During Iran's election campaign, the moderate presidential candidate Masoud Pezeshkian has criticized the country's strict headscarf policy for women.
"I promise that I will stop this behaviour that is happening to our daughters and sisters on the streets," the former health minister said in front of hundreds of supporters in Tehran on Sunday.
Recently, the so-called guardians of morality have once again stepped up their efforts to enforce the compulsory wearing by women of headscarves on the streets.
"I promise the teachers and students who were expelled from university for no reason that I will not allow this to happen again," he added.
During the protests led by women in the autumn of 2022, universities punished critical voices and, for example, expelled students who opposed the headscarf requirement.
Pezeshkian campaigned for renewed trust between a potential moderate government and the population.
The Guardian Council, an Islamic supervisory body, has only approved six candidates for the election on June 28. Pezeshkian is the only moderate candidate for the presidency.
Among the conservative forces, parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Saeed Jalili, former chief negotiator in the nuclear negotiations, are considered the most promising candidates.
The new election was called after the late president Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash on May 19.
Many people in Iran are disillusioned in the face of political repression, an economic crisis and the failed attempts at reform in recent decades. They have lost faith in major domestic political change.
In the autumn of 2022, the death of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini sparked nationwide protests against the hardline Islamic system of rule.
Voter turnout in this year's parliamentary elections reached a record low of around 40%.
