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Activists are being exiled, TV newswomen have had their makeup banned, and a propaganda documentary slams feminism. Dana Goldstein on the effort to kill women's rights once and for all.

On December 5 in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, known as a center of art and culture, women’s rights campaigner Hayedeh Tabesh was publicly seized by authorities as she was participating in a language class. In May, Tabesh had been banned from traveling outside Iran after she received a letter inviting her to attend an activist training in South Africa. And in October, the authorities served her son with a summons demanding that his mother report to the Intelligence Ministry.

Ebadi’s Nobel medal was confiscated from her safe-deposit box and her bank account was frozen. The government claimed she had failed to pay back taxes, but there was little doubt the state’s intention was political.

Tabesh’s lawyer, Mina Jafari, told the Iranian feminist Web site Signforchange.org that the procedure of the summons likely violated Iranian law, but that her client reported to the ministry anyhow, to “signal her good intentions