some of the alcohol in Iran has been smuggled to borders with Iraq or with Iran.

Armenia or with Turkey as well. But there is no regulation and if people are caught with alcohol, they can be fined, lashed as well and these smugglers also are risking when they bring alcohol into Iran. I was in Iran up until 2020. I went to underground parties and

And I drank alcohol in Iran. I have to say that. And this is something that many, many young people like me, they do in Iran. But we always had that fear that the police is going to come and raid the party. And if they did, people would just run away out of fear of being caught. Or it wasn't the safest thing to do. But the thing that we were thinking that we are defying the law and we were thinking that this law was

should not be imposed in the first place because we saw Western movies and Western culture and how alcohol when you were above 18 like in some countries it was allowed but in Iran even the access and even the buying was such a challenge. The same with the restrictions on the internet that people use VPNs nowadays to go around these restrictions because Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X they're all blocked in Iran.

So people are getting more and more creative with the ways that they get around these rules. I wonder if they might start building little treadmills for their dogs and stuff and find other ways of walking them so that they don't get caught out by this ban. It could be because it's not just like walking the dogs when you want to take them to vet. And the vet is also another very interesting topic because of the sanctions that are imposed on Iran. It's very difficult to find pet food

I was talking to a friend who's a vet in Iran and he said some of the injections that you need for the dogs for them not to catch diseases that what authorities are worried about, they're not accessible in Iran.

So you've got a kind of chicken and egg thing. You're not allowed to walk your dog to the vet to get the injection that would protect it from the illnesses that the Supreme Leader is afraid of because he's the one who says that dogs are unclean in the first place. Exactly, exactly. It's like a vicious cycle. It is a vicious cycle. It sounds like a very complex situation and there's a lot to be clarified still on these rules. Conchay, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for listening. This is What In The World from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Gilbert. We'll see you next time.