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The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) has refused to comply with a ruling by the IRIB Supervisory Board ordering it to stop censoring President Massoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Parliament Speaker and chief nuclear negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

The dispute has drawn criticism from government officials and reformist and moderate newspapers while prompting little public sympathy.

Instead, many Iranians mocked the complaints, saying state television had long ignored ordinary people and was now simply extending the same treatment to members of the political establishment.

Before the Supervisory Board issued its ruling, government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said the public expected the national broadcaster to uphold professional ethics, democratic principles and the national interest.

"All tastes and viewpoints must be reflected in the national broadcaster's narrative," she said.

Little public sympathy

On social media, many users joked that it was refreshing to see senior officials finally experiencing the neglect ordinary citizens had long endured from state television.

A Tehran-based journalist summed up the mood more bluntly, saying most people did not care whether politicians appeared on television; they wanted to see themselves and their own problems reflected instead.

For years, many Iranians have complained that IRIB neither reflects their lives nor represents their concerns.

Critics say television dramas rarely portray people like themselves, while supposedly spontaneous interviews on political and social issues feature only carefully selected voices. Others note that cooking programmes routinely feature meals beyond the reach of many families.

Meanwhile, IRIB responded to Araghchi's complaint with a sarcastic remark, saying it was "impossible to give him 24/7 coverage."

A watchdog without teeth

Earlier this week, the IRIB Supervisory Board formally warned the broadcaster over its repeated censorship of senior officials.

Board secretary Mohammad Mirzaei said "necessary cautions were issued" and that IRIB had pledged to implement reforms and prevent similar incidents from recurring. Deputy political director Hassan Abedini also publicly promised fairer coverage of officials' remarks and activities.

Yet the broadcaster showed no sign of changing course, declining even to report the Supervisory Board's meeting—a story carried by nearly every major Iranian news agency.

Established under Article 175 of Iran's Constitution, the Supervisory Board brings together representatives of the executive, parliament and judiciary to oversee IRIB's editorial conduct.

It can issue warnings, but ultimate authority over the broadcaster, including appointing its chief, rests with the Supreme Leader.

Current IRIB chief Payman Jebelli and his management team have long faced criticism over partisan editorial policies, discrimination and censorship directed at both ordinary citizens and politicians outside the ultraconservative camp.

Leadership under scrutiny

Jebelli's five-year term expires in less than a month, raising questions over whether Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei will retain the current management or appoint a new leadership team.

The latest dispute comes amid an unusually coordinated campaign by media close to the Pezeshkian administration.

Last week, the reformist dailies Etemad and Shargh, together with the government's own newspaper Iran, accused IRIB of systematically censoring senior officials and promoting voices at odds with government policy.

Iran newspaper also alleged that the broadcaster censored remarks by Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei praising Pezeshkian.

The episode has exposed more than a dispute over television coverage. It has highlighted the growing gap between Iran's formal institutions and the centres of authority that increasingly operate beyond their reach.

Just days earlier, authorities had affixed heavy metal seals to the doors of several cafes that had become popular gathering places for young people - 1401, Theory, Jo Cafe, Dobareh, Sam Cafe, Maan, and Nook. Now, even the physical footprint of these gathering spots was being erased.

The scene along Sanaei is not an isolated urban redevelopment project; it is the visible edge of an expanding domestic front. As the Islamic Republic navigates profound geopolitical vulnerability, military standoff, and international isolation, its security apparatus has turned inward with renewed vigor. The target is the physical fabric of daily life—the informal, everyday spaces where citizens meet, breathe, and quietly subvert official ideology.

The erasure of the 'Patogh'

In Iranian urban culture, the patogh - a hangout spot, whether a neighborhood coffee shop, a shaded bench, or a specific street corner- holds a special resonance. Central Tehran, with its historical universities, cultural venues, and tree-lined avenues, has long served as a sanctuary for students and young professionals seeking conversation away from state surveillance.

Cafes in this district do not merely sell coffee; they operate as vital breathing rooms in a pressure-cooker society. They are spaces where women routinely drop their headscarves, where independent acoustic music plays quietly, and where social networks form organically.

