In recent months, the mood of an entire city has shifted repeatedly—and often with startling speed. On my screen, I watch footage from the streets of Tehran captured by the camera of a Gulf television network. The first image is a black-and-crimson tableau in which mourning and vengeance are deeply intertwined. Millions of people, dressed in black—the traditional color of grief and martyrdom—carry red flags in their hands.
Banners reading “Rise Up” and “We Must Rise,” dedicated to the religious leaders killed in late February, line both sides of the streets, while elegies of Karbala echo from the walls. It is collective grief transformed into state resilience: a form of regime engineering, except that this time the building material is not concrete, but sorrow.
A few days before the funeral ceremonies, a giant sculpture of a clenched fist symbolizing the hand of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was erected in Tehran’s Enghelab Square. Its message was unmistakable: “The Islamic Republic has not been defeated; it is still standing tall.” The spectacle conveyed unity and continuity to those at home while projecting defiance toward the West.
A microphone is held out to an elderly man, and his words capture the country’s latest mood: the war has given the revolution a new lease on life. The regime’s founding purpose has been resurrected. The government is no longer presenting itself as a contested order, but as the defender of a besieged homeland.
THE MOURNING CLOTHES COME OFF
The scene on Tehran’s streets changes abruptly the day after Khamenei’s state funeral. Art galleries around Enghelab Square reopen. Women with uncovered hair, dressed in T-shirts and jeans, paint inside them. Young people ride motorcycles through the ancient passageways of the Grand Bazaar. Cafés are crowded with couples holding hands and groups of young people engaged in spirited conversation. It is as if the same city, within the same week, has shed its mourning clothes and put on the attire of rebellion.
Restrictions on clothing, music and mixed-gender gatherings have visibly eased. This is not the Iran of a year ago. The morality patrols—established in 2005 with the declared mission of protecting “public virtue”—have withdrawn from the streets. When a young woman died in custody in 2022, setting off nationwide protests, the patrols were ostensibly suspended. Women removed their headscarves and poured into the streets chanting, “Woman, Life, Freedom.” The white vans with dark-green stripes, which became symbols of that era—much like Turkey’s infamous white Toros cars—are no longer chasing people through the streets.
The television commentator notes that these young people are the same generation that was resisting the regime only a few months ago. Yet the country has experienced a new convergence. Once the war with the United States and Israel erupted, the conflict between “the people and the regime” gave way to solidarity around “Iran against the aggressor.” Young people on the streets now ask in unison: “How could we possibly support occupying powers?”
The bombing of Isfahan, renowned for its centuries-old monuments and known as “Half the World,” has stirred an unexpected nationalist response among the young. Stories circulate of youths gathering around the city’s historic bridges, symbolically protecting them like human shields. Social media has become the swiftest mirror of this transformation, with videos praising wartime resistance and inflaming nationalist sentiment going viral among younger Iranians.
LOOSEN THE GRIP, BUT KEEP WATCH
How will the state manage this rapidly rising tide of loyalty? It is still too early to know whether the change will prove lasting or temporary. Most likely, young people will be granted greater freedom in clothing, music and public life, provided they do not attempt to organize politically. In other words, lifestyle freedoms will be separated from political freedoms. The reduced visibility of social control will be exchanged for the stability of political control.
Meanwhile, digital and physical surveillance may move in the opposite direction and become even tighter: freedom on the street, monitoring on the screen. It is the classic tactic of loosening the grip while keeping watch.
Behind this public spectacle lies a much older power struggle. The balance between the clerical establishment and the Revolutionary Guards—the twin pillars born of the 1979 revolution—is shifting. The clergy traditionally set the ideological direction, while the Guards supplied security and coercive power. Even before the latest war, the Revolutionary Guards had become the backbone of Iran’s economy, security apparatus and regional policy. The clergy, meanwhile, had steadily lost ground to the younger generation in the country’s cultural battles.
By presenting themselves as the force protecting the population from American attacks, the Guards have once again seen their prestige soar. A similar rise occurred after the Iran-Iraq War. Some regard the cultural easing promoted by clerical authorities as a necessary safety valve; others see it as a form of doctrinal surrender. A quiet transfer of power is unfolding behind the scenes, but one thing appears certain: the Revolutionary Guards will hold the decisive veto.
THE REAL MANIFESTO IS THE ECONOMY
All this cultural relaxation looks feeble beneath the shadow of the economy. Inflation is suffocating low-income households, while even the middle class can barely breathe. It is approaching 80 percent—a level unseen since the Second World War. With daily life becoming so difficult, young people on the streets are increasingly anxious that they can no longer imagine a future. That despair is a far more authentic manifesto than all the red flags filling the squares.
Some believe that a prolonged war will weaken the American security umbrella over the Gulf, give Iran’s allies in Yemen and Lebanon room to recover, and crown Iran as the dominant regional power. Control of the Strait of Hormuz offers a potential new economic lifeline. Yet this narrow passage, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and energy supplies flow, is a double-edged sword. If Iran chokes the global economy, the backlash will inevitably strike its own economy as well.
The Iran I remember—the country I now watch on a screen and visited many times years ago—can no longer fit into a single photograph. It resembles a mosaic whose shattered pieces are still being reassembled, with no one yet knowing which color will ultimately dominate. Perhaps the seeds of a new social contract, whose articles have yet to be written, have already been planted behind closed doors.
By loosening its harsh restrictions on the streets while erecting a monumental fist in the public square, Iran’s regime is trying to win both the hearts of its young people and the preservation of its own authority.
