During the campaign, both spoke out for greater women’s rights, which is an issue that resonates with Iranian voters. Her presence also encouraged other candidates to campaign with their wives, the first time this has happened since the 1979 revolution.

Ms. Rahnavard was a leftist long before she became an Islamist, and in that sense she and her husband are different from the more conservative rightist Islamists.

Leftist Islamists were moved by social and economic concerns of the poor and dispossessed, and thought that Islam would be a unifying ideology toward greater social progress and democracy in Iranian society. Since 1979, both she and her husband have gone through a series of changes. She has become a strong advocate of women’s rights and headed al-Zahra Women’s University until President Ahmadinejad removed her from that post in 2005.

Ms. Rahnavard called for Iran joining the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and Mr. Moussavi spoke against polygamy. He published a very comprehensive list of gender reforms, including social, economic, political, cultural reforms, and promised to carry them out if elected.. In the meantime, she called for freedom of all political prisoners and Mr. Moussavi, who is an Azeri (from the northwestern Iranian province of Azerbaijan), encouraged greater recognition for ethnic minorities of Iran.

The press also became bolder and began to address all sorts of taboo issues. Women activists called for an end to compulsory hijab. It became clear that the election of Mr. Moussavi would lead to a greater democratization of the Islamic Republic.

I think this frightened the supreme leader who wanted to avoid such a scenario at any cost. In the meantime, sexual politics remained a dominant focus of the campaign. Mr. Ahmadinejad returned to his familiar denunciation of sexual “immoralities” the West, issues that usually resonate with his base. However, the changing sexual norms in Iran have made this type of rhetoric less effective.

On Monday, Ms. Rahnavard appealed to the public to join the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Tehran. The success of this remarkable turn out suggests that we may be witnessing some extraordinary days ahead. As President Obama suggested on Tuesday, given the volatile history of U.S.-Iran relations, it is best if the United States government does not interfere and overtly take sides in this matter. But all efforts should be made to give broad coverage to this unique social movement.

This month when Rahnavard — sporting a colorful scarf under her veil — appeared hand in hand with her husband in a campaign photo, voters interested in change certainly took note. For this is the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution that a political couple has appeared in public in this manner.

Rahnavard’s story is that of a generation of Islamist women who took official positions after the 1979 Islamic revolution, only to become advocates of women’s rights in the 1990s. Born into a highly religious Shia Muslim family, Rahnavard was an extremely bright student with an interest in the arts. She was introduced to the underground stream of secular leftist oppositional literature, but like many students from more traditionalist backgrounds, Rahnavard had trouble reconciling her new political interests with her religious commitments. She abhorred the relative sexual freedoms exercised by the more educated sectors of Iranian youth during the late 1960s. But an embodiment of the culture conflicts of the period, she also wore a miniskirt.

Fired from her first teaching job for expressing criticism of the shah’s authoritarian regime, Rahnavard gravitated to Tehran University. During these years, Rahnavard studied art history and exhibited her paintings. She continued her political opposition, while also holding fast to her religious beliefs.

Eventually, she joined the circle around the lay Muslim theologian Ali Shariati, whose teaching fused Shia Islam with a militant anti-imperialism borrowed from the more secular left. When the state cracked down on Shariati’s Center, Rahnavard — by then married to Mousavi, also a follower of Shariati — fled abroad with their children.

She returned to Iran shortly before the revolution and with her husband joined the circle of the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini. After the revolution, Rahnavard, who now wore a heavy black chador, became a founder of the Women’s Society of the Islamic Republic (WSIR) and editor of an influential women’s magazine. She used her considerable oratorical skills and her influential position to propagate Islamist values in Iran and abroad, working in particular against Iran’s feminists. She also founded the International Association of Muslim Women, and in 1987 became director of the Cultural and Social Association of Women, which advised then-President Ali Khamenei on women’s issues.

One of her best-known publications was a travelogue written during an official visit to India in 1986. She traveled there unaccompanied by her husband, who was then serving as prime minister. Rahnavard’s travelogue denounced the condition of Indian women, making reference to the notorious “dowry burnings” of brides whose families had provided an insufficient dowry. Yet her compassion for Hindu women was channeled completely into the peremptory injunction that “all Indian women should collectively convert to Islam,” in order to save themselves from the sexism of Hindu culture.

After Moussavi stepped down as prime minister in 1989, Rahnavard remained active in politics but gradually changed her position on women’s rights. In 1990, she joined the High Council of the Cultural Revolution, where she helped to lift some of the restrictions on women’s employment. In 1997, after reformist President Muhammad Khatami was elected by a decisive majority, Rahnavard joined his camp and was appointed president of al-Zahra Women’s University.

By this time, as seen in a 1999 interview with the feminist journal Zanan, she was complaining that Iranian women were treated as the second sex, a reference to Simone de Beauvoir’s book of the same title. Rahnavard unsuccessfully advocated for stronger laws against the sexual abuse, rape, and murder of women by male relatives. She also demanded the lifting of restrictions on women receiving custody of children after divorce, restrictions imposed shortly after the revolution.