To the security state, these hubs represent something far more dangerous than simple rule-breaking: they are unmonitored incubator spaces for civil defiance.

By dismantling the planters and outdoor ledges where young people once congregated, the state is conducting a campaign of physical depatterning. The objective is simple: raise the friction of gathering, eliminate opportunities for unscripted human interaction, and force citizens back into the isolation of private homes.

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From central cafes to northern bazaars

The systematic clearing of social life is not confined to central Tehran's bohemian quarters. In the northern district of Tajrish—a bustling commercial hub anchored by its traditional bazaar, the Imamzadeh Saleh shrine, and the thoroughfares leading toward the Saadabad Palace—a parallel push is underway.

Here, the crackdown targets street musicians, artisans, and informal vendors whose presence gives the district its distinctive kinetic energy.

"Plainclothes men carrying two-way radios came up to me last week while I was playing," a young handpan musician who performed near Tajrish Square told Iran International. "They told me bluntly: 'The time for these antics is over. There will be none of this in the streets anymore.'"

For many, performing or vending in Tajrish was not a lifestyle choice, but a last resort. Following the internet blackouts imposed during recent nationwide unrest, thousands of small online businesses, home-craft pages, and digital storefronts collapsed overnight. Young artisans, women-headed households, and unemployed graduates migrated to the pavements of Tajrish to sell handmade goods or play music for passing crowds.

Now, even that economic and social retreat is being shut down. Vendors near the shrine report periodic sweeps by security personnel and vigilantes ordering them to pack up their "sinful stalls" under threat of physical violence.

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The asymmetry of public space

What makes this campaign so striking to Tehran residents is its stark selectivity.

While young people face sledgehammers and security sweeps for sitting on a sidewalk ledger or strumming a guitar, state-aligned groups enjoy unrestricted access to the city’s major arteries. For months, heavily subsidized groups have set up nightly ideological gatherings, loud ceremonial processions, and roadside stands with full logistical backing from the state.

This spatial double standard reveals the regime's broader urban philosophy: public space in Iran is not a shared civic commodity, but a state monopoly. The streets are permitted to be loud, crowded, and disruptive—provided that noise serves the government's narrative. The moment a street corner becomes a site for quiet civilian autonomy, it is treated as a security threat.

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The historical pattern: Internal repression as external defense

This tightening grip on everyday life follows a familiar pattern in post-revolutionary Iran. Historically, whenever the Islamic Republic faces severe external threats or internal crises, its immediate response is to signal total domestic control.

The destruction of cafe seating and the silencing of street performers occur alongside a sharp escalation in judicial violence, including a surge in executions and political detentions. The message directed at society is unified across every medium: the state retains absolute authority over who walks the street, who speaks, and who lives.

Yet, despite the shattered concrete on Sanaei Street and the quieted plazas of Tajrish, Tehran's urban ecosystem remains stubbornly resilient. The urge to assemble, connect, and reclaim small fragments of normal life has repeatedly outlasted physical destruction—proving that while a government can tear up a sidewalk, controlling the social life that flows over it is a far more difficult task.

Abolfazl Ghadyani, a veteran Islamic Revolution-era official turned fierce critic of Tehran; Mohammad Najafi, a human rights lawyer jailed for exposing a protester's death in custody; and Reza Valizadeh, an Iranian-American journalist and former Radio Farda contributor, issued the joint statement from Tehran's Evin prison.

The three political prisoners said the Islamic Republic was accelerating executions to inflict revenge on defenseless citizens for military setbacks against international adversaries.

"The corrupt regime of the Islamic Republic has once again turned war into a license to kill citizens," the prisoners wrote. "Whatever collapsed of its hollow authority on the battlefield, it is now trying to rebuild on the gallows."

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Executions described as 'begging for authority'

Executing protesters following show trials does not represent the administration of justice but rather "begging for authority on a path of blood," the signatories wrote.

They said Iranian authorities were rushing executions to take out frustrations on ordinary citizens that they could not exact on the US and Israel, seeking to crush any protesting voice.

"Today the hereditary regime of Mojtaba Khamenei, who like his father is a bloodthirsty and criminal tyrant who shared and partnered in all his father's crimes and plunder, has fallen from governance to tunnel-keeping," the statement said.

