Fatemeh is a 46-year-old “commander” of hundreds of Iranian women who voluntarily serve the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military force, in a poor satellite town near Tehran.

Operating as part of the Basij Resistance Force – the eyes and ears of the Islamic republic – she attended a rally this week ahead of tomorrow’s parliamentary poll in support of the main fundamentalist coalition, which embraces supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the president.