Iran International
After Tehran's deadliest crackdown on dissidents in decades and with broad domestic security mobilization and sweeping internet blackout still in place, Tehran now tries to project an image of calm.
That effort is being carried out through the handful of government-owned media outlets still permitted to operate, and increasingly through individuals granted internet access via so-called “white SIM cards,” who portray a peaceful, orderly Iran.
As of midday January 16, state television’s rolling news channel, IRINN, had aired more than two dozen times an old video showing families visiting a ski resort in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province near Isfahan. “People are enjoying the beautiful snowfall,” the narrator says.
Nowhere on the channel is the still-simmering nationwide discontent mentioned.
‘No tension, no police’
Other bulletins highlight news of a a “major oil contract”—not with a foreign partner, but with a group of well-connected domestic contractors authorized to sell Iranian oil on the black market using a “ghost fleet” geared toward evading US sanctions.
“The sooner this contract bears fruit, the sooner it will be a win-win agreement,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said of the deal in a clip posted on Telegram by the Revolutionary Guards-affiliated Fars News outlet.
On social media, one widely shared clip shows a street on the western edge of Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. Cars move quickly along empty roads, with no pedestrians and no open shops.
“There is no tension in the streets even without security forces present,” the voice in the video says.
The account does not explain why calm streets should appear unusual, though residents note that armored vehicles and machine-gun-mounted vans patrol other neighborhoods openly, especially after dark.
The clip raises another question: how the account’s administrator was able to access the internet while driving in a city that has been largely cut off from the outside world for more than 200 hours by January 16.
‘Cut Trump’s finger’
In another IRINN report, security chief Ali Larijani said he had spoken with his Swiss counterpart “about bilateral ties.”
Around the same time, international media reported that Switzerland—along with several other European countries—had summoned Iran’s ambassador to protest the violent treatment of demonstrators.
State television and state-aligned social media accounts have ignored the suspension of operations by several embassies in Tehran, including that of the United Kingdom, and more recently those of Portugal and New Zealand.
Notably, senior officials have largely disappeared from public view. Airtime has instead been given to former figures such as Mohsen Rezai, the Revolutionary Guards' first commander, who threatened to “cut off Trump’s finger if it is on the trigger” during a televised appearance.
State TV reported that President Pezeshkian thanked Russia for supporting Tehran at the United Nations during a phone call, but otherwise officials remain conspicuously absent.
It may be some time before they reappear. It may take even longer for the public to forget what they did—and failed to say—during the crackdown.
