Iran summons Jewish MP over constituents’ social media activity

Last week, an international film festival was held in the historic city of Shiraz. To emphasize the festival’s international character, organizers invited one of Turkey’s most acclaimed filmmakers Nuri Bilge Ceylan to head the jury.

The announcement angered hardliners, who framed it as a cultural intrusion. Culture Ministry officials who organized the event did not dare explain the meaning of “international.” Even if they had, few would have listened.

While the festival attempted to celebrate cinematic creativity in a conspicuously muted way—so as not to provide ammunition to political rivals—security forces in Tehran raided a private birthday gathering of Iranian filmmakers and arrested several for drinking.

It was another reminder that even culture, perhaps especially culture, cannot escape the state’s instinctive need to police spontaneity.

On air sagas

That same week, cleric Abdolrahim Soleimani Ardestani sparked outrage during a live debate on a popular YouTube-based platform when he asserted that a Shi'ite Imam was killed by his wife after discovering he had taken a second wife.

Fundamentalists and hardliners swiftly accused him of insulting religious sanctities—an allegation that could carry the death penalty—ultimately forcing him to apologize.

In the same week, a local official in the western province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad openly questioned President Masoud Pezeshkian’s water policy during a televised event.

Visibly angry, Pezeshkian shouted that the dams in question were not signed off by him. The live broadcast was abruptly cut off when the official produced documents that proved the president wrong.

A mundane administrative event turned combustible in a system where power is perpetually on edge.

Everything—even football

Then came the 2026 World Cup draw in Washington DC, and the saga surrounding entry permits for Iran’s delegation.

Tehran first announced it would boycott the event after the United States issued visas to only four of the nine delegates—a high number, as countries typically send one to four representatives.

After two weeks of heated debate in Tehran, the boycott was abandoned and two delegates were sent to the draw following “consultations with the Foreign Ministry.”

Predictably, no one asked why such consultations had not taken place before the hasty boycott. Nor did anyone question why the federation or government failed to protest the ban on Iranian spectators traveling to the US for the 2026 World Cup.

Sports diplomacy became yet another venue where reflexive posturing overtakes basic competence.

Strange as it may seem, this was simply another ordinary week in Iran—a week where the smallest acts are politicized, the simplest decisions are derailed, and the state’s fear of normalcy turns daily life into a continuous cascade of avoidable crises.

To many viewers it looks like a cultural opening: a genre long associated with underground resistance now visible on mainstream screens.

But researcher and artist Siavash Rokni, a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University in Montreal who studies Iranian youth culture, pop music and the communication dynamics of social movements, argues that that the reality is more complicated.

“It is a public relations performance,” he said. “It is fooling a lot of people, and we need to stop being fooled by it.”

Rokni has followed the evolution of Iran’s rap scene across five generations. He sees the new appetite for rap not as legalization but domestication, turning underground culture into something profitable and controllable.

Entertainment shows and “normal” rappers

One of the most watched programs in this space is BaZia, hosted by a former Iranian state television personality now living in Turkey. According to Rokni, the show’s guest selection and narratives suggest an ongoing connection with Iran.

“Technically speaking, he is no longer connected to the system,” Rokni said. “But the way he chooses his guests shows there is a connection.”

The rappers appearing on BaZia help normalize a particular type of rap that is not inclusive of all aspects of this cultural practice. Many of the same rappers featured on BaZia are now set to appear in a new rap-themed program hosted by him called GANG. Rokni says it shows how this was part of a larger plan to create momentum for the new show while normalizing a particular narrative of regime approved rap.

The narrative, Rokni said, “comes very slowly” through a sequence of interviews. Artists describe performing abroad but wanting to return. Producers talk about the economic advantage of bringing rap back while being able to control the content.

Money, control and aesthetics

Much of Iran’s music economy is in the hands of a profit-minded clique, Rokni said.

“The people who are running this oligarchical capitalism are connected to the Islamic Republic,” he said. “They just want to make cash.”

He stressed that the motivation is not necessarily ideological. Many simply benefit from the system’s structures.

The appearance of rap on screens has been accompanied by pressure and arrests behind the scenes. In early October at least five rappers and a composer were detained in Tehran and Shiraz, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Security forces raided homes, seized phones and recording equipment and transferred the men to detention.

Within days videos appeared on their Instagram accounts with shaved heads and visible tattoos, apologizing on camera. Lawyers told CHRI the accounts had been taken over by cyber police.

One of the most high profile cases remains Toomaj Salehi, whose lyrics became an anthem of the Women Life Freedom movement.

He was arrested, abused in detention, sentenced to death, released on bail and then rearrested after publicly describing his treatment. Supporters say he is targeted because he refuses to leave Iran or be silent.

Female rappers face even greater constraints. Iran bans solo female singers from performing publicly or releasing their own vocals, forcing artists into exile or underground spaces. Studios refused to record them and venues were raided for illegal performances.

Why normalize rap at all?

Rokni traces the logic back to then Iranian president Mohammad Khatami era when the government offered small cultural openings to create a sense of possibility.

“You free some cultural restrictions and reconcile with the people,” he said. “You give hope. And that can be taken away very easily.”

He called this strategy dishonest. Licensing and televised satire, he said, do not signal reform. They are tools for narrative management.

Oppression, he argued, is often brief.

“They put a lid on it,” he said. “But the program starts after that.”

The backlash against licensed rappers, especially those connected to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, has been emotional. Some consider state approved albums a betrayal. Others see economic survival.

Rokni believes the solution is parallel economies, enabling musicians to make money without going through state linked producers or licensing offices.

“Do it yourself,” he said. He pointed to artists who built audiences through Instagram and streaming platforms.

In today’s Iran rap carries two meanings. One version is polished, licensed and safe. The other remains underground created by musicians who refuse to compromise.

Both exist at once but only one is protected.

The story is not the “death of religion,” as it may appear from social media snippets depicting once unheard of public concerts and women spurning the mandatory hijab, but a fundamental reordering of how Iranians relate to faith.

Recent surveys by the Netherlands-based Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN) found 68% oppose the continuation of the Islamic Republic. Support for its leader and revolutionary principles fell from 18% to 11% between 2022 and 2024.

A leaked culture ministry survey reported that 73% favor separating religion and state. A peer-reviewed article by Ali Sarihan of Maryland's St. Mary's College, published in the journal Religions puts support for a secular system at around 70%.

Yet other indicators show Iran is not secular in the familiar Western sense. The World Values Survey (WVS) still finds 96% identify as Muslim and only 1.3% as atheist.

Faith endures, it seems. It is political Islam that is losing ground.

Hidden secularism

Classic secularization theory imagined that modernization would push religion out of public life. Iran shows something more layered: personal belief can survive even as the political project built around it collapses.

Sociologist Asef Bayat has called this “post-Islamism”—a phase in which political Islam has exhausted its appeal, even as many Iranians retain some form of private faith.

Iran is not “non-religious,” Bayat argues. It is post-theocratic in its political aspirations.

Religious practice has thinned markedly.

Sarihan's study also suggests that the share of Iranians who “always or often” pray fell from 78% in 2015 to 55% in 2023—a steady decline shaped, and likely accelerated in recent years, by repression and economic crisis.

The WVS relies on face-to-face interviews, which in a country like Iran give respondents every incentive to conceal dissent or non-conformity.

Belief recast

Religious rituals remain part of everyday life.

The Shi'ite religious holy days of Muharram and Arbaeen still draw large crowds especially outside major cities, and shrines remain busy.

But for younger Iranians, who express the highest levels of political dissatisfaction, religion no longer aligns with state intrusion into private life.

The compulsory hijab, morality policing and the regulation of personal behavior have turned religion, for many, into a vehicle of control.

The widespread protests of 2022, known by their rallying cry of Woman, Life, Freedom, exposed this rupture. The slogans were never an assault on faith itself but on the state’s claim to define and enforce it.

On social media, hashtags rejecting the Islamic Republic sit comfortably alongside posts defending personal belief. The distinction between faith and religious governance has become unmistakable.

Coercion to choice

Iran’s path to secularization is unusual because it runs in two directions at once: from above and from below.

Heavy-handed enforcement—from hijab rules to cultural censorship—has alienated generations and inadvertently strengthened the case for separating religion and power.

GAMAAN’s highest recorded opposition to the theocratic system came at the height of the 2022 protests, when women’s bodily autonomy became the central battleground: four out of five respondents said they would vote “no” to an Islamic Republic in a hypothetical referendum.

Meanwhile, everyday acts of defiance are reshaping religious life from the ground up.

Women walk unveiled. Families who still value faith increasingly bypass official religious bodies. Younger Iranians look for ethics and spirituality beyond state-sanctioned channels.

God versus government

Two caricatures usually obscure the real picture. Iran is not a “godless society”: personal belief, ritual and religious meaning remain widespread. But nor is it the devout political community the state insists it governs.

The Islamic Republic’s project of political Islam has lost its authority, and most Iranians now prefer a secular political order.

The theocracy has produced one of the region’s strongest secularizing shifts—not through reform but through coercion. The more it has enforced religious rule, the more clearly Iranians have separated faith from the state.

Iran today stands between private, chosen belief and state-imposed religion.

The secularization of politics is now a structural threat to Islamic rule—one that often goes unnoticed amid a myriad of more immediate, louder crises.

After winning the prestigious Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, Panahi’s film has now been nominated for Best Motion Picture (Drama), Best Non-English Language Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes 2026.

Panahi’s film will compete in the Best Motion Picture (Drama) category alongside Frankenstein, Hamnet, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, and Sinners.

In the Best Director category, he is nominated alongside Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another, Ryan Coogler for Sinners, Guillermo del Toro for Frankenstein, Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value and Chloé Zhao for Hamnet.

Shot secretly in Tehran, the film has already been selected by France as its official submission to the 2026 Oscars and will also represent France at the Golden Globes.

Last week, Iranian lawyer Mostafa Nili announced that Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran sentenced Panahi in absentia to one year in prison.

The verdict cited “propaganda against the state” and imposed a two-year travel ban and a ban on political or social group membership.

Panahi, a long-time critic of the Islamic Republic, said he plans to return to Iran despite the new ruling. The filmmaker has previously been detained and restricted from travel but continued to make movies that later received major awards at Cannes, Berlin and Venice.

The production was carried out under tight constraints inside the capital, continuing Panahi’s long pattern of making films despite restrictions, surveillance and repeated bans on his professional activity.

It Was Just an Accident follows Panahi’s established cinematic approach—minimalist storytelling, non-professional actors and a blend of documentary and fiction.

His earlier works, including Taxi and No Bears, were also created while he was banned from filmmaking and travel, drawing international support for his case.

Mizan, the judiciary’s outlet quoted the chief justice of Alborz province, Hossein Fazeli Herikandi as saying that the defendant, who is a European country resident, allegedly held “multiple meetings with Mossad officers during a visit to Israel.”

Harikandi provided no evidence supporting the accusation and did not disclose the suspect’s identity – a pattern seen in past espionage cases brought by the Islamic Republic, many of which have later been discredited.

Rights groups note that Iran has repeatedly detained, prosecuted and even executed individuals on espionage charges without presenting verifiable proof.

One of the most prominent examples is the case of Mazyar Ebrahimi, arrested in 2012 and tortured into confessing to assassinating nuclear scientists – a claim he later exposed as fabricated.

Arrest during the 12-day war

Intelligence agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mizan said, arrested the dual national on the fourth day of the 12-day war between Iran and Israel.

“Complex espionage and intelligence equipment” was found at his residence, the report said, but did not specify what those items were or whether the defendant has had access to independent legal counsel.

Following the war, Iran’s judiciary has accelerated arrests and prosecutions on charges of “espionage” or “collaboration with Israel.” In October, political prisoner Javad Naeimi was executed in Qom on such charges.

Pattern of politically driven arrests

Over recent years, the Islamic Republic has detained dozens of foreign and dual nationals, often accusing them of spying or security offenses. Human-rights groups describe the practice as “state hostage-taking,” arguing Tehran uses detainees to pressure Western governments and extract concessions.

International monitors have repeatedly cited Iran’s judiciary for due-process violations, noting that many political defendants are denied independent lawyers and face opaque trials.