A theater production in Tehran displayed a notice to spectators before a performance saying two actors who embrace on stage are married, underscoring the restrictions governing physical contact between men and women under the Islamic Republic.
“Dear spectator, in this performance a woman and a man embrace each other,” the message shown before the play Arash said. “We have been asked to assure you that Sheida Khaligh and Keyvan Saketof have been married for years.”
Under rules enforced by the Islamic Republic, physical contact between unrelated men and women is prohibited in public performances, which are subject to oversight by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
Iranian theater groups have long been required to observe restrictions covering physical contact, dress and interactions between male and female performers.
Married actors have occasionally provided productions with a rare way around those restrictions, allowing forms of physical contact that would otherwise risk intervention by cultural authorities.
Even then, performances remain subject to official approval and scrutiny over how such contact is presented.
The notice comes amid heightened scrutiny of physical contact on stage.
Tehran prosecutors opened a case last month against the team behind another play over what the judiciary described as conduct “contrary to social norms and propriety” after footage appeared to show two actors making physical contact.
The production denied any contact had taken place and subsequently adjusted the staging to make the distance between the actors clearer.
Iran International journalists Mojtaba Pourmohsen and Kambiz Hosseini were among the targets of the alleged surveillance operation, prosecutors told Woolwich Crown Court.
“Together, the defendants were engaged in what is very obviously a form of spying,” prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC told jurors.
Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 46, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 57, are accused of conducting months of surveillance and reconnaissance, including photographing and filming locations connected to their targets.
All three are charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service under Britain’s National Security Act 2023. Prosecutors say the foreign intelligence service was Iranian.
Sepahvand is also accused of conducting surveillance, reconnaissance and open-source research intending to carry out serious violence against a person in Britain. Javadi Manesh and Noori are accused of conducting surveillance and reconnaissance intending that serious violence would be carried out by someone else.
“It is the prosecution case that their ultimate objective was that one or more of their targets would be subjected to serious violence,” Jones told the jury.
The prosecution says Sepahvand was intended to carry out the violence himself, with Javadi Manesh and Noori gathering information to assist the planning of an attack.
The three men were arrested in May 2025 and are the first Iranian nationals charged under the National Security Act, which came into force in 2023.
Phones reveal surveillance operation
Prosecutors presented on Tuesday an outline of the evidence regarding the surveillance of Pourmohsen and Hosseini.
“These three defendants were carrying out surveillance and reconnaissance to locate and target at least two journalists associated with news agency Iran International,” Jones said.
The surveillance was intended to establish where targets lived and worked, their routines, the people they spent time with and the layouts of buildings connected to them, according to the prosecution.
Material recovered from Sepahvand’s phone included searches seeking Pourmohsen’s address. One search asked ChatGPT for “Mojtaba Pour Mohsen’s address,” according to evidence presented in court.
ChatGPT did not provide a home address but returned information about his career and social media contacts and suggested contacting him through Iran International, jurors were told.
Investigators also recovered from Sepahvand’s phone what prosecutors described as a briefing document or “targeting package” containing Pourmohsen’s photograph and information about locations associated with him.
The material included the address of Volant Media, Iran International’s parent company, and information about the Clayton Hotel on Chiswick High Road.
Pourmohsen had stayed at the hotel around Christmas 2024 after developing security concerns about his home address, Jones told jurors.
Prosecutors also presented photographs and videos of Malthouse Court, where Pourmohsen had lived between 2019 and 2023.
The defendants appeared not to know that Pourmohsen had already moved away, according to the prosecution.
Location data and videos
Cell-site data placed Sepahvand and Javadi Manesh in the Malthouse Court area on December 10, 2024, prosecutors said.
Data from a SIM card installed in Sepahvand’s Mercedes A200 also placed the vehicle in the area, according to evidence presented to the jury.
Javadi Manesh later sent Sepahvand photographs and videos of Malthouse Court that prosecutors say were recorded during the visit.
One video played to jurors began with a view of the river before moving toward the block of flats and zooming in.
Location data also placed Sepahvand and Noori in the Malthouse Court area on December 16, prosecutors said.
The prosecution had begun addressing the surveillance of Hosseini by the latest court update.
Sepahvand says he acted under pressure
The defendants contest crucial elements of the prosecution case in different ways.
Sepahvand accepts carrying out surveillance and reconnaissance and that he was doing so for the benefit of Iran, according to the prosecution’s account of his defence.
His position is that he did not want to carry out the activity and acted because he feared the consequences of refusing. Sepahvand also maintains that he deliberately did a poor job so the Iranian intelligence service would not receive the assistance it wanted, Jones told jurors.
The prosecution disputes that account.
“We suggest you will find nothing in any of these messages that is, or looks or even feels like, a threat to Sepahvand,” Jones said.
Javadi Manesh and Noori accept visiting relevant locations and taking photographs and videos but maintain that they did not know they were doing so to assist Iranian intelligence services, according to the prosecution’s description of their cases.
Jurors will have to consider whether they knew what the activity was intended to achieve or whether the circumstances meant they reasonably ought to have known, Jones said.
Messages presented to jury
The prosecution also took jurors through communications recovered from Sepahvand’s phone involving two Iranian telephone numbers.
One belonged to a man identified as Mostafa Ghorbani. Another was saved in Sepahvand’s phone as “Amin Mostafa’s friend.”
Both contacts appeared repeatedly in Sepahvand’s phone activity, prosecutors said.
In a December 8 exchange with Ghorbani presented in court, Sepahvand discussed information he had been sent about a person and location.
“It’s a tourist area, look. They got these [from] Iran, someone said he/she/it is here. They also sent me these few pictures from the Internet. I said ‘okay, I’ll go’, if he/she/it wasn’t there it’s their own problem,” Sepahvand wrote in a translated message read to the jury.
The following day, Sepahvand discussed plans to visit a location with the contact saved as Amin, according to the prosecution.
“I’ll definitely go tomorrow,” Sepahvand wrote.
Prosecutors say “tomorrow” referred to December 10, when location data subsequently placed Sepahvand and Manesh near Malthouse Court.
Amin responded with messages including “God willing you’ll see him/her/it” and “it’ll be sorted,” according to translations presented in court.
The prosecution argues the exchanges undermine Sepahvand’s position that he carried out the work because he had been threatened.
Jones also told jurors that some communications referred to Sepahvand being paid for his work.
Prosecutors say Sepahvand also wanted help resolving a criminal conviction in Iran. The jury was told that the conviction itself was not evidence against him and should not be held against him, but prosecutors consider his efforts to resolve it relevant to his motivation.
Another target
The surveillance outlined by prosecutors extended beyond Iran International.
Material exchanged between Sepahvand and Javadi Manesh included information about Jonathan Turner, a founder of UK Lawyers for Israel, the court heard.
Two aerial images sent by Sepahvand to Javadi Manesh in August 2024 showed addresses connected to UK Lawyers for Israel and Turner’s barristers’ chambers, prosecutors said.
The prosecution says the material relates to another person who had attracted the attention of Iranian intelligence services for reasons different from the journalists.
The majority of the evidence on which prosecutors will rely comes from material obtained from the defendants’ mobile phones following their arrests, Jones told jurors.
The indictment accuses Sepahvand, Javadi Manesh and Noori of engaging between August 14, 2024 and February 16, 2025 in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service carrying out UK-related activities, knowing or reasonably being expected to know that their conduct was likely to provide material assistance.
The case is being heard by Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb and is expected to last six to eight weeks, with the prosecution expected to spend about two weeks presenting its case.
The prosecution’s opening has begun laying out the digital trail at the center of its case, including searches for a journalist’s address, photographs and videos of locations connected to him, location records and messages discussing visits to those locations.
The jury will ultimately decide what the three men knew about the purpose of the surveillance and whether prosecutors prove it was intended to assist Iranian intelligence services and prepare for serious violence against journalists in Britain.