These efforts — many of which were blocked under Khatami by conservatives — did not endear her to Ahmadinejad, who was elected Iranian president in 2005. The following year, he removed her as president of al-Zahra University.

In campaigning for her husband this year, Rahnavard has argued that Iran should join the United Nations-backed Convention for Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). She has also advocated freedom for all political prisoners. Her husband recently issued a long list of gender reforms he would carry out if elected. If Mousavi wins the election, this will be due in no small measure to the public persona of Rahnavard, whom many voters, especially women, perceive as an embodiment of change.

The operation itself has been performed for centuries in a culture where girls are expected to be virgin on the wedding night. Traditionally, a groom’s avowal that the young bride was not a virgin could cause great scandal. In 1865 the Jewish Austrian physician Jacob Polak, who worked for the royal court in Iran, reported that some grooms used this tactic to extort a larger dowry from the bride’s family. Resourceful families planned ahead. They took the girl to a midwife before the wedding who testified to her virginity. If the girl had indeed lost her virginity before marriage it was usually due to rape or incest since girls were married at or before puberty and had little chance of socialising with unrelated males. According to Polak, in such situations the girl’s family might “stitch [her hymen] with the help of one of several Iranian surgeons who are experts in such matters”.

A century later, in the 1970s, anthropologist Janet Bauer reported that hymen repair operations remained “one of the most sought-after procedures” among the urban middle classes of Tehran. Now it was no longer just victims of rape or incest who opted for the procedure. Many were disillusioned women abandoned by secret boyfriends or newly employed professional women – secretaries and nurses – who had had affairs with their bosses but realised there was no hope of marrying them. Dr C Pirnazar, a male anesthesiologist who also observed such procedures in Tehran hospitals, reported that when a serious suitor appeared on the horizon, these modern urban women arranged for hymen repair in a private clinic or hospital. They paid for the procedure out of their personal savings or asked the ex-boyfriend to help.

By 1978, opposition from traditional sectors of society (bazaar merchants, clerics, rural and urban poor) to such supposed immoralities helped fuel the Islamic Revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini came to power with a mandate of purifying society from such sinful behaviours. But 30 years later the operation is more popular than ever.
Hymen repair is now sought by sexually active women in many major cities, women who feel they have a right to sex but are too afraid to openly defy the norms. Many are from the more conservative religious classes. Young women from the religious city of Qom agonise on the internet over what to do. Some hope to marry their current boyfriend or an enlightened suitor who would overlook their non-virginity. But a majority of young men maintain a double standard: They want to date and have intercourse with a woman from their own social class (rather than a prostitute), but they also want to marry a virgin. Others say they are more worried about what family and friends might say. Because of this double standard women wonder if they should tell their fiance about their previous sexual experience and risk having the engagement broken off, or get the operation. Many opt for the latter.

Hymenoplasty today is more sophisticated than the hymen-repair procedure Polak described. The modern operation includes the use of gelatin capsules containing red dye that will rupture during nuptial intercourse, simulating the physical markers of virginal sexual experience.

Iranian feminists are divided on the merits of hymen repair. Some believe it reinforces existing power relations and affirms the patriarchal order. Others, such as Fataneh Farahani, suggest that widespread recourse to hymenoplasty is gradually making it impossible to tell the difference between “real virgins” and “fake virgins”, in the end making virginity meaningless. Men are indeed aware of these tricks, often joking that there are no real virgins left in Tehran and the big cities.

Advocates of the operation have recently received support from an unexpected source. In a society where women can be imprisoned or executed for premarital sex, a high-ranking cleric has come to the defence of hymen repair. Grand Ayatollah Sadeq Rouhani (Qom), has issued a fatwa permitting the operation. He has also recognised a woman’s subsequent marriage as legitimate. This means that among followers of Rouhani a man can no longer claim divorce on the grounds that he was duped about his wife’s virginity. It remains to be seen if young Iranian men and their families will gradually give up this sexual hypocrisy now that women have at least one religious leader on their side.

The state views V-Day as a form of “western cultural incursion” and has suggested alternatives: the wedding anniversary of Ali (the first Shia imam) and his wife Fatima, and, more recently and a bit more successfully, a pre-Islamic celebration of “love and friendship” on Feb. 19 called “Sepandar Mazgan Day.” But even these less popular alternatives are increasingly celebrated with cards and symbols that have an uncanny resemblance to Valentine’s Day mementoes.

The immense popularity of Valentine’s Day is rooted in fundamental changes in gender relations in Iranian society. Iran is experiencing a sort of sexual revolution. Ironically, it is rooted in some of the policies of the Islamic Republic in the last three decades. Westerners often portray the Islamic republic as “puritanical” about sex. Indeed, child marriage, polygamy and unilateral divorce by men were reinstated after the revolution. Greater limits were placed on women’s right to divorce and on women’s employment, while many child care centers were closed.

