POLICE CLOSE POPULAR FAST-FOOD RESTAURANT IN IRAN

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Police Close Popular Fast-Food Restaurants in Iran

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Police have shut down four of the Iranian capital's Western-style fast-food restaurants, popular with youngsters as meeting places to mingle with the opposite sex, in an apparent crackdown on un-Islamic behavior.

Restaurant owners said the closures were ordered 12 days ago by a branch of the police notorious for closing down shops and eating places deemed to have contravened the Islamic Republic's strict moral code.

"They closed the biggest fast-food places in Tehran in one day, without giving a reason," one owner, who declined to be named, told Reuters Thursday. "We've had to fire all our workers because we don't know when we'll be allowed to reopen."

Bored teenagers, officially prohibited from socializing with unrelated members of the opposite sex, pack into brightly lit eateries and coffee shops in the evenings and at weekends to subtly flirt over a burger or a coke.

Young women, in particular, have incurred the wrath of hardline authorities by wearing make-up, short coats and colorful scarves pushed back to expose as much hair as possible instead of the head-to-toe black chadors deemed necessary by the country's ruling clerics to protect a woman's modesty.

Another owner told the reformist Tosea newspaper that police said his restaurant -- located, like the other three, in upmarket northern Tehran -- was shut for "not observing the Islamic code of behavior."

"If (the police) have a problem with how the youth dress or behave they should adopt a cultural solution for the problem," Tosea quoted him as saying.

Tehran police officials could not be reached for comment.

Tired of such costly closures, some restaurants in Tehran have begun to employ soccer-style penalties for diners who could jeopardize their business.

Girls deemed to be improperly dressed or men flirting too openly with the opposite sex may receive a "yellow card" on their table warning them to modify their dress or behavior.

Repeat offenders receive a "red card," and are asked to leave at once.

Psychologists said shutting restaurants would have the opposite effect to that intended.

"By closing such places they are channeling that behavior indoors where anything could happen. You cannot suppress young people's instincts," one psychologist, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.