Ali Ansari

The revelation that an Iranian official in charge of Islamic values has been caught on video having sex with another man will have come as no surprise to much of the Iranian population.   The hypocrisy of the ruling class has long been a topic of discussion among Iranians Few care about the individual’s sexual preferences but many have contempt for the hypocrisy that is emblematic of the ruling class. Reza Saghati, the local representative of the ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in Gilan province, appears to have been imprudent (or hubristic) enough to video his escapades. One of those videos then found its way, courtesy of local activists, onto a local social media channel.

The political movement that led to Iran’s first constitution in 1906 – which established the country’s first parliament – was underpinned by an intellectual revolution which absorbed and adapted ideas from the European Enlightenment. How these ideas came to influence Iran, given the absence of a print industry in the country, is a question that has long intrigued intellectual historians. One route was membership of the Freemasons.  In 1835, three Iranian Princes paid a visit to London where they visited and commented on the varied and interesting developments that were taking place in England, including the construction of the Thames Tunnel – an engineering wonder – and a review of the political system which was described in thoroughly whiggish terms.

During a press conference in Tehran on 3 December, Iran’s Attorney General, Mohammad Javad Montazeri was asked by a journalist what had happened to the country’s morality police, which have been strangely absent from Iran’s streets. Clearly irritated by the question, Montazeri snapped that the morality police had nothing to do with the judiciary and they had been ‘abolished’ by the same body that had installed them. The word he used could also be translated as ‘suspended’ but the implication that the force had been in some way removed was seized upon by international journalists that something was beginning to give in the Islamic Republic.

A wave of protest is sweeping across Iran. Sparked by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who allