Iran Extends Ban on Dog-walking for ‘public Order
The ban, which echoes a 2019 police directive that barred walking dogs in Tehran, was expanded to Ilam city in the west on Sunday, according to reports.
At least 17 other cities have introduced similar bans in recent days, including Isfahan in the centre and Kerman in the south.
Owning and walking dogs has been a contentious subject since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, though there is no law banning dog ownership outright.
Many religious scholars, however, consider petting dogs or coming into contact with their saliva as najis , or ritually impure, while some officials view pet dogs as a symbol of western cultural influence.
Local authorities have periodically introduced bans on walking dogs in public spaces or carrying them in vehicles as part of a wider campaign to discourage their ownership.
Enforcing the restrictions has been inconsistent, as many owners continue to walk their dogs in Tehran and elsewhere across Iran.
On Sunday, the reformist Etemad newspaper quoted an official from Ilam city as saying 'legal action will be taken against violators', without elaborating.
On Saturday, the state newspaper Iran said the latest measures were aimed at 'maintaining public order, ensuring safety and protecting public health'.
Abbas Najafi, the prosecutor of the western city of Hamedan, was quoted by the Iran newspaper, as saying: 'Dog walking is a threat to public health, peace and comfort.'
In 2021, 75 lawmakers condemned pet ownership as a 'destructive social problem', saying it could 'gradually change the Iranian and Islamic way of life'.
In 2017, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said: 'Keeping dogs for reasons other than herding, hunting and guard dogs is considered reprehensible.'
According to Tasnim news agency, Khamenei added: 'If this practice resembles that of non-Muslims, promotes their culture or causes harm and disturbance to neighbours, it is deemed forbidden.'
Also read: Iran Furious At 'Racist' US Travel Ban Targeting Muslim Nations
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gulf Insider
4 hours ago
- Gulf Insider
UN Watchdog Chief Believes Inspectors Will Return To Iran
Iranian diplomats have concluded talks with their European counterparts from Germany, the UK, and France on Friday to revive nuclear negotiations, amid warnings from the three European nations that they may activate the 'snapback' UN sanctions mechanism outlined in the defunct 2015 nuclear agreement. The Istanbul-hosted meeting lasted about four hours and marks the first such engagement since Israel's mid-June strikes on Iran, which triggered a 12-day conflict, at the end of which the US intervened on Israel's side and bombed three key nuclear facilities. Throughout the June war, top Iranian military commanders, nuclear experts, and hundreds of civilians were killed. Iran has said its nuclear sites were 'destroyed' but still maintains the capability and 'right' to enrich uranium for its domestic nuclear energy program. Following Friday's talks, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, who attended alongside senior diplomat Majid Takht-Ravanchi, described the discussions with the European powers as 'serious, frank, and detailed'. The talks were focused on sanctions relief and nuclear concerns, which each side expressed willingness to continue the discussions. Despite Iran recently booting IAEA nuclear inspectors from the country, the UN nuclear watchdog remains optimistic of the return of a monitoring regimen: The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog is optimistic that inspectors will be able to return to Iran later this year, he said on Friday. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters that it was important to start discussing with Tehran the modalities of restarting visits. 'We need to agree on where to go, how to do it. We need to listen to Iran in terms of what they consider should be the precautions to be taken,' he said. Meanwhile, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi has once again warned that if 'snapback' sanctions are reinstated, Iran would respond with punitive countermeasures, including the possibility of withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT requires non-nuclear states to keep their nuclear activities strictly for peaceful, civilian use. Notably, Israel, which is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons – possibly dozens or over one hundred – has not signed the treaty, and Tehran has long blasted this international hypocrisy. Under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, Tehran committed to restricting its nuclear program to civilian purposes in return for the lifting of UN sanctions but the historic agreement included a 'snapback' provision allowing for the reimposition of those sanctions if Iran is found to be in violation of the agreement. But after Trump withdrew the US from the JCPOA in April 2018, Iran has been saying essentially 'what deal?' …and that Washington can no longer be trusted. Also read: Kabul Edges Toward Disaster As It Becomes First Modern Capital City To Run Out Of Water
Daily Tribune
16 hours ago
- Daily Tribune
Saudi Arabia Takes Lead in Global Push for Palestinian Statehood
Saudi Arabia has reaffirmed its commitment to advancing peace in the Middle East, with Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan announcing the Kingdom's co-chairing of a major international conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this week in New York, alongside France. Speaking to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Prince Faisal said the Kingdom's role reflects its long-standing support for Palestinian rights and the pursuit of a just and lasting peace based on the two-state solution. 'Under the leadership of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Kingdom continues to work tirelessly to end the suffering of the Palestinian people and the violence caused by decades of occupation,' he said. The upcoming ministerial-level conference at the United Nations headquarters seeks to accelerate the implementation of key UN resolutions and pave the way for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Saudi-French initiative follows the September 2024 launch of the International Coalition for the Two-State Solution, led by Saudi Arabia, Norway, and the European Union. Prince Faisal also emphasized that the initiative aligns with the efforts of the joint Arab-Islamic ministerial committee, aimed at securing Palestinian statehood and fostering long-term peace and security in the region.
