Iran International
With tens of thousands killed and society still reeling, the Islamic Republic has turned to sport to project normalcy as matches return, but players’ muted celebrations and empty stadiums show how little of the script still holds.
Domestic leagues have resumed, fixtures have been brought forward, and state-aligned media have amplified claims that the country is returning to ordinary life.
That portrayal clashes with lived reality. Even under severely restricted internet access, videos of brutal crackdowns – particularly from January 8 and 9 – have circulated, showing the scale of violence used against protesters.
Much of society remains in mourning. Families are grieving thousands of young people, including dozens of athletes, and official claims of normalcy ring hollow. What disrupts the state’s carefully assembled image are unscripted gestures that resist being folded into the official storyline.
The match goes on but the joy does not
For the state’s project of normalcy to work, sport must deliver more than competition. It must deliver emotion. A goal is meant to be followed by celebration; a win is meant to bring release. Instead, a visible rupture has set in. Players score and walk away. The whistle blows and faces remain closed, expressions blank.
In recent weeks, many players have kept their celebrations muted as a gesture of solidarity with the uprising and a mark of respect for the dead, including fellow athletes – while stopping short of openly defying orders to play.
Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting has lost the few audience it once assumed it possessed. According to a 2024 survey by the state-run ISPA, only 12.5 percent of Iranians follow the news through the state broadcaster, and 11.5 percent watch films and TV series on state TV.
Viewers have migrated elsewhere, disengaged, or stopped watching altogether. The result is a broadcaster that retains infrastructure and reach on paper but has been stripped of public relevance in practice.
This erosion matters because the system was never designed to retain an audience. Its function was to define reality by default, assuming passive consumption rather than active belief. Once viewers disengaged, repetition lost its force. Control of distribution no longer compensates for the absence of viewers.
During moments of nationwide crisis, when internet shutdowns leave citizens with few information sources, state television no longer functions as a reference point. Instead, it serves as a tool of narrative management: selecting what can be shown, omitting what cannot be explained, and substituting political reality with staged images of normalcy.
Broadcasting without an audience
For decades, Iran’s media model assumed a captive audience. State television and aligned agencies – particularly Guards-affiliated outlets such as Tasnim and Fars – operate not as independent newsrooms but as synchronized instruments of governance. Their role has been to speak in a single vocabulary, regardless of whether anyone is listening.
This model depends on two conditions: uninterrupted control of distribution and a public compelled to accept official framing as the baseline. Periods of unrest strain both. Authorities respond by narrowing the information space – blocking platforms, jamming opposition satellite networks, sidelining independent outlets and cutting internet access – to prevent images and testimony from circulating outside official filters.
Yet this strategy also exposes weakness. When viewers are forced back to a channel they no longer trust, omissions and contradictions become more visible, not less. Absence of alternatives does not restore authority; it highlights how little credibility remains.
Managing perception through omission
One of the clearest techniques used by Iranian state media during crises is substitution: replacing destabilizing political reality with curated depictions of normalcy. While protests across the country have been driven by explicit rejection of the political system – including chants calling for the overthrow of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – state television has persistently reframed unrest as a response to economic pressure.
Instead of addressing violence, casualties or political slogans, IRIB dispatched reporters to city streets to highlight the availability of basic goods such as chicken meat. These segments emphasized supply while omitting that prices had surged several times over in recent weeks.
By focusing on availability rather than affordability – and by recasting a political uprising as economic grievance – the broadcasts constructed an image of stability. The effect was to depoliticize a movement defined not by price demands, but by calls for the end of the ruling order.
Alongside omission sits coercive performance: televised confessions aired by Fars and Tasnim from detained protesters presented as “leaders” of unrest. These segments are not designed to persuade skeptics. They function as demonstrations of power, signaling the state’s ability to script guilt and enforce compliance.
From staged crowds to synthetic reality
What distinguishes the current phase is not the presence of propaganda, but its tools. Traditional methods – recycled crowd shots, selective framing and inflated attendance claims – have long been used. What is new is reliance on digitally manipulated or AI-assisted content that blurs the line between documentation and fabrication.
A recent example illustrates such shift. State media circulated a video presented as aerial helicopter footage of pro-government rallies, promoting it as evidence of mass popular support. Viewers quickly questioned its authenticity, pointing to visual inconsistencies in lighting, movement and composition, as well as the absence of basic helicopter safety features.
The state’s instinctive response – denial, external blame and further restriction – reinforced the cycle. Each tightening of control signaled anxiety. Each refusal to address substantive questions accelerated the erosion of credibility.
Whether every technical critique was correct was secondary. The significance lay in the reaction. Official visuals were no longer treated as authentic; they were examined as artifacts to be tested for manipulation.
This marked a shift from propaganda as persuasion to propaganda as evidence production. The aim was no longer only to frame events, but to manufacture visual proof. Paradoxically, the more sophisticated the techniques, the faster trust eroded.
Rasht Bazaar: A disaster told through one voice
The fire at Rasht’s central bazaar showed how narrative control operates under blackout conditions.
During protests in the northern city on January 8 and 9, a large section of the historic market caught fire as internet and phone services were cut, limiting residents’ ability to document events. State television retained full operational capacity and sent reporters to the scene while the fire was still burning.
Official coverage attributed the blaze to protesters and focused on material damage, repeatedly citing the number of shops destroyed. Casualty figures were absent. Later segments emphasized economic losses through interviews with selected shopkeepers and officials, while avoiding scrutiny of security forces.
