From Private Parties to Protest Cells: How Iran Polices LGBTQ+ Lives

When a Private Gathering Becomes a Police Operation

In May 2007, police and Basij forces entered a private gathering in Isfahan and arrested 87 people. Human Rights Watch reported that those detained included four women and at least eight people accused of wearing clothing associated with another gender. Witnesses described beatings, bloody injuries and broken bones. The raid was presented within a wider campaign against conduct and appearance that authorities characterized as immoral, but its consequences extended beyond the enforcement of a particular morality code.

The operation entered a private home, exposed a social network and transformed appearance and association into potential grounds for suspicion. Attendance at the gathering did not establish that every person present was LGBTQ+, just as clothing did not prove anyone's sexual behavior. Yet once dozens of people were detained, their identities and relationships could become part of an investigative process in which suspicion itself acquired institutional consequences.

Less than a year later, another operation followed. In February 2008, Human Rights Watch reported that police arrested at least 30 men at another private party in Isfahan. Some were detained for weeks without charges or access to lawyers and were reportedly referred for forensic examinations intended to seek evidence of same-sex conduct. Human Rights Watch also reported subsequent surveillance and harassment of people connected to those arrested.

The importance of these cases is not simply that police entered private gatherings. It is that a private gathering could become a source of information about a wider community. Once authorities had identified people who knew one another, attended the same gatherings or maintained particular relationships, the social network itself could become visible to investigators.

A party had become a map. Once that map existed, it could be used again.

The Arrest Is Only the Beginning

For LGBTQ+ people living under criminalization and social stigma, the consequences of a raid can extend far beyond a criminal sentence. An arrest can expose a relationship to parents who may not have known about it. A confiscated phone can reveal contacts and private conversations. A home address can become known to hostile actors. Employment or education can be disrupted before guilt has been established.

A person can also be released without conviction and still return to a life that has fundamentally changed. Family members may have learned something the person had kept private. Friends may distance themselves because they fear being identified. A community that once offered support may become more cautious because its members have seen what happened to people who were exposed.

This is why counting prison sentences alone fails to capture the full impact of policing. Identification can itself become punishment. Exposure can itself become punishment. The knowledge that another knock on the door is possible can reshape an entire social circle long after officers have left.

For communities that already live under stigma, the effect can be especially severe. People do not simply ask whether an action is legal. They may have to ask whether being seen with a particular person is safe, whether a private gathering can remain private, whether a phone can be trusted and whether seeking help from authorities could expose them to further harm.

Morality Policing and the Institutions Behind It

The institutions involved in gender and morality enforcement in Iran are not interchangeable. Iran's morality police operated within the national law-enforcement structure, while the Basij belongs to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Both have participated in enforcing state-defined social norms, but their chains of command are different.

That distinction matters when attempting to establish accountability. If an operation is to be investigated, it matters which institution ordered it, which commanders supervised the personnel involved and where complaints were supposed to go. Broadly attributing every act of repression to a single undifferentiated security apparatus may communicate the scale of the problem, but it can also obscure the specific mechanisms through which abuse occurred.

A September 2022 US Treasury designation identified Mohammad Rostami Cheshmeh Gachi as national head of the morality police and Haj Ahmad Mirzaei as head of its Tehran division during Jina Mahsa Amini's detention. The same document identified Qasem Rezaei as deputy commander of Iran's law-enforcement forces and described his supervisory role in abusive policing. These were administrative sanctions findings, not criminal convictions.

Hossein Ashtari was separately identified by the US Treasury as commander of Iran's national law-enforcement forces from March 2015. His tenure came years after the 2007 and 2008 Isfahan raids, meaning he cannot simply be inserted into those earlier operations without evidence connecting him to them.

But changes in leadership raise a broader question about institutional continuity. Did methods change as commanders changed, or did enforcement of prescribed appearance and behavior continue under successive leadership? Answering that question requires examining operations, orders, personnel and patterns of conduct rather than simply comparing names at the top.

The Basij and a Wider System of Coercion

On the IRGC side, US sanctions records identified Gholamreza Soleimani as Basij commander during 2020 and 2021. A December 2021 designation addressed the Basij's role in violent protest suppression. A separate Treasury announcement identified Salar Abnoush as a Basij deputy commander who had publicly discussed his command role during the November 2019 protests.

These records are relevant when examining questions of institutional structure, training, discipline and command. They do not, by themselves, establish that either man ordered violence against a particular LGBTQ+ detainee. That requires a more specific evidentiary chain connecting an individual official to a particular operation or act.

Political rhetoric forms another part of the environment in which this coercion occurs. 6Rang documented anti-LGBTQ+ remarks attributed to senior political and security figures, including Ali Khamenei, Ebrahim Raisi and an IRGC official in Lorestan. Statements do not prove operational orders, but rhetoric can help define what institutions describe as normal, immoral, threatening or legitimate.

When people are already vulnerable to arrest because of appearance or perceived sexuality, official language does not remain entirely abstract. It can shape the environment in which police officers, security personnel and other officials understand the people they encounter. The words used by those in power can contribute to the normalization of treating LGBTQ+ identity as something requiring intervention, correction or control.

LGBTQ+ People in the Woman Life Freedom Crackdown

The death of Jina Mahsa Amini in September 2022 placed state control over bodies and gender presentation at the center of a nationwide protest movement. In March 2024, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran concluded that Amini's death in custody was unlawful and that violations committed during the crackdown included crimes against humanity.

Those findings concerned the wider protest response and were not an LGBTQ+-specific casualty count. Nevertheless, for LGBTQ+ participants, detention during the crackdown could carry an additional layer of vulnerability. A person could be arrested for participating in a demonstration and then face different treatment once officers perceived them as gay, lesbian or transgender.

