Iran International
Changes to how YouTube presents ads has dealt a sharp blow to Iranian content creator revenues while bringing mercifully fewer ads to ordinary viewers of the banned but wildly popular video app.
Despite being officially blocked in Iran, YouTube has in recent years grown into a major source of both entertainment and dollar-based income in a country where cultural censorship and economic malaise are deep.
Persian-language creators inside the country and in the diaspora built large audiences, while viewers relied on VPNs to access content largely unavailable on domestic platforms.
That ecosystem has now been disrupted by changes to YouTube’s advertising and location-detection systems, which more accurately identify users’ real locations—and pay far less for viewers from a country where major brands have little to no presence.
Aria Keoxer, a veteran YouTuber with more than 750k followers, said in a video this week that while some videos previously earned up to $11 per thousand views, that figure has now fallen to around $1.
“The game is over for Iranian YouTubers,” he said.
For many ordinary users, however, the same shift has been met not with anger but with relief. Most viewers were never part of YouTube’s advertising economy.
Their concern is access and usability, not revenue, and many on social media describe the experience as unexpectedly positive.
“Not showing ads for us Iranians is basically free YouTube Premium,” one X user posted with a tinge of irony. “Looks like we’re seriously moving forward by going backward.”
In Iran, YouTube Premium exists largely in theory. Subscribing requires foreign payment methods, and even when technically possible, the dollar-priced monthly fee can be prohibitively expensive.
Even for those who could afford it, payment remains nearly impossible because of sanctions and Iran’s exclusion from international banking systems.
Lost opportunity
Despite the ad-free relief for viewers, YouTube’s role as a source of income remains central.
The platform had become a rare outlet for Generation Z creators, artists constrained by political and social restrictions, rural families sharing local culture and cooking, and entertainment and political producers sidelined by state television.
For many, it was one of the few ways to earn in hard currency.
YouTube’s tighter enforcement now appears to undercut earnings even for creators operating abroad. Some popular online shows, including the Eternal Love reality show, have attracted millions of viewers, but their revenue streams are increasingly fragile.
Domestic platforms such as Aparat offer revenue shares of around 50 to 70 percent, but payments are made in rials, leaving them unable to compete with YouTube’s dollar-denominated income.
Solution: politics
Experts have urged creators to adapt by producing English-language content, targeting diaspora audiences, or securing domestic and foreign sponsors. Some YouTubers say they plan to shift content to other platforms, including Kick.
The technology website Zoomit argued that the loss of profitability could remove “one of the last justifications policymakers had for maintaining the platform’s filtering—those who viewed it as a source of foreign currency revenue.”
The daily Ham-Mihan, however, argued that even lifting the filter would not resolve creators’ problems, as sanctions and economic restrictions would remain.
“Companies like Adidas or Nike, which have no official presence in Iran, are unaffected by whether YouTube is filtered or not, because Persian-language YouTube users do not have free access to these brands to make purchases,” the paper wrote.
“What could help YouTubers and users in the long term is the lifting of sanctions and the presence of reputable brands in Iran.”
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.