Ali Rafiei, head of Tehran's police department responsible for monitoring businesses and public venues, said cafes must operate strictly within the activities covered by their licenses.
“Cafes must operate only within their licensed line of business,” Rafiei said. “Serving hookah, hosting live music or DJs, and gambling-related activities are among the violations that will be dealt with.”
He said police would take action as soon as such activities were identified. Businesses could first receive warnings and be required to provide written assurances, while repeated violations could result in their licenses being revoked.
Cafes face wider scrutiny
The warning follows a series of closures targeting cafes, restaurants, shops, gyms and cultural venues across Iran in recent months.
At least 42 businesses were reported sealed between late July and mid-August in different cities.
Authorities in Ardabil also announced the closure of three coffee shops and the arrest of 16 people during the same period.
Closures have not been limited to entertainment or licensing violations. Businesses have also been sealed over the enforcement of Iran's mandatory hijab rules and over support for nationwide protests.
Young people and public space
Rafiei said police monitoring of cafes extended beyond activities inside the establishments.
He pointed to Tehran's Sanai and Iranshahr streets, saying cars cruising through the area, sidewalk setups by cafes and groups of young people gathering without what he described as a clear purpose had contributed to congestion and complaints.
He said blocking sidewalks or public space could also lead to enforcement action. Police generally issue a warning and seek a written commitment from the operator before sealing a business, he added.
Continued violations could ultimately result in the cancellation of a business license, according to Rafiei.
Protest support has also drawn penalties
The pressure on cafe operators has also extended to owners who supported the January protests.
In one case, Iran's Supreme Court in September upheld the prison sentence and confiscation of assets imposed on Sadegh Saedinia, the head of Saedinia Properties and Industries and a supporter of the protests.
Saedinia was sentenced to 12 years, six months and one day in prison and barred from working in the cafe industry for two years after completing his sentence. All branches of his cafe business were sealed following his arrest.
The judiciary said the case involved social media posts, participation in gatherings, closing cafes and shops, and encouraging employees to take part in protests.
The latest police warning adds live music, DJs and hookah service to a growing list of activities that can expose cafe operators to sanctions, alongside mandatory hijab enforcement, use of public space and support for demonstrations.
“Seven plainclothes men entered our home and began searching different parts of it,” the father of a slain teenage girl told Iran International.
“They went into our daughter’s room and put some of her personal belongings, including clothes, diaries, books and even two of her dolls, into a bag and took them away.”
Security forces have raided the homes of at least five families in the past two weeks and removed belongings of their slain relatives, informed sources told Iran International. Three of those killed were under 18.
The raids, sources said, targeted families active on social media and were intended to stop them keeping the memory of their children publicly alive.
The mother of the teenage girl had previously posted videos showing objects left behind in her daughter’s room as she mourned her death.
The latest raids take the pressure on bereaved families beyond summonses, arrests and restrictions on memorials. They reach into rooms left behind by the dead and the objects through which their parents continue to remember them.
‘Nothing will remain in your child’s room’
For another family, the message was explicit.
Security forces searched their home and took a watch and clothes their child was wearing when killed, the mother told. The officers then warned the parents against publishing more photographs or videos online.
“They threatened us that if we published another photo or video on the internet, nothing would remain in our child’s room,” she said.
The officers followed that warning with another, according to the mother.
“They told us, ‘A thief might come to your home one night, and in the morning you might find an empty room.’”
For months, families seeking accountability have faced restrictions on funerals, memorial ceremonies and birthday commemorations, according to information provided to Iran International.
Gravestones have been damaged at night, mobile phone SIM cards blocked and families pressured to remove posts from Instagram.
When a doll becomes something to confiscate
Personal belongings have assumed a wider role in the families’ efforts to preserve the memory of those killed.
A bedroom can be photographed. Clothes can be shown in a video. A diary can preserve someone’s words. A childhood toy can become an intimate reminder that the person killed was a son or daughter with a life beyond the circumstances of their death.