The reason for the initial arrest and the reason for subsequent humiliation or abuse did not necessarily have to be identical. A person could enter detention because of political activity and then become vulnerable to additional mistreatment because of their perceived identity.

6Rang's 2023 report War on Bodies and Minds drew on accounts from 70 people. One account concerned "Sabri," a protective name used for a transgender woman who said security personnel intensified their violence after recognizing her as trans. She described officers burning her hair and debating whether she should be placed in a men's or women's detention facility.

The account illustrates how classification itself can become a form of power. A detention system organized around rigid gender categories determines where a transgender detainee sleeps, who guards her and who has physical access to her. When those decisions are being made by personnel accused of degrading or assaulting the detainee, classification becomes inseparable from physical safety.

Sexual Violence and Targeted Humiliation

6Rang also submitted accounts concerning LGBTQ+ people affected during the protests. One concerned "Ashkan," identified as a 19-year-old gay man reportedly beaten while passing a protest in Isfahan. Another concerned "Ali," who described sexual assault and threats by a plainclothes agent during a protest in Gorgan on 22 September 2022.

The organization used protective names, and the officers involved were not publicly identified. These accounts therefore support investigation of alleged targeted abuse without establishing a national prevalence rate or assigning responsibility to unnamed individuals.

Amnesty International documented a broader detention environment in its December 2023 investigation into sexual violence against 45 protesters, including 26 men, 12 women and seven children. Alleged perpetrators included members of the IRGC, Basij, Ministry of Intelligence and multiple branches of the police. The 45 survivors were not presented as an LGBTQ+-only sample.

The significance lies in the environment in which LGBTQ+ detainees may find themselves. Sexual violence can be used to punish political participation, intimidate detainees and assert power over the body. For LGBTQ+ people, it can also exploit existing stigma. A survivor may fear not only the authorities but also family disclosure, social consequences and the possibility of being blamed for the abuse because of their sexuality or gender identity.

The same act can therefore produce more than one threat. The physical assault itself is one form of violence. The possibility that reporting it could expose a person's identity or place them in further danger is another.

What Happens When Survivors Complain?

Amnesty reported that six survivors who raised abuse during prosecutorial questioning were ignored. Three people who submitted formal complaints later withdrew them or stopped pursuing them after threats or inaction. The organization also examined an October 2022 document that it interpreted as evidence of efforts to conceal allegations of rape involving two Revolutionary Guards agents.

In September 2024, Amnesty reported that Iran's High Council for Human Rights responded by saying no complaints of rape, assault or sexual harassment had been filed in 28 of 31 provinces. Amnesty disputed the significance of that claim, pointing to intimidation and barriers to reporting.

This creates a fundamental problem for any attempt to measure abuse through official complaints alone. A complaint system is meaningful only when a person can use it without reasonably fearing another form of punishment. If the alleged perpetrator or the institution responsible for the alleged abuse also controls detention, transportation, communication or access to prosecutors, the existence of a complaint form says very little about whether genuine protection is available.

The more meaningful questions are operational. Was the detainee examined by an independent doctor? Were injuries documented? Could a lawyer obtain the records? Was the accused officer removed from contact with the complainant? Was the allegation investigated outside the officer's own chain of command?

Those questions reveal more than institutional assurances because they test whether a system actually creates consequences for abuse.

The Policing of Gender Did Not End With the Protests

The Woman Life Freedom crackdown intensified international attention on gender enforcement, but it did not create the underlying mechanism. In June 2023, HRANA reported the arrest of five transgender people in Tehran's Afsariyeh district following a confrontation over their clothing with a self-appointed religious enforcer. HRANA described later footage as coerced confessions in which the detainees expressed remorse for their appearance and behavior.

The episode differed from a mass protest arrest. It began with clothing and ended with arrest and a public performance of conformity. That sequence matters because a coerced public expression of remorse can shift attention away from how the confession was obtained and toward the detained person as an object of public condemnation.

In April 2024, authorities also launched the Noor campaign to enforce compulsory veiling. The campaign affected women and girls broadly, not only LGBTQ+ people. Its relevance to LGBTQ+ rights lies in the continuing assertion of state authority over prescribed gender presentation.

Across these different contexts, a recurring governing principle becomes visible. Bodies are classified. Appearance is monitored. Deviation attracts attention. Attention can lead to coercion.

From One Raid to a System of Exposure

The evidence does not establish one written plan connecting every Isfahan raid, protest detention, morality-police operation and assault. It instead reveals a more decentralized but persistent pattern in which different institutions repeatedly exercised power over appearance, association and bodily autonomy.

A private gathering could expose a social network. Gender profiling could intensify a detention. Sexual violence could be followed by ineffective complaint mechanisms. A coerced confession could transform abuse into a public demonstration of conformity. These mechanisms do not have to be centrally coordinated to produce cumulative harm.

One raid can make another gathering feel unsafe. One assault can discourage someone from seeking medical care. One exposed identity can alter a family relationship. One ignored complaint can teach others what may happen if they speak.

Accountability therefore requires more than naming senior officials. It requires identifying the people who entered homes, conducted interrogations, ordered examinations, used violence, handled complaints and decided whether misconduct would have consequences. Institutional responsibility becomes meaningful when individual decisions can be connected to the structures that authorized, enabled or failed to prevent them.

For LGBTQ+ Iranians, the danger is not simply that the state prohibits certain conduct. It is also that gender difference itself can become a reason for official attention. Once attention becomes policing, the boundary between public order and private life can disappear.