Journalist at Iran International
The Islamic Republic moved beliefs about the unseen from the margins of society to the center of power, and used oil money to give them institutions, budgets and a propaganda apparatus, so that its rulers could draw legitimacy from a source no citizen can question.
Two recent scenes show what that means in practice.
At state-organized rallies in February, marking the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, organizers set fire to effigies they identified as Baal, the Canaanite deity condemned as a false god in both the Bible and the Quran. In the middle of an economic crisis, the state staged its victory over its enemies as a piece of street ritual.
Months later, Salar Velayatmadar, a member of parliament, said the decision to stop publishing images of Mojtaba Khamenei had been taken on the advice of senior clerics in Qom, Mashhad and Najaf, and of security officials, so that Iran's enemies could not use "occult sciences," a term covering practices such as talismans, incantations and divination, to harm him.
With that, the occult had entered the official language of national security.
A distinction matters here. This is not an argument about what Iranians privately believe, and the point is not that millions of people hold beliefs about the sacred, as they do in every society. The question begins at the moment an unfalsifiable claim becomes the basis of political legitimacy, a security decision and the distribution of public money. At that point it has stopped being faith and become statecraft.
Nor is this a case of a secular state later contaminated by such thinking. The Islamic Republic's identity was bound from the beginning to a phrase that describes the country as belonging to someone who cannot be seen.
The absent owner
Speaking to government officials in September 1981, Ruhollah Khomeini, the cleric who led the 1979 revolution and founded the Islamic Republic, said: "The owner of this country is the Imam of Time." The line is recorded in volume 15 of Sahifeh-ye Imam, the official collection of his speeches and writings.
The Imam of Time is the twelfth imam of Shia Islam, who is believed to have vanished in the ninth century, to be alive and hidden, and to be destined to return. Iran's constitution frames clerical rule explicitly as an arrangement for the era of his absence.
Read as a theory of ownership, the consequences are considerable. If the country's true owner is absent, clerics become the interpreters of his will, and the Supreme Leader, rather than representing citizens, becomes the deputy of an absent proprietor. His accountability runs towards a realm no one can reach, not towards a public that could remove him.
Khomeini's arrival did not create popular belief in miracles and unseen forces, which long predated him. What the state he founded did was move those beliefs out of private life and into the machinery of power.
Manufacturing the sacred
The apparatus has been building sanctity around its leaders since the beginning.
The historian Olmo Gölz, in a study of the claim that Khomeini's face could be seen in the moon, drew on memoirs and newspapers of the period to trace both the spread of the rumor and its rejection by Khomeini himself and by a number of clerics. The denial did nothing to prevent the halo forming.
Video from Khomeini's first days back in Tehran shows a man touching his hand and then the hands of the crowd, passing on a blessing said to reside in the leader's body.
Decades later, Mohammad Saeedi, the Friday prayer leader of Qom, said that Ali Khamenei, the late supreme leader, had uttered the name of Imam Ali at the moment of his birth. The political significance of such a story lies not in efforts to establish whether it happened, but in the fact that the official apparatus uses it to build sanctity around a ruler.
The unseen world also has physical addresses. The most important is the mosque at Jamkaran, outside Qom, built on the belief that the hidden imam once appeared on the spot. Its own website describes the well where visitors drop written petitions addressed to him. Around such beliefs the state has built rituals, buildings, media, pilgrimage routes and an economy.
Set in that history, the absence of Mojtaba Khamenei is the most recent expression of the same logic. A leader with no verified image or voice governs a system whose true owner is also described as absent. What looks from outside like a crisis of decision-making, and has clearly produced disagreement inside the government, is material that this apparatus is equipped to convert into mystery, sanctity and waiting.
The security dimension is real, and the comparison with Osama bin Laden's final years captures it. But the difference is in the structure of meaning: the al-Qaeda leader hid in order not to be found, while the ruler of a country said to belong to a hidden imam can turn his own invisibility into symbolic capital.
In a secular system, a vanished leader is a legitimacy crisis. Here, absence was given meaning in advance by the architecture of belief.
Messages attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei extend the same logic outward, describing Iranians as the bearers of a historic mission and placing the public, state institutions and allied forces abroad in a chain of divine purpose. The ruler cannot be seen, but society is required to carry out his mission.
Who pays for it
None of this could have expanded so far without earthly backing.
The Venezuelan anthropologist Fernando Coronil, in The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela, described how oil states use wealth from beneath the ground to stage a power that appears miraculous. In the Islamic Republic the metaphor has acquired a literal meaning.