Gulf Insider
2 days ago
- Gulf Insider
OPEC Is Playing The Long Game
OPEC is pursuing a long-term strategy to increase its market share and is unwinding production cuts, with oil prices remaining strong due to factors beyond OPEC's direct control. The rise in oil prices is influenced by geopolitical developments, such as U.S.-Chinese trade talks and sanctions against Russia, as well as a decline in new non-OPEC oil discoveries. OPEC's approach is also aimed at restoring group cohesion among its members and capitalizes on the resilience of oil demand, even as some forecasts suggest a peak in consumption. 'There is no peak in oil demand on the horizon,' the head of OPEC, Haitham al Ghais, said last month in Canada. Demand will continue to increase as global population grows, he added. And OPEC will be there to respond with what supply is necessary. OPEC is now playing the long game. Fast-forward a month and Reuters is reporting on 'signs of strong demand more than offset the impact of a higher-than-expected OPEC+ output hike for August', not to mention now chronic worry about Trump's tariffs. In fact, after OPEC+ announced the bigger than expected supply boost, prices rose, not least because not everyone boosting supply was boosting it fast enough. When OPEC+ first said they were going to start unwinding their production cuts, agreed back in 2022, reactions were varied. Some argued it was all about trying to kill U.S. shale again. Others said the Saudis, the biggest cutter, simply had no other choice any longer after the cuts failed to produce significantly higher prices. Yet others claimed OPEC in general and Saudi Arabia specifically are trying to please Trump—by hurting some of his biggest donors. OPEC itself has not endorsed any of these versions of events. The fact remains that OPEC is reversing the cuts, boosting oil supply—but prices are not tanking as so many prominent energy analysts said they would, and are still saying they would, later this year. Of course, this is because of factors unrelated to OPEC, namely geopolitical developments such as U.S.-Chinese trade talks and Canadian wildfires, as well as yet more EU sanctions against Russia. But OPEC certainly wouldn't mind these factors supporting prices, if not more U.S. rig additions. OPEC is playing for market share. This is one of the most popular explanations for the group's latest moves among analysts. After curbing production for a couple of years and surrendering market share in the process, now some of the world's biggest producers want this market share back. This is going to take a while. Bank of America's head of commodities research, Francisco Blanch called it a 'long and shallow' price war. 'It's not a price war that is going to be short and steep; rather it's going to be a price war that is long and shallow,' Blanch told Bloomberg a month ago. He went on to say the target, especially for the Saudis, is U.S. shale, which has become more resilient in recent years but is still vulnerable to lower oil prices because of its higher costs. There is also another aspect to the change in OPEC approach, as detailed by Kpler's Amena Bakr. It's about group cohesion, Bakr wrote in an analysis for The National. With so much non-compliance with the cuts, those that were compliant needed to have their concerns addressed, too. 'To restore a sense of fairness, an orderly plan to return the barrels gradually was needed to avoid a free-for-all situation that would drown the market in supply,' Bakr explained. OPEC doesn't even need to try very hard this time, because geopolitics is working in its favor. Last month, prices climbed immediately on the suggestion that the U.S.-Iran talks could escalate into missile action, after the Iranian defense minister threatened strikes on U.S. bases in the Middle East should the two fail to reach a deal on Iran's nuclear program. U.S. Congress work on fresh sanctions against Russia, targeting specifically its energy industry also served as a driver for higher prices, undeterred by EU plans to try and stop importing even petroleum products made with Russian crude, possibly in light of the EU's track record of success with the anti-Russian sanctions. Yet there is another factor helping OPEC stay on top: non-OPEC supply. The Financial Times reported in mid-June that the international supermajors have not made many new discoveries lately. Since 2020, new non-shale discoveries have averaged 2.5 billion barrels a year, the FT noted, citing a Goldman Sachs report. This is just 25% of the average annual in new discoveries for the three years prior to 2020. In other words, all the talk about non-OPEC swamping OPEC and taking the upper hand on international oil markets may have been a little premature—as may be the case of IEA demand projections. The IEA has been notoriously bearish on oil demand, repeatedly citing rising EV sales, even though these sales in the U.S. are set for a serious decline. In Europe, EV sales are on the rise thanks to the return of subsidies but how long these are going to last is anyone's guess. China is always the country everyone points to when it comes to EVs, and yet China's oil demand is still growing—although peak talk is intensifying there as well, including from its own state oil majors. In this situation, OPEC essentially does not need to do anything but sit and wait. Price-sensitive U.S. shale will slow down, lack of new discoveries will crimp the growth potential of the supermajors, and prices will rise, because peak demand does not mean a sharp drop afterwards. In fact, even if we have reached peak oil demand, the most likely next stage in demand evolution is a plateau at a level that would need to be maintained. OPEC would no doubt be happy to help do that.
