Iran orders crackdown on sale of dolls deemed offensive to religious figures

The summons came after state-affiliated Oman Observer cited Royal Oman Police as saying the country banned the import of bottled water from Iran after two people died from drinking a contaminated batch.

Abdolrasoul Shabibi, director of the ministry’s second Persian Gulf department, formally protested what he described as “unfounded and negative media coverage” of Iranian products and urged Omani authorities to clarify the facts swiftly.

Shabibi added that the incident had nothing to do with the Iranian company’s drinking water and was in fact “a family-related criminal case driven by revenge.”

The Emirati website The National quoted Oman's police as saying an expatriate woman died on September 29, and an Omani man died in hospital on October 1, after being in critical condition for two days.

The source of the poisoning was traced to a contaminated batch of Uranus Star bottled water from Iran, the report said.

It said laboratory tests confirmed the contamination after samples were collected.

It added that Oman's authorities began withdrawing the product from local markets and warned the public not to drink Uranus Star water.

“Contrary to many analyses and comments, the Al-Aqsa Storm operation was a mistake,” the paper wrote in an editorial on Sunday.

The newspaper said the attack caused significant damage to what it described as “anti-Israel movements” across the region, from Iran to Lebanon.

It also cited the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the collapse of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government as “major losses” for what it described as the regional anti-Israel front.

It added that the paper's editorial board had believed from “the very first moments” the attack was a miscalculation, adding that, two years later, “our belief in this mistake has only grown stronger.”

The paper said in aftermath of the Iran's 12-day war with Israel in June — including the joint Israeli and US bombings of Iran’s Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow nuclear facilities — had severely damaged the country’s military and nuclear command structure, setting its nuclear program back “considerably.”

Jomhouri Eslami — like Kayhan and Ettela’at — is overseen by Khamenei’s representative but is known for its more moderate tone under managing editor Massih Mohajeri, a Shia cleric who has at times criticized parts of Iran’s establishment and defended reformist figures such as Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Khamenei has previously praised Hamas’s October 7 attack, calling it a step toward “removing America from the region” and saying the operation “overturned the table of US policies.”

Here’s the lay of the land.

Tehran. A late summer sunset. A young woman in a loose linen coat rides her moped past a billboard of slain commanders of the June war with Israel. Her hair, uncovered, whips through the air as the call to prayer echoes over rooftops scrawled with graffiti.

It’s a fleeting image— half defiance, half survival— but it captures the contradiction of life in an ailing religious state run by an 86-year old ruling over a young population which yearns for a better life.

From above, a political system struggles to survive by shedding its skin into a harder, more securitized form. From below, society is defying the pressure by quietly reinventing itself, thriving together in social and artistic places, unveiled and unbowed.

Iran’s future hangs in balance as the two realities collide.

Erosion or renewal?

Sociologists offer two contrasting readings of Iran’s condition.

One sees society at its weakest: social capital eroding, trust fading, public bonds thinning. Economic hardship has forced Iranians inward, building small islands of survival in a sea of uncertainty.

The other sees adaptation at work. Even under pressure, society is reorganizing itself. Signs of this regeneration can be found in the behavior of the young, in underground music and digital satire, in cafés and rooftops reclaimed as shared space.

Social change in Iran rarely announces itself; it leaks through the seams. What may look like resignation is often invention—a culture that has learnt to breathe under constraint.

Shedding skin for survival

The state seeks to ensure its survival by becoming thicker and more controlling—fortifying itself to endure a self-made, permanent state of emergency.

Yet it appears to be hollowing from within, clinging to symbols and slogans that few outside the security apparatus still believe in, let alone fight for.

Ordinary Iranians, especially the young, have moved on.

Everyday life in the cities reveals the contours of this transformation: in dress codes and cultural consumption, underground music, the language of youth and the growing visibility of women in public spaces.

Everyday life as resistance

Walk through Tehran and you feel two clocks ticking at once.

On one hand, the city wears the uniform of authority: portraits, banners, prohibitions. On the other, life insists on slipping past the censors.

It’s there in loosened fabrics and street style, in the sly humor of street art, in laughter spilling from cafés that double as sanctuaries.

A generation raised amid sanctions and firewalls seeks meaning not in possessions but in experiences—in fleeting freedoms, in self-expression, in joy reclaimed as a political act.

Beneath repression, a new cultural grammar is taking shape. It is diffuse yet deliberate, defiant yet creative. It asserts and insists on its agency without shouting.

Where next?

Iran’s future is not fixed.

