Power politics in Tehran has reached a stage where even the most routine public affairs—a film festival, an environmental report or the World Cup draw—spiral into controversy, as if the system cannot tolerate anything resembling normalcy.
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.
Speaking at a ceremony marking Student Day, Pezeshkian addressed the controversy surrounding the preferential access system, which drew widespread criticism after a November update to X revealed that numerous journalists, officials and pro-government figures were using unfiltered connections.
“We have instructed that these white internet lines be turned black as well, to show what will happen to people if this blackness continues,” he said.
Pezeshkian has repeatedly promised to lift filtering, a key pledge of his 2024 presidential campaign. On Sunday, he again suggested that political constraints lie beyond his control. “It is not enough for me to simply order the lifting of filtering. If it could be solved by instruction, we would have done it on the first day,” he said.
The comments came as government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said that the administration seeks “free internet for all,” despite saying last year that no such promise had been made. Instagram, X, Telegram, and some other platforms remain blocked more than a year into Pezeshkian’s term.
A stalled pledge
Filtering reform was central to Pezeshkian’s campaign, when he said he would “risk his neck” to fix it. Yet in his first meeting of the Supreme Cyberspace Council he emphasized implementing the Supreme Leader’s directives on internet governance rather than easing restrictions and ordered action against the flourishing trade in VPNs.
Since then, senior officials have offered varying timelines. In December, Majid Farahani from the presidential office said filtering would be removed in three phases by the end of the year. The newspaper Farhikhtegan later reported consensus among Iran’s three branches of government to move from blocking toward “smart restrictions,” indicating the system is being recalibrated rather than dismantled.
Public anger intensified after revelations of the white SIM scheme, which critics said exposed a tiered access system contradicting the government’s rhetoric about digital equality.