At the same time, however, the Islamic republic encouraged rural and urban women from more religious sectors to join Islamist organizations, and many did so. By taking jobs in the revolutionary institutions (the Revolutionary Guard, the auxiliary “Basij” or the morality police), women from highly religious families gained financial and personal autonomy. Instead of marrying in their early teens to a man selected by their father, many married in their late teens or 20s to men they had selected in these Islamist institutions. Often these were veterans of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, whom they married with the blessing of the state, which provided them with a small dowry.

In the 1990s, many Islamist women gradually became more aware of women’s rights in marriage. Increased female literacy, a drop in fertility rates and greater awareness of venereal disease helped this trend. Initially, the state had encouraged large families. But near the end of the Iran-Iraq War, the government reversed course and reinstituted the family planning program of the shah’s time. This program was more successful since the newly educated rural women embraced it, especially when family planning and sex education were packaged with Islamic blessings.

By the turn of the 21st century, the birth rate had dropped dramatically to 2.0 – below replacement levels. In this same period, life expectancy increased, the average age of marriage for women shot up to 24 and women’s expectation in marriage changed. Strictly arranged marriages became less common, and women, including many from traditional middle classes and rural communities, demanded companionship in marriage, including greater emotional and sexual intimacy. As in the west, love in marriage became important. Access to Iranian films and western media that celebrated heterosexual love increased these expectations. One result was that Valentine’s Day has become a big festive occasion.

In the west, birth control changed marriage from an institution for procreation to one that celebrated companionship. Greater appreciation of love and sexual satisfaction in marriage also led to greater tolerance for premarital sex and later, steps toward the recognition of same-sex relations.

That chapter has yet to be written in Iran. Judging by the passion with which Valentine’s Day is celebrated among urban middle classes in Tehran and other big cities, though, such an evolution should not be too far off, historically speaking.

Last month there were two celebrations in Tehran, an official commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution and an unofficial and more light-hearted celebration of Valentine’s Day. Young people held hands in the streets and cafes despite warnings by the morality police. Shops did brisk business selling heart-shaped cards, chocolate, flowers, balloons, and jewellery. Husbands and wives took ads in popular Islamist journals expressing their passionate love, while Persian blogs were inundated with V-Day messages. Judging from these messages Valentine’s Day is not only a celebration of personal love but also a way of expressing sentiments like “make love not war”.

The state views V-Day a form of “western cultural incursion” and has suggested alternatives: the wedding anniversary of Ali (the first Shia Imam) and his wife Fatima, and more recently and a bit more successfully, a pre-Islamic celebration of “love and friendship” on 19 February called Sepandar Mazgan Day. But even these less popular alternatives are increasingly celebrated with cards and symbols that have an uncanny resemblance to Valentine’s Day mementoes.

The immense popularity of Valentine’s Day is rooted in fundamental changes in gender relations in Iranian society. Iran is experiencing a sort of sexual revolution. Ironically, it is rooted in some of the policies of the Islamic Republic in the last three decades. Westerners often portray the Islamic republic as “puritanical” about sex. Indeed, child marriage, polygamy and unilateral divorce by men were reinstated after the revolution. Greater limits were placed on women’s right to divorce and on women’s employment, while many childcare centres were closed.

At the same time, however, the Islamic republic encouraged rural and urban women from more religious sectors to join Islamist organisations and many did so. By taking jobs in the revolutionary institutions (the Revolutionary Guard, the auxiliary Basij, or the morality police) women from highly religious families gained financial and personal autonomy. Instead of marrying in their early teens to a man selected by their father, many married in their late teens or twenties to men they had selected in these Islamist institutions. Often these were veterans of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, whom they married with the blessing of the state, which provided them with a small dowry.

In the 1990s, many Islamist women gradually became more aware of women’s rights in marriage. Increased female literacy, a drop in fertility rates, and greater awareness of venereal disease, helped this trend. Initially, the state had encouraged large families. But near the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the government reversed course and reinstituted the family planning programme of the shah’s time. This programme was more successful since the newly-educated rural women embraced it, especially when family planning and sex education were packaged with Islamic blessings.

By the turn of the 21st century the birth rate had dropped dramatically to 2.0 – below replacement levels. In this same period life expectancy increased, the average age of marriage for women shot up to 24, and women’s expectation in marriage changed. Strictly-arranged marriages became less common and women, including many from traditional middle classes and rural communities, demanded companionship in marriage, including greater emotional and sexual intimacy. As in the west, love in marriage became important. Access to Iranian films and western media that celebrated heterosexual love increased these expectations. One result was that Valentine’s Day has become a big festive occasion.
In the west, birth control changed marriage from an institution for procreation to one that celebrated companionship. Greater appreciation of love and sexual satisfaction in marriage also led to greater tolerance for premarital sex and later, steps toward the recognition of same-sex relations. That chapter has yet to be written in Iran. Judging by the passion with which Valentine’s Day is celebrated among urban middle classes in Tehran and other big cities, though, such an evolution should not be too far off, historically speaking.