The prisoners added that the regime and its military-security cliques, unable to manage severe economic and social crises, were relying on a triad of "execution, crackdown, and imprisonment" to control the population outside their power centers.

Isfahan hangings spark grief and anger

The statement follows the executions of two young protesters early on Tuesday, Amirhossein Safari and Abolfazl Sepahi, who were hanged in Isfahan amid a heavy security deployment around Alikhani Square.

The two men were among 12 defendants convicted in the Alikhani Square case stemming from clashes during protests in January. Their hangings brought the total number of individuals executed in the case to four, following the executions of Golmohammad Mohammadi and Erfan Esfandiari on July 19. Eight others remain under sentence of death.

The hangings in Isfahan triggered widespread grief, anger, and public defiance across Iranian cities and abroad. Witnesses described crowds gathering near Alikhani Square overnight despite intimidation by security forces, while messages across social media described the executions as a crime that hardened public resolve rather than suppressed dissent.

UN human rights experts led by Special Rapporteur Mai Sato had urged Iranian authorities on Monday to halt the executions, warning that closed-court trials based on televised confessions violated basic international legal standards.

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Surge in capital punishment draws global alarm

The joint statement from Evin prison comes amid a broader surge in death sentences and executions across Iran over the past year, particularly following the January protests and escalating regional conflict.

Data compiled by Iran International shows that the Iranian judiciary has executed more than 50 political prisoners since the beginning of the current Iranian year, with dozens more facing execution.

Rights groups and civil society leaders have issued repeated warnings over the escalation. Amnesty International reported that at least 60 people, including three individuals under the age of 18 at the time of their alleged offenses, face imminent execution in Iran.

The three Evin prisoners concluded their statement by warning that no government achieves security or legitimacy through "the accumulation of corpses and a fear production line," adding that if the ruling establishment fails to yield to the public will, "Iran will become more ruined."

Speaking on Iran International's Titre Aval (The Lead) program on Wednesday, Des Roches said the United States had limited military options after adopting an air campaign and argued Trump was unlikely to accept the political cost of ending the operation without achieving his objectives.

Three options

"The United States went in with an air power-only strategy," said Des Roches, now an associate professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies.

"That usually is flawed because once you do that, and if you look historically at how we've used an air power-led strategy in Korea, Vietnam, even World War II, but I think the illustrative point is Kosovo."

"If you don't achieve your strategic goals initially against a small target set, your options are to either introduce another element of warfare, and we don't have time to do that. To have a credible ground invasion force would take a year to build up, or you bomb more intensively."

"You widen the target list to include dual-use infrastructure, like bridges, the power grid, the national communications, television, and radio. This is what the US did against Serbia to stop the massacre of Muslims in Kosovo, or you leave."

"Those are really your three options, and I think that President Trump does not relish the prospect of leaving. That's too close to Joe Biden."

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More strikes likely

Des Roches said he believed the White House was most likely to increase military pressure rather than expand into ground operations.

"So I think, you know, he doesn't really have the ability to introduce another domain of warfare," he said.

"But really, I think his main option is to try to increase pain on the regime, and I think that that will mean an expansion into the targets towards dual-use targets and an expansion of intensive bombing to include not just areas adjacent to the Persian Gulf, but also areas inland, and especially the capital Tehran."

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Politics driving the conflict

Asked about reports that Trump had been advised against escalating the conflict because of concerns about US weapons stockpiles, Des Roches said he believed political and economic factors were more important than military constraints.

"Some, but I think it's not really driven by military action or missile inventories," he said.

"I think it's political and economic. So we have midterm elections coming up. The Islamic Republic knows this. The leaders within the Islamic Republic know it, and they have calculated that if they can draw the war out, keep gasoline prices high, that President Trump will be in a worse position, or may even be impeached and removed."

"I think that they're kind of overplaying their hand."

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Revolutionary Guards and internal divisions

Des Roches said recent Iranian actions might not reflect a unified government position.

"I'm not sure if the actions we're seeing reflect a unitary position of the Iranian government, but rather the actions of different factions of the Iranian government, probably the Revolutionary Guard, who are vying for supremacy and are trying to wreck any possibility for negotiations."

