By: Rezvan Moghaddam

On Saturday, May 17, 2025, in Firozabad, Fars Province, a man whose identity has not
been made public brutally killed his young wife, Elyana Kouhi (23), and his mother-in.
law, Farideh Bagheri (45), by stabbing them multiple times. According to reports, the
motive behind this double killing was Elyana’s request for a divorce. Although both
women were rushed to the hospital while critically injured, they yielded to their wounds
due to the severity of the attacks.
The Etemad Online news website reported the incident without disclosing the names of
the victims or the perpetrator, referring to the crime only as a “family dispute, a
framing that erases the gendered nature of the violence and contributes to the
normalization of violence against women and the culture of impunity surrounding it. This
killing occurred on the same day as two other femicides in Shahrud and Shahriar,
painting a plain picture of the worsening crisis of women’s safety in Iran, where
discriminatory laws and a patriarchal discourse continue to devalue women’s lives.
The killings of Elyana Kouhi and her mother, Farideh Bagheri, marked the fourth
femicide on Saturday, May 17, alone news that lays bare the rampant and unchecked
gender-based violence in Iran. In a country where a woman’s request for divorce can
endanger not only her own life but also her mother’s. Domestic violence is not an
isolated or personal matter but a deeply structural, political, and legal crisis.
Legal institutions in Iran, by denying women equal rights in divorce, custody, and legal
protection, have created a breeding ground for escalating domestic violence. The state
media’s choice to conceal the identities of the victims is part of a broader silencing
project, one that continues to erase the severity of a catastrophe that is claiming the
lives of more women every day.
This crime did not happen in a vacuum. It occurred in a society where the law routinely
strips women of bodily autonomy and decision-making power, and where male
dominance is embedded in family and judicial systems alike.

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