In the state's first decades, oil revenue freed the government from depending on taxation, and therefore from bargaining with its citizens. Money came out of the ground and was spent building an apparatus that took its legitimacy from the sky. Oil remains the state's source of foreign currency: according to data from the analytics firm Kpler, China took about 1.2 million barrels a day from Iran in 2026.
On that foundation, the seminaries, the propaganda organizations, the shrines, religious foundations, devotional associations and cultural institutes became a network for reproducing this worldview.
Superstition in the Islamic Republic moved well beyond the pulpit and the amulet-writer: it acquired organizations, media, staff and budget lines.
In the 2026 budget bill, the Supreme Council of Seminaries was allocated 74.5 trillion rials, about $37 million at market exchange rates, and the Seminary Services Centre 164.2 trillion rials, roughly $82 million. What those figures show is less their size than their presence: bodies of this kind now appear as line items in the national accounts. In the same budget, a meaningful pay rise for civil servants and pensioners was set aside in the name of controlling inflation, while the apparatus that produces and distributes religious legitimacy was left untouched.
The political function of these institutions is clear enough. They produce clerics, preachers, rituals, obedience, enemies and legitimacy. They build a world in which a foreign policy failure becomes a divine test, poverty becomes an occasion for patience, repression becomes the defense of faith, and the survival of the government becomes a sacred promise.
But the apparatus is no longer run on oil money alone. The 2026 bill projects that 87 percent of total budget resources will come from taxation. Oil was central to constructing this ideological edifice; taxes, inflation and the falling purchasing power of Iranians now pay to maintain it.
Magic did not produce oil for the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic used oil money to turn magic into an instrument of power.
In the republic of magic, the orders still come from heaven. The bill is increasingly paid out of people's pockets.
After Iran launched missiles at US bases in Jordan in response to an American strike on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump promised another response.
“We’re going to hit them hard,” Trump told Fox News. “There will be a response.”
At the same time, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a different measure of who has the advantage.
“I would think that they are lashing out kinetically because they are losing economically,” Bessent said, arguing that Tehran is feeling the effects of Washington’s expanding pressure campaign.
Iran’s economy does not have to collapse, he said. “We just have to have the regime come to their senses.”
That leaves a central question hanging over the latest exchange: can Iran’s military retaliation actually improve its position as economic pressure mounts?
“Keep firing on Jordan, keep firing on Kuwait and Bahrain and UAE, but does that solve your problem at home?” Kamran Bokhari, Strategic Forecaster and Senior Resident Fellow with the Middle East Policy Council in Washington, told Iran International.
Bokhari believes Washington has little incentive to escalate into a larger war when it can respond to specific Iranian actions while maintaining the blockade and economic pressure.
“Keep the blockade,” he said. “If they try to mine, do what they did yesterday, but don’t escalate anything, and just keep the pressure up on the economic front.”
In that scenario, Iran retains the ability to retaliate, but its attacks do little to relieve the broader pressures facing the Islamic Republic.
Can economic pressure lead to something bigger?
Ali Dadpay, an Iranian American economist from Texas, said Washington’s stated objective is to change the Islamic Republic’s behavior rather than openly pursue regime change.
“Right now, they officially and legitimately say change of behavior,” Dadpay said.
But he argued that the economic deterioration Iran is experiencing could ultimately produce a more consequential outcome than Washington’s stated goal.
Dadpay pointed to the Soviet Union, East Germany and communist Poland as examples of political systems that collapsed without being invaded by a foreign power.
“A similar set of socio-economic factors can create a similar outcome,” he said of Iran.
Dadpay also said the combination of military and economic pressure could alter calculations among groups within the Islamic Republic and push the system toward what he described as a “new equilibrium.”
The immediate question is how far Washington is prepared to go with that economic pressure.
Max Meizlish, a former senior policy adviser at the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said a key test will be whether the US targets financial institutions facilitating Iranian trade with China.
Iran may still have oil to sell. The bigger question is whether Tehran can get paid. Unless financial channels through Hong Kong, the UAE and elsewhere are constrained, Meizlish said, “the regime is still going to have pathways for rearming itself.”
The pressure reaches ordinary Iranians
The expanding campaign is also having consequences beyond the regime. On August 24, OFAC suspended General License G, which had permitted certain educational services and academic exchanges involving Iranians.
ETS told Iran International it has since paused TOEFL and GRE testing inside Iran. Iranian nationals can still take the tests outside the country.
Dadpay called the impact on testing a “side effect” of the broader restrictions. Meizlish said the administration may be trying to prevent regime-linked individuals from using educational opportunities abroad.
But he acknowledged the wider cost.