He argued that an end to the conflict would shift public attention inside Iran toward domestic issues.

"Obviously, if peace breaks out, then the focus within Iran goes from a national rally around the flag, oppose the Zionist entity and the Great Satan, towards looking at things like where has all the money gone over the year? Why is Tehran running out of water when the Revolutionary Guard controls the major construction companies in the country, and why are their children driving Lamborghinis in Spain and ours are having a hard time getting water in Tehran?"

"So it's a challenging period, but I think the hardliners, particularly in the Revolutionary Guard, are at risk of severely overplaying their hand."

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Regime change

Asked whether regime change had become part of US strategy, Des Roches said he believed Trump was pursuing a different approach from previous US interventions.

"My view is President Trump's theory of victory is not that the US will impose a new regime the way we did, for example, in Iraq, because that didn't work out well."

"I think he feels that economic pressure will lead the Iranians to have their own regime change."

Des Roches said Trump appeared to believe the anti-government protests in late 2019 had brought Iran close to internal political change.

"I think he feels that in December that was about to happen. It was only the violence of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij, the massacres of between 1,300 and 4,000 Iranians - we don't know the exact number - that would have done it."

"I think that's why we're here now. It's not because Netanyahu led it. It's because, in the face of what he saw as a vindication of his policy, I think he believes that had he remained president after 2020, regime change would have been accomplished from within by about 2022."

On July 29, the administration's official daily, Iran, published four opinion pieces by representatives of four moderate and conservative parties, presenting the collection as evidence of a new political accord.

The paper argued that "the traditional pattern of political competition between Iran's two major blocs has fundamentally shifted," concluding that "what seems to have 'ended' is not reformism or principlism as political identities, but the confrontational style of rivalry that had turned these blocs into near-enemies."

The optimism sits uneasily with political reality.

Hardliners routinely accuse President Masoud Pezeshkian and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf of betraying the country because of their relatively pragmatic approach to negotiations and the confrontation with the United States, while state television, dominated by ultraconservatives, has repeatedly censored key remarks by both men.

Nor did the initiative reflect the country's current balance of political power. The contributors came from four parties that have largely been sidelined since at least 2020 and no longer reflect the real distribution of influence in presidential or parliamentary politics.

The ultraconservative Paydari Party, arguably the most influential ideological force in today's parliament, and the centrist Executives of Reconstruction Party were both absent, whether by exclusion or choice.

The paper nonetheless argued that "the pressures of war and national security crises pushed both sides toward cooperation, reducing polarization and enabling decisions that required broad consensus."

Yet it also acknowledged that Paydari—described as "a small but loud minority" enjoying disproportionate influence through state broadcasting—stood outside the initiative.

Rather than demonstrating broad political consensus, the exercise illustrated its limits. Three of the four essays were written not by party leaders but by deputies or senior members of organisations that have played only marginal roles in Iranian politics for nearly two decades.

The four contributors differed in emphasis but converged on a common message.

Mahmoud Vaezi argued that, amid hybrid warfare and economic pressure, Iran needed rationality, restraint and an end to factional competition. Alireza Khojastehpour called for what he described as "revolutionary rationality." Mohammad Sadegh Javadi-Hessar framed moderation as a religious imperative, while Mohammad Ali Amani argued that resilience depended less on military power than on social cohesion.

Collectively, the essays portrayed moderation as a strategic necessity rooted in political experience, revolutionary reasoning and religious ethics. Extremism was presented as corrosive, narrowing political choices, deepening polarization and eroding public trust.

Yet the initiative may reveal less about the emergence of a new political consensus than about the administration's effort to reinforce its case for a more moderate course.

Facing the prospect of war, worsening economic pressures and relentless attacks from powerful hardline factions, Pezeshkian appears to be seeking validation for a strategy that many of the country's most influential political actors remain unwilling to embrace.

The country's most influential ultraconservative factions, their media allies and an IRGC that increasingly acts as a political institution in its own right were absent from the discussion.

They are also the actors least likely to look to the government's flagship newspaper for lessons in moderation.