W'S SECOND WORST MOMENT:

Iran's most prominent reformist party urged Tehran to overturn obligatory headscarf laws on Saturday in the wake of the ongoing Mahsa Amini protests that rocked the country.

Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian, died on 16 September following her arrest in Tehran three days prior by the country's Morality Police, who apprehended her for not wearing the hijab "correctly".

The Islamic People's Union of Iran, formed by close associates of former reformist President Mohammad Khatami, said that it "demands" that authorities "prepare necessary legal elements that will pave the way for the abolition of compulsory hijab laws," according to a statement issued on Saturday, as reported by AFP.

In 2002, the direct talks between Iran and U.S. officials begun during Khatami's presidency were restarted and led to a successful collaboration in fighting their mutual enemy: the Taliban in Afghanistan. There were even plans to collaborate in the fight against Al-Qaeda and the war in Iraq, but these plans were scrapped after the inclusion of Iran in Bush's "Axis of Evil." Until 2003, Iran presented successive American presidents with opportunities for rapprochement that were missed--mainly due to the United States' misunderstanding of Iran's political system. Khatami's private offers to the U.S. to discuss all outstanding issues were ignored by the Bush administration for a while, and only responded to in his State of the Union Address.

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