By: Rezvan Moghaddam

On Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in the Mehrshahr district of Alborz Province, a man
stabbed his wife and then killed their five-year-old daughter, Zeinab Hosseini, burying
her body in the Ghezel Hesar area. The injured woman, whose condition was reported
as critical, told emergency responders before being transferred to the hospital that her
husband first attacked her with a knife and then took their daughter with him. Following
a police investigation, it was confirmed that the five-year-old girl had been killed by her
father, and her body had been hidden in Ghezel Hesar.
In his confession, the perpetrator cited “suspicion of his wife’s infidelity” and doubts
about the child’s fatherhood as his motives—claims that are frequently used to justify
violence against women and children. This tragedy is a painful example of how
domestic violence, femicide, and filicide are intertwined within Iran’s patriarchal legal
and cultural structure, a system that allows men to take the lives of their wives and even
children at the slightest doubt or perceived loss of “ownership.”
While the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran fail to provide equal and protective rights
for women and children, men feel emboldened to carry out killings under the excuse of
“honor” or “suspicion.” The silence of the law, the lack of effective legal support for
women at risk, and the dangerous narratives of state-affiliated media that frame such
killings as “family disputes” or “jealousy” all create an environment ripe for repeating
such tragedies. In crimes like this, it is not only a woman who is targeted but also a
child—killed simply because a misogynistic society has entrusted decisions of life and
death to men who choose violence over accountability as a tool of control and revenge.
A critical dimension of this crime is the structural and cultural dominance over women’s
bodies and lives. In such systems, men believe they have the right to monitor, control,
and dictate their wives’ relationships, behavior, and even physical and mental well-
being. The killer’s suspicion of his wife and doubt over the child’s fatherhood are neither
legally nor morally justified—they represent a reproduction of violence enabled by
patriarchal norms and the absence of protective legislation.
The view that sees women not as independent individuals but as male property is a
dangerous foundation for tragedies like this—tragedies in which control over a woman’s
body and life is enforced through deadly violence, while Iran’s judicial and cultural
systems, through indifference or superficial responses, fuel its continuation.

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