For parents who share those objects online, private grief can become a public record.
That has made the belongings themselves part of the pressure described by the families.
Authorities have previously sought to restrict the public activities of relatives seeking accountability.
Mahmonir Molaei-Rad, the mother of Kian Pirfalak, and other families connected to those killed during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests have faced similar efforts to restrict their public activity.
But the latest accounts describe security forces crossing another boundary: moving from controlling what families publish to taking away some of the objects they publish about.
The fight over who gets remembered
The bedrooms of those killed have become more than spaces of mourning for some families.
Photographs of their possessions circulate online alongside images of graves, birthdays and family gatherings, allowing parents to preserve details of lives that might otherwise become reduced to names and death tolls.
The sources who spoke to Iran International said stopping that process was a purpose of the recent raids.
The confiscations therefore bring together two strands of pressure on families seeking accountability – attempts to restrict what they say publicly and interference with how they remember privately.
Nearly nine months after the January killings, that struggle has reached objects of little material importance but immense personal value.
For families refusing to let their children disappear from public memory, a dress, a watch, a diary or a pair of dolls can preserve a fragment of the person who once occupied an empty room, but even those fragments are now being taken away.
Informed sources said Abbasian had previously posted videos on social media in support of demonstrators. The death sentence was communicated to him on Sunday at Shirvan prison.
The precise charge leading to the death sentence and the evidence presented against him have not been made public.
Arrested months after protests
Abbasian was arrested in May in Shirvan's Farhang Shahr district. During the nationwide protests earlier this year, he had published videos urging people to take part in demonstrations.
The source said Abbasian was tortured on the first day of his detention and taken to hospital after his condition deteriorated. He was later transferred to Shirvan prison.
His family has not been allowed to visit him since his arrest, the source said, adding that judicial and security authorities had prevented the family from appointing a lawyer of their choice.
Executions accelerate
The sentence comes as Iranian authorities have carried out a growing number of executions of people detained over the nationwide protests that erupted in January.
On Monday, Alireza Sepahi and Alireza Raisi were executed at Isfahan Central Prison in connection with protests in the central city, according to rights groups and Iran's judiciary.
They were among 12 defendants sentenced to death in what has become known as the Alikhani Square case. Seven people in that case have now been executed.
Sepahi married his fiancée from prison one day before his execution, according to Nobel Peace Prize laureate and lawyer Shirin Ebadi.
“Yesterday he became a groom, and today they executed him,” Ebadi wrote.
Five executions in less than a week
The two executions on Monday followed that of Siavash Jamshidi Kheirabadi, who was put to death on Saturday after being arrested during January protests in Shahrekord.
Iran's judiciary said Jamshidi had been sentenced to death for moharebeh, or “enmity against God,” over accusations that he fired at security forces. No information about his prosecution had been made public before the announcement of his execution.
Two other protesters, Ali Hemmati and Majid Nikandish, were executed on September 30 after being detained over demonstrations in Mashhad.
The judiciary accused them of involvement in the deaths of four security personnel and described them as “field operatives” in what it called an attempted coup. No court documents or independent evidence supporting those allegations were made public.
Taken together, at least five people detained in connection with the January protests have been executed since September 30.
Fair-trial concerns
Rights groups and UN experts have repeatedly raised concerns about the use of death sentences against protesters in Iran, citing reports of torture, forced confessions and denial of access to lawyers.
Mai Sato, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, raised concerns about the treatment of defendants and fair-trial standards in the Alikhani Square case, including reports that detainees and their relatives had been tortured.
A joint statement by 46 countries at the UN Human Rights Council last week also expressed concern over the execution of more than 30 protesters following the January crackdown and called on Iran to halt executions.
Iran Human Rights said in September that at least 100 people detained during the protests were at risk of execution.
Abbasian's case now adds another protester to death row, with his family still barred from visiting him and the basis for the sentence yet to be made public.
