IRAN’s morality police were out in force on the streets of Tehran, the capital, for Mother’s Day on May 1st, which marks the anniversary of the birth of Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad and wife of the first imam of Shia Islam. Armed with carnations and roses, the gashte ershad rewarded those women sporting the best hijab in town. The apogee of “good hijab” in the Islamic republic is the chador, a long black cloak that reveals only the face. Chador-wearers received the most flowers, but women seen to be sticking to both the letter and the spirit of the country’s strict sartorial laws were also honoured by Iran’s boys in green.

The morality police are a common sight on Tehran’s busy street corners, accompanied by chador-clad female assistants who have the grisly task of forcing unco-operative women into the back of minivans. Detained women are then driven to the Vozara correctional facility, where they are lectured on how to be better citizens. They are almost always released on the same day.

In 2011, Iran’s state-owned Mehr news agency ran an interview with a female assistant to the morality police in which she explained her beat and her motivation for doing the job. “We are guiding people who are defacing society,” she said. “From dawn to dusk we are calling to virtue and banning from vice which is a divine order. A lot of people cry but when we let them go, they come back looking the same. I don’t believe in the tears people with bad hijab shed.”

Yet while women in Iran have long faced punishment for bad hijab, this is the first time that good hijab has been rewarded. Some say that the dynamics of the upcoming presidential election in June have changed the rules of the game. Elections are generally preceded by a softening of resolve by the morality police to encourage women to vote for religious conservatives. This year however, the government has come down hard on those of its female citizens whose fashion falls foul of the state’s dress code, perhaps because there is less pressure on conservatives to ease up given the weakness of the reformist camp.

“We will not allow individuals to parade the streets like mannequins and put themselves on display,” declared Tehran’s deputy police chief, Ahmad Reza Radan, on April 28th. Mr Radan added that shop owners who sell “improper attire” would be subject to “police action”.