"Iran is not a haven for trans people": Why the attack on a trans woman's home in Tabriz made headlines

A Viral Record of Neighborhood-Led Persecution

Over several weeks, the Instagram page of Hasti, a trans woman in her thirties living in Tabriz, became a parallel chronicle of her daily life under siege. Her videos, which collectively drew millions of views, show bricks being hurled at her home, glass shattering, and physical assaults on her father and cousin by groups of men she identifies as neighbors. In one shaky clip, a man in dark clothing shouts "pimp, pimp" — a slur used as a weapon against her. The footage was systematically deleted from her account on 22 Tir (July 12) under what Hasti describes as pressure she could not resist.

According to Hasti's own posts, the campaign was led by a single neighbor who, upon learning of her gender identity, mobilized acquaintances to drive the family out of the area. She alleges the neighbor and his associates threatened the family with death and pressured them into selling their home at half its assessed value. In another video, a man in a blue t-shirt accuses her in Azeri Turkish of bringing men into the house and selling drugs; a voice believed to be Hasti's responds that she is a carpet seller and demands evidence. The exchange captures the texture of how rumor and stigma operate as a pretext for organized harassment in tightly knit urban neighborhoods.

When the Police Station Becomes the Site of the Abuse

The most damaging part of Hasti's account is not the street violence but what she describes as the response of state institutions. She says that despite her father and cousin being injured, the local police station took no action against the assailants. Instead, officers allegedly registered the attacking neighbors as complainants and Hasti's family as defendants — an inversion she says surprised even hospital staff and the on-duty judge. When her family did not comply with a request to file a written report, officers reportedly climbed over the wall of their home at night, handcuffed Hasti and her cousin in the yard, and took them to the station. There, she says, officers pressed her to delete the videos from her phone and beat her cousin, telling him it was a "fatherly slap."

A judge subsequently ordered Hasti transferred to the Razi Psychiatric Hospital in Tabriz for examination, a move that, in the Iranian legal context, can function both as a protective measure and as a mechanism for pathologizing trans identity. She says the hospital confirmed her mental health, but the symbolic damage of the referral is part of why her case has resonated. She also reports having filed two complaints against the same neighbors — for attacking the home, stabbing her father, and property destruction — that have sat largely untouched in branches 6 and 11 of the prosecutor's office for a year and a half.

The Pattern Behind a Single Case

Nima Nia, a feminist and trans rights activist, frames Hasti's experience as a product of Iran's rigid gender binary rather than of trans identity itself. The same framework, he argues, that treats a cisgender woman's makeup as unremarkable can treat a trans woman's identical self-presentation as a trigger for violence — a structural rather than incidental hostility. That argument is borne out by a documented history of trans killings in Iran that Hasti's case has now dragged back into public view.

In early 2024, Iranian media reported that a father in Tabriz had killed his 17-year-old child, Parsa, citing fear of dishonor and his child's trans or gender-nonconforming expression; the father received a three-year sentence, citing his inability to "cure" the teenager. In 2025, Sogand Pakdel, a roughly 26-year-old trans woman from Kavar in Fars province, was shot dead by her uncle, according to the rights group HRANA. Together with Hasti's account, these cases sketch a recurring pattern in which trans Iranians face lethal danger from inside their own families or communities, while the legal system offers little meaningful recourse — the very gap the viral videos are now forcing Iranians to confront.