They’d choose the women who were pretty and suited their appetite … … then the officer would take one of them from the cell to a smaller, private room.” “They would sexually assault them there.” How Iran's security forces use rape to quell protests Covert testimonies reveal sexual assaults on male and female activists as a women-led uprising spreads By Tamara Qiblawi, Barbara Arvanitidis, Nima Elbagir, Alex Platt, Artemis Moshtaghian, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Celine Alkhaldi and Muhammad Jambaz, CNN November 21, 2022 Haje Omeran, Iraq (CNN) — A trickle of people passes through a normally busy border crossing in the mountains of northern Iraq.“It’s a big prison over there,” one Iranian woman says, gesturing to the hulking gate that marks the border with Iran’s Islamic Republic, which has been convulsed by protest for over two months.In one of the most striking comments in the smear campaign against female protesters, Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of Iran’s revered slain general Qassem Soleimani, accused women in the protests of wanting to “get naked.” In recent weeks, social media videos have emerged allegedly showing Iranian security forces sexually assaulting female demonstrators on the streets.In some of the cases CNN uncovered, the sexual assault was filmed and used to blackmail the protesters into silence, according to sources who spoke to the victims.The contents of the leaked accounts — conversations between medics on Instagram’s private messaging service — suggested that Iranian security forces tortured and sexually assaulted Abbasi."