“There could be an unintended effect here where ordinary Iranians are caught in the crossfire, so to speak,” Meizlish said.
Iran’s missiles have shown Tehran can still strike back. What remains unclear is whether those attacks can ease the pressure building on the Islamic Republic — or whether Washington’s economic squeeze can change the regime’s behavior without increasingly hurting the Iranians it is meant to pressure Tehran on behalf of.
Navid Mohammadzadeh, one of Iran’s most prominent film and theater actors, was removed Monday from the cast of the theater-orchestral production “Arash,” according to a statement from the production team.
The producers cited “multiple controversies,” unspecified personal problems and, unusually, “the lack of audience interest in him” as reasons for the decision, saying a replacement would be announced soon.
The wording was striking in a country where support for Palestine has been promoted for decades as a foundational political and ideological cause, while expressions of sympathy for Israel can carry legal consequences.
Mohammadzadeh had drawn a wave of criticism on social media about two weeks earlier after posting an image of himself wearing clothing bearing the Palestinian flag. He responded with a video in which he made clear that his position went beyond concern for Palestinian civilians.
“I supported Palestine before, I support it now and I will continue to support it,” he said. “Why? Because I simply don’t like Israel. I will definitely choose Palestine forever.”
Mohammadzadeh pointed to football stars Diego Maradona and Cristiano Ronaldo, whom he described as personal idols, as figures whose attitudes toward the Palestinian issue helped confirm his own position.
He also pushed back against attacks on Iranian artists from rival political camps, complaining that both government hardliners and their opponents were quick to accuse people of betraying the country.
“I’m not on your side and I’m not on their side. I’m on nobody’s side,” he said. “I’m only on the side of one thing: life. And one place: Iran.”
“My love is Iran,” he added, saying he could have lived elsewhere but had chosen to remain despite the country’s difficulties.
His remarks failed to quell the criticism, as the social-media backlash over his support for Palestine continued.
The controversy coincided with another problem for “Arash”: anger over its unusually expensive tickets. Prices ranged from 990,000 tomans to nearly 5 million tomans for a limited number of premium seats, prompting criticism that the production had turned theater into a luxury product during a period of severe economic pressure. The producers later announced a 20% discount.
Reports about weak demand cited both ticket prices and opposition to Mohammadzadeh, making it impossible to establish how much of the production’s commercial difficulties resulted from his Palestine stance alone.
What distinguishes Monday’s decision is the production’s own explanation: rather than merely citing scheduling problems or artistic differences, it publicly identified a lack of audience interest in Mohammadzadeh as one of the reasons for removing one of Iran’s biggest stars.
Hardliners question ‘invisible red lines’
The decision drew sharp criticism from hardline Farhikhtegan newspaper, which linked Mohammadzadeh’s removal to his pro-Palestine post.
In a critical piece on Monday, the newspaper asked whether parts of Iran’s cultural scene had developed “invisible red lines” under which support for Palestine could lead to boycott and exclusion.
Farhikhtegan said the unusually blunt announcement — rather than the customary references to scheduling or contractual disagreements — resembled a hurried attempt to distance the production from the actor.
It suggested his removal amounted to a public warning that taking a particular political position could carry a professional cost, while disputing claims of weak demand by noting that audiences had still bought the expensive tickets.
The reaction is revealing. For most of the Islamic Republic’s history, pressure on cultural figures has generally operated in the opposite direction: artists could face bans, prosecution or professional consequences for challenging officially sanctioned causes.
In Mohammadzadeh’s case, a conservative newspaper is effectively complaining that an actor may have suffered commercially for embracing one of the state’s own defining positions.
A divide hidden by censorship
The episode brings into view a political divide that has existed in Iran for years but has been difficult to measure through the country’s tightly controlled domestic media.
Support for the Palestinian cause, and particularly for what Tehran calls the “resistance,” has been a cornerstone of the Islamic Republic’s identity since 1979. Iran has provided money, arms and training to Palestinian armed groups including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The US State Department estimated that Tehran provided up to $100 million annually in combined support to Palestinian militant groups before the latest regional wars.
That policy has unfolded while Iranians have faced repeated currency crises, high inflation, sanctions and declining purchasing power, helping turn Tehran’s spending abroad into a recurrent theme of anti-government protests.
“Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran” first emerged prominently during the 2009 Green Movement and returned during successive waves of unrest.
It was heard again during the economic protests that erupted in late December 2025, including in Tehran, Kermanshah and universities, and continued into January 2026.
The slogan does not necessarily express hostility toward Palestinians themselves. Its central message is that Iran’s resources and political priorities should be directed toward Iranians rather than Tehran’s regional allies.
