Iran International
Cafés—and the social life that has grown around them—have become the latest battleground for Iran’s hardliners, who increasingly see their control over everyday behavior slipping out of reach.
That tension was on display this week when Saeed Jalili, a leading figure of Iran’s ultra-hardline camp, attacked café culture as a Western plot designed to undermine the family.
“They define three spaces: the dormitory, the workplace, and a ‘third space,’ like a café, to escape loneliness,” Jalili said. “In this paradigm, the family loses meaning. This stands in opposition to Islam’s philosophy of marriage.”
For conservative factions that have long insisted on strict gender segregation and rigid enforcement of compulsory hijab, the spread of cafés represents more than a shift in leisure habits—it signals a loss of authority over how people socialize and occupy public space.
Even in religious strongholds
People who have recently visited Iran report a striking expansion of café culture, including in religious centers such as Qom, long seen as resistant to such social change. Analysts note that the trend reflects not only generational preferences but also economic pressure.
“At a time when many traditional forms of leisure have been eliminated due to economic hardship, cafés are the only place left that can fill the recreational void for young people,” the news website Jaryan24 wrote, describing the phenomenon as a version of the “lipstick effect.”
The spread of cafés in cities like Qom and Mashhad has been particularly alarming to ultra-hardliners.
In September, Mannan Raisi, a hardline lawmaker representing Qom, condemned the opening of a new café in the city and warned that “the people themselves” would intervene.
Videos circulating from the event showed young men and women socializing at a DJ-led gathering—images that drew outrage from conservatives in a city that hosts Iran’s most influential Shiite seminaries.
The café was shut down within a day. Shortly afterward, a member of Qom’s city council announced that the owner’s business license had been revoked and that criminal charges had been filed for allegedly promoting “moral corruption.”
That anxiety has been sharpened by what hardliners view as the authorities’ retreat from enforcing a stringent hijab law passed by parliament in 2023 but later shelved by the Supreme National Security Council for fear of public backlash.
‘Society has moved on’
Jalili’s remarks triggered a broad backlash across Iranian media and social platforms. Critics argued that his comments revealed a widening gap between hardline ideology and everyday social realities.
Seyed-Ali Pourtabatabaei, a former editor at Qom News, described café culture as “the new nightmare of Saeed Jalili and his supporters.”
“Jalili does not fear cafés because he believes the West is destroying the family,” Pourtabatabaei argued. “He fears them because cafés symbolize a society that no longer needs him or his ideology—and does not vote for it.”
Legal scholar Mohsen Borhani went further, writing that such thinking “places no value on citizens’ freedom of choice,” adding that even authoritarian systems of the past did not seek to regulate cafés.
What the debate reveals is less about coffee than about power. As traditional mechanisms of control weaken, seemingly ordinary spaces have taken on political meaning—becoming sites where the struggle over Iran’s social future is quietly, and visibly, playing out.
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.