IRANIAN WOMEN SHOULD HAVE A RIGHT TO TRAVEL ABROAD

The officer at the airport looked at me with menacing eyes. It dawned on me that I might not be allowed to embark on the plane. I was at Iran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, prepared to get on my flight.

“What do you think you’re doing, leaving the country without a husband?”

I told her I was single, held American citizenship and was going back to the U.S after three years abroad. She did not look satisfied with my explanation and appeared to want to pursue the matter further when her colleague took me aside. Taking a look at my American passport, and then my Iranian one, she handed them back to me and let me exit the terminal.

Close call? An exit procedure? Or a charade to make women have second thoughts before traveling?

It never occurred to Samira Zargari to think twice. As head coach of Iran’s female national ski team, she was accompanying her team to the Alpine world championships in Italy. It was only upon her arrival at the airport that she realized she could not leave. In Iran, married women need their husband’s legal permission to obtain a passport or leave the country, and Ms. Zargari’s husband refused to let her travel.

Hers is just the latest in a slew of cases of women in Iran being denied freedom to travel. In 2015, athlete Niloufar Ardalan’s husband refused consent to renew her passport so she could participate in the Asian Championships in futsal, a version of soccer. In 2017, Paralympic gold medalist Zahra Nemati’s husband barred her from traveling to participate in competitions. Iran’s authorities were pressured to intervene and issue a special travel permit for her.

Yet there was no intervention for Ms. Zargari, who had to stay behind and cheer on her team from afar. She has posted Instagram stories expressing her hopes that one day all women in her country will be free to travel, and she believes that in unity, they will make it possible.

Ziba Kalhor, a professional skier in Iran whose coach is Ms. Zargari, considers the ordeal a senseless travesty.

“We’re talking about someone who supervises two assistant coaches and leads a team of five skiers,” she told me. “A perfectly capable adult whom the law has rendered incapable of leaving the country.”