If society can weave cohesion from its scattered threads, a “soft reconstruction” may emerge—a gradual rebuilding from below, driven by civic networks and the imagination of the new generation.

But if political and economic pressures persist and society turns inward, even this fragile tissue could tear. The state might endure, getting hollower but nastier every day

The greatest reason for optimism is that after nearly half a century of theocratic rule, Iranian society remains generative—in art, language, humor.

Life continues in fragments: whispered jokes on buses, basement exhibitions, online debates that flicker between VPNs.

From that vitality springs possibility. And from possibility, hope.

Bahonar had previously caused a stir by saying there was no longer any basis for enforcing hijab laws.
“The era of running a country through mandatory hijab laws is over,” Bahoner said in a debate aired by Entekhab on October 4, adding that the Supreme National Security Council had cut the hijab legislation, rendering it unenforceable.

In a separate meeting with journalists, Bahoner said, “Some insist hijab must be compulsory. I’ve never believed in mandatory hijab—not from the beginning, and not now.”

Those remarks drew swift backlash from conservative figures and media, including Kayhan newspaper, which operates under the supervision of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office. The spokesperson for the Expediency Council, Mohsen Dehnavi, distanced the body from Bahoner’s statements, writing on X on Saturday that his comments “do not reflect the official views or legal standing of the Council.”

On Friday, Tehran’s interim Friday prayer leader Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari rebuked Bahoner without naming him. “Who are you to speak like that? Who gave you permission? Why do you speak on behalf of the system?” he asked from the pulpit.

Facing mounting pressure, Bahoner walked back his remarks during a televised interview on October 11, aligning himself with hardliners. “In our system, boundaries must be clear. Whoever breaks these norms will be treated the same as someone who violates security or economic rules,” he said.

He equated cultural dissent with national security threats, saying, “Publications and media that undermine cultural norms are just as damaging to society as security breaches.”

His reversal comes amid a wave of government actions against businesses across Iran, including the sealing of cafes and restaurants accused of failing to enforce hijab rules. Police issued a fresh directive on October 9, warning all public venues to adhere to hijab regulations or face closure.

The report said the directive, approved by the cabinet on September 18 and issued on October 5, sets out a roadmap to gradually increase gasoline prices and restructure fuel subsidies. The plan would widen the price gap between gasoline and compressed natural gas to encourage drivers to switch to gas-powered vehicles.

It also mandates new consumption quotas and introduces multiple pricing tiers, meaning fuel purchases beyond the allotted share would be charged at a higher rate. Consumers would additionally bear the costs of transportation and fuel station commissions, while prices would rise annually in line with inflation. The directive says that next year, gasoline allocations will be granted in monetary value rather than volume.

Hours after the publication, Ali Ahmadnia, head of the government’s information office, denied any decision to increase fuel prices, calling the report inaccurate.

“The issue of revising fuel prices may arise in the next year’s budget,” Reza Sepahvand, a member of parliament’s energy committee, said on October 10. “Real cost of producing and importing gasoline, electricity, and gas is far higher than current retail prices, and maintaining this gap places a growing financial burden on the state,” he added.

President Masoud Pezeshkian has previously proposed reducing fuel subsidies for high-consuming households and redirecting the savings toward low-income groups. Similar pledges during past price hikes were never fulfilled.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf also said last month that the government sells gasoline “at a price far below its supply cost,” adding that “continuing this situation is not in the country’s economic interest.”

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Public backlash over leaked plan

The Khaneh Eghtesad report prompted a surge of online criticism, with many Iranians expressing fear that a price hike would worsen inflation and disproportionately affect poorer citizens.

One user on X, identified as Hadi Zarei, wrote: “According to the new government decree, gasoline will also become more expensive — adjusted to inflation. Apparently, the only thing unrelated to inflation is workers’ wages, which barely rise 20% a year.”

“Not only will gasoline prices go up, but consumers will also pay the transport and delivery costs to fuel stations,” another user, Mahbod, commented.

The controversy followed weeks of official debate over rising fuel consumption, environmental damage, and the financial strain of subsidies. State media, however, largely avoided discussing the inflationary impact of a potential price rise.

Several users also pointed to the irony of the government’s reported fuel reform while pledging to send free fuel to Lebanon — a reference to comments by Iran’s ambassador in Beirut, Mojtaba Amani, who said on October 10 that Tehran had offered Lebanon free fuel shipments, which Beirut declined.

Iran’s last major gasoline price increase in November 2019 triggered nationwide protests that were met with a violent crackdown, leaving at least 1,500 people dead and thousands detained, according to rights groups.