A short video of a private wedding went viral in Iran recently, tearing away the country’s veil of piety and exposing hypocrisy and a seeming disregard for the rules by which the theocratic regime requires that most Iranians live their lives.
The wedding in question was that of Fatemeh Shamkhani, in mid-2024. She is the daughter of Ali Shamkhani, a close adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, at the luxurious Espinas Palace Hotel in Tehran.
She wore a low-cut strapless dress with a western-style bridal veil rather than the full head-covering mandated for Iranian women. Many wedding guests also wore modern western styles and a lot of the women went without head coverings.
The video displayed images that were starkly dissonant, revealing the significant class and moral divides within the Iranian Republic and contradicting Iran’s values of revolutionary simplicity and Islamic modesty.
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That it was Shamkhani’s family wedding made matters worse. A former commander of the regime’s Revolutionary Guards, he is a key power broker in Iran, who has the ear of Khamenei himself. He was also involved in the savage crackdown on the public protests in Iran in recent years, in defence of the same security and morality laws his family was seen so lavishly violating at the wedding celebration.
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The emerging ruling elites maintain their wealth through oil revenue, state contracts and shadow economic activities – that enable them to evade sanctions (the Shamkhani family was identified and sanctioned earlier this year by the US treasury as controlling a vast shipping empire involved in transporting oil from Iran and Russia in breach of US sanctions). .
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Since the 1979 Revolution, Iran has maintained its legitimacy through its mission to reshape public conduct by enforcing rules such as hijab requirements and sex segregation. The state maintains complete authority to regulate female bodies.
So the Shamkhani wedding, with its ostentatious luxury, its low-cut gowns and lack of head coverings felt to many Iranians as showing complete disregard for laws that the regime’s “morality police” uses to enforce strict rules on ordinary women. The rules exist to control, but they do not apply to those at the top of the tree.
This incident is significant in the context of the “woman, life, freedom” protests of recent years. These were sparked in 2022 by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who had been arrested for not wearing her hijab properly. Since then, many Iranians, particularly young people, have openly defied the hijab law.
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Anyone surprised?
Tangentially related, but theres a reason why Pakistan’s field marshall has the internet nickname of “Hafiz Whiskey”
Well no shit, that’s pretty much every ruler/ruling class in history.
I’m more surprised that people are surprised by this. Being nobility class is this: you’re free to make whatever rules you want for your subordinates, and you’re free to disregard any of them. You’re not bound by any sense of morality (whatever it might be); that’s for lower men.
What were they expecting? Obviously these people won’t comply with anything that’s imposed on the masses, especially in a society where the norms are so restrictive.
And I further suspect that the more totalitarian a country is, the more its elite will deliberately choose to go against their own rules, as this is the greatest proof of their powerful social status.
Does Wilhoit’s law apply to Islamic Theocracy?
Frank Wilhoit said, "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Sounds like it applies to any form of governance.
Rules are only for the rubes. That is a constant for every fascist regime.
Iran’s government is historically weak. It’s allies and proxies have been routed in the region while American and Israeli jets bomb their country with impunity. The place is vulnerable to revolution and it would be nice to see feminists overthrow the Ayatollah.
However, it’s hard to get optimistic about revolution in the Middle East. After all, it was a revolution that created the Iranian theocracy to begin with. I’m also worried that a fallen Iran would mean an Israeli regional hegimon.
Wow that’s horrible: Iran has oligarchs, too. We should freedom-bomb the fuck out of Iran and replace them with our own compador oligarchs and give the oil back to British Petroleum.
It’s nice to see that you don’t focus exclusively on China and Russia, @Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org. You’re an equal opportunity concern troll for US empire.