Eyewitness testimony carried by Iran International described a sharply different sequence: crowds pushed toward the bazaar, people trapped by smoke in narrow corridors, and security forces firing on those emerging with raised hands to surrender.
In this environment, state broadcasting operated with technical access but without an audience willing to accept its account. The absence of open networks and real-time citizen reporting produced a one-sided evidentiary landscape shaped by coercion and selective disclosure.
Beyond access: a crisis of credibility
Iran’s media crisis is often framed as a problem of access – blocked platforms, censored outlets and restricted bandwidth. It is more fundamentally a crisis of credibility.
A broadcaster that has lost its viewers may still produce content, but it no longer produces belief. Control without an audience is not influence. And in politics, messages that are not believed might as well not be seen.
That tension has also fueled backlash against the few moments that look like unguarded celebration or emotion. After a Mes-e Rafsanjan F.C. victory and following Esteghlal F.C. staff reactions to a disallowed goal against Tractor S.C., criticism spread quickly across social media.
Former national team player Mohammad Taghavi voiced the sentiment plainly, arguing that players should not be taking the field at all.
“These footballers had no right to play under these circumstances. They could have claimed illness and avoided playing,” he told Iran International.
Sports journalist Mohsen Salehi described the resumption of matches as a staged display, even when players refrain from celebrating.
“The regime wants to turn footballers’ legs into tools of propaganda, projecting a false image in which life appears to be continuing as usual,” he wrote.
The question remains whether athletes – especially footballers – are willing to become props in that spectacle. When a country is in mourning, sport cannot remain a neutral island. Footballers are not only players; they are public figures with obligations to the communities that elevated them.
“Running on a field that reeks of blood is participation in a grand lie. Until the true scale of this repression is made clear and those who ordered and carried out these crimes are held accountable, what value does soccer really have? Players stand before the judgment of history. They must choose between being instruments of power or standing with the people,” Salehi added.
Taking such a position can carry consequences for the players.
though those costs pale in comparison with what the country is enduring. Tehran prosecutor has recently opened cases against 15 sports figures and actors for supporting the national uprising.
round the same time, reports emerged that Persepolis F.C. player Reza Shekari and Omid Ravankhah, head coach of Iran’s under-23 national team, were briefly detained on arrival at Tehran’s international airport over support for the protests.
Women’s soccer and foreign involvement
Signs that normalcy has not returned are also visible in institutional decisions. Farideh Shojaei, the federation’s vice-president for women’s football, announced the cancellation of two planned women’s national team friendlies against Uzbekistan and Belarus.
At club level, foreign participation has also thinned. Assistants to head coach Dragan Skočić at Tractor S.C., and one assistant to Ricardo Sá Pinto at Esteghlal F.C., have terminated their contracts. Several foreign Esteghlal players who left Iran during the mid-season break have yet to return.
The departures appear driven less by symbolic protest than by risk assessments. Matches continue, but confidence – especially among outsiders – has not been restored.
Tears as a counter-image
One of the most destabilizing moments for the state’s push for normalcy came in a single image: a women’s footballer scoring and then crying. In the visual economy of state messaging, it was the opposite of what is needed. A smile would complete the frame. Tears break it.
Last week, Maryam Mohammadhosseini, a player for the Esteghlal women’s team, did not celebrate after scoring and instead broke down in tears.
The image spread quickly because it showed what the official narrative tries to contain. Athletes can compete while remaining psychologically unsteady. Participation is not the same as emotional recovery. The body registers what the script denies.
Empty stadiums, louder signals
Matches continue, but spectators remain barred from stadiums, extending the same logic of control. The ban reflects authorities’ fear that protest chants and political displays could erupt on live broadcasts.
A match without a crowd may be technically possible, but for many it is drained of meaning. There is an image, but no collective response.
The limits of performative normalcy are even clearer beyond Iran’s borders.
The Asian Football Confederation has ruled that Iranian clubs cannot host certain continental matches at home, moving them to neutral venues. Under the decision, Esteghlal F.C. and Sepahan S.C. will stage Asian Champions League fixtures outside Iran, while Tractor S.C. will play on neutral ground.
If conditions were genuinely stable, those clubs would be allowed to host. A version of “normal” that holds only within domestic media does not withstand external assessment.
A growing list of athletes killed
Rights groups and media reports have documented the deaths of numerous athletes during protests so far, including former beach soccer national team goalkeeper Mohammad Hajipour; karate champion and referee Hassan Ghasemi; boxer Arshia Ahmadpour; mountaineer Sara Behboudi; women’s football assistant referee Sahba Rashtian; youth players Amirhossein Mohammadzadeh and Rebin Moradi; and former Tractor player Mojtaba Tarshiz, who was killed while shielding his wife.
The most recent confirmed case is Ahmad Ramezanzadeh, a catcher for the Iran national baseball team, who was killed after being shot with a handgun in eastern Tehran.
Other confirmed cases include soccer coach Milad Lavasani, futsal figure Amirmohammad Kouhkan, bodybuilder Masoud Zatparvar, taekwondo coach Afshin Mirkiani and arm-wrestling champion Erfan Bozorgi.
These are not the only athletes killed by the Islamic Republic. More names are likely to emerge in the future, as thousands of victims have yet to be identified.
