Iran to Crack Down on Dog Walkers
When Iran banned dog walking in 2019, few dog owners were all that worried about the order. But after years of lax enforcement, officials in recent days have pledged to crack down, according to the state news media.
Prosecutors in at least 20 cities cited public health risks and threats to public safety in announcing the heightened enforcement of the bans, which include both dog walking and driving with dogs.
'Dog walking is a clear crime,' Mohammad Hossein Doroudi, the prosecutor in Mashhad, told reporters on Monday as he announced that city's plan, according to IRNA, a state-owned news outlet.
Iran's government has also long seen pet dogs as a sign of Western cultural influence. And much of the opposition to dogs in Iran stems from religious beliefs, with dogs considered to be 'najes,' or impure, in Islam.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, had issued a fatwa, or religious order, explaining the logic: A dog's saliva or hair would render anything it touched — like a person, clothing or a surface — impure.
'Prayer is invalid with the presence of dog hair,' his fatwa read.
Mr. Doroudi said that enforcement had lapsed over the past two years, but that officials now planned to be far more strict. He said that violators in Mashhad, Iran's second-most populous city, would first receive a warning and that they could be fined or their dogs could be confiscated if they failed to comply.
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