More than 48 hours after the event, the identity of the Iranian woman who stripped and paraded in her underwear in front of her university in Tehran remains unknown. On social media, she is known as "the science and research girl," after her university campus.

On Saturday, November 2, in a video posted online, we see this young woman, long hair falling down her back, walking calmly in front of the Azad University campus in northern Tehran. Around her, university security officers, responsible for monitoring the appearance and behavior of male and female students alike, bustle about. In a second video, filmed from farther away, she removes her underpants. A car then shows up, and the officers violently force her to get into the vehicle.

Since then, no reliable information has been published about her. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, women are required to be entirely covered, leaving only their face and hands visible, and the mixing of men and women is strictly controlled and monitored.

According to the Telegram channel "Khabarname Amir Kabir," which specializes in protest movements at Iranian universities, the young woman had been harassed by university security officers for wearing clothing deemed "insufficiently Islamic." The same source reports that her clothes had been torn during a confrontation with the officers, and that she decided to strip in protest.

The two videos have caused an uproar on social media. Azad University's director of communications, Amir Mahjoub, tried to calm the situation by denying any altercation between the student and the security officers, referring instead to the "psychological disorders" from which the young woman was said to be suffering. The official news agency ISNA and other Iranian media also reported that the young woman had been placed in a psychiatric center, raising serious concerns. A video was also circulated, showing a man with a blurred face who introduces himself as her ex-husband and asks: "Please, for the sake of her children's future, don't share this video. Don't damage her reputation."

In the past, the Iranian regime has used forced psychiatric internment as a means of repression against its opponents, particularly women. A case in point is Roya Zakeri, arrested in October 2023 in Tabriz for not wearing a headscarf. She was committed three times to a psychiatric hospital in her town, and in a video posted in November 2023, she declares: "The Islamic Republic is trying to make me look mentally ill, but I am physically and mentally healthy."

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