Thirty years ago today, on November 19, 1995 (September 27, 1995 in the lunar calendar), Iran announced that women would be allowed to divorce. Iran's intolerable abuse of women On November 19, 1995, Iran's Attorney General Mogtadai announced that Iranian courts would grant divorce requests filed by Iranian women who had been abused. Mogtadai said Iranian courts would grant women's divorce claims if they were proven to have been "intolerable abuse," regardless of whether their husbands agreed or not. An official from Iran's General Prosecutor's Office said the "abuse" was any act that made the marriage impossible. In Iran, due to traditional attitudes and property reasons, in the past, only men generally filed for divorce.