But other expressions have gone considerably further.
Two days after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, hundreds of Persepolis football fans at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium shouted an obscene slogan demanding the removal of Palestinian flags displayed around the pitch. At another match later that month, spectators disrupted an officially requested minute of silence for people killed in Gaza by shouting and blowing horns.
The scenes contrasted sharply with government-organized rallies supporting Palestinians and Hamas, which failed to generate participation comparable to pro-Palestinian demonstrations seen in several other countries in the region and beyond.
Iranian social media after October 7 also saw unusually visible expressions of sympathy for Israel and hostility toward Hamas, despite the risks involved. In October 2023, Iran’s attorney general designated online activity promoting or supporting Israel a criminal offense, underscoring why such attitudes are largely absent from licensed domestic media.
The divide surfaced again in 2024 when Iranian celebrities joined the global “All Eyes on Rafah” campaign. Critics responded with “All Eyes on Iran,” accusing public figures of showing greater concern for Palestinians than for Iranians killed or imprisoned by the Islamic Republic.
Is Iran’s society anti-Palestine?
Polling helps quantify the gap, while also showing why describing Iranian society simply as anti-Palestinian or pro-Israel would be misleading.
A 2021 survey by the Netherlands-based GAMAAN research foundation found that 70.6% opposed the Islamic Republic’s approach toward Hamas. Nearly 64% agreed with “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran,” while 65.5% opposed the official “Death to Israel” slogan.
Those findings predate the recent wars, suggesting that resentment toward Tehran’s regional priorities is not itself a new postwar development.
A GAMAAN survey conducted after the 12-day Iran-Israel war last year showed the same divide in a more complicated form. Sixty-nine percent said the Islamic Republic should stop calling for Israel’s destruction, while 63% viewed the conflict as a war between Israel and the Islamic Republic rather than between Israel and the Iranian people.
But that did not amount to majority support for Israel. The same survey found 39% viewed Israel favorably and 48% unfavorably. Fifty-seven percent agreed that many Israeli military actions in Gaza could be considered war crimes.
The results suggest that several attitudes can coexist: opposition to Tehran’s funding of armed Palestinian groups, rejection of the “Death to Israel” ideology, anger at the use of Palestine as a compulsory political cause, sympathy toward Israel in its confrontation with the Islamic Republic, and concern about Palestinian civilians and Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
For some government opponents, Israel has also taken on a political meaning separate from the Palestinian conflict: it is an adversary of the state they themselves oppose. That dynamic has helped produce expressions of sympathy for Israel that are unusually visible by the standards of much of the Middle East.
What may be new is the consequence
It is impossible to know whether hostility toward a celebrity for publicly backing Palestine has significantly increased since the recent wars, or whether audiences previously felt much the same way but were less willing or less able to act on it.
What appears different in the Mohammadzadeh case is the consequence.
Attitudes long visible in protest slogans, football stadiums and relatively uncensored corners of social media appear to have crossed into the commercial calculations of a major, officially licensed cultural production.
That creates an extraordinary inversion.
For decades, Iranian artists have had reason to fear the consequences of straying too far from state ideology. Mohammadzadeh publicly embraced a position at the heart of that ideology — rejection of Israel and support for Palestine — yet the production employing him cited audience reluctance when removing him.
In other words, a political stance heavily promoted by the state appears, at least in this case, to have become a liability with part of the paying public.
That does not prove that support for Palestine has become broadly unacceptable in Iran. Mohammadzadeh had other controversies, and the high price of “Arash” tickets provides a separate explanation for the production’s difficulties.
Nor does the episode establish that public attitudes changed because of the wars. The “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon” slogan and polling against Tehran’s regional policies long predate them. The more significant development may instead be that such sentiment can now manifest itself openly enough to affect a high-profile cultural project.
Whether the reversal is allowed to stand is another matter.
Public theater performances in Iran require authorization from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, giving the state considerable leverage over productions and venues. Iranian regulations require theatrical works shown to the public to obtain a performance license from the ministry.
Hardline media are already framing Mohammadzadeh’s removal as punishment for supporting Palestine, a cause the Islamic Republic regards as central to its values and foreign policy.
It remains to be seen whether “Arash” will proceed without official consequences or whether its producers will face pressure over a decision that runs so visibly against the political priorities of the state.
If the removal stands, its significance may extend beyond one actor and one play. It would offer a rare example of a sentiment largely excluded from Iran’s controlled media environment exerting enough pressure from below to produce a tangible result inside the cultural system the state itself regulates.
