Prostitution in Iran is illegal, and incurs various punishments ranging from fines and jail terms to execution for repeat offenders. The exact number of prostitutes working in Iran is unknown. However, prostitutes are visible on some street corners of the major cities. Many of them are runaways from poor and broken homes.
Police raids have also exposed child prostitution rings. Before the Iranian Revolution in , prostitutes were confined to separate neighborhoods such as Shahr-e No in Tehran. The new religious government demolished the district and punished prostitution with lashing.
In , General Reza Zarei , the Tehran police chief, was arrested in a brothel with six prostitutes. Usually, a dowry is given to the temporary wife. Sigheh can last from 3days to 99 years although some Islamic scholars mujtahids , say that it is impossible to marry a person, as temporary marriage, for a period of time that is usually longer than the average life-time of a person ; [11] it expires automatically without divorce.
According to a number of scholars and Iranians , Sigheh is being misused as a legal cover for prostitution in Iran. It means that if a woman marries a man in this way and has sex, she has to wait for a certain period of time before marrying again and therefore, a woman cannot marry more than a limited number of times in a year. These centers provide disease prevention tools and examine the sex workers for STDs.
They also provide counselling. According to Farahnaz Salimi, head of Aaftaab Society, an NGO for social damages controlling and prevention, there are about 10, female sex workers in Tehran. Among these sex workers, there are married women or female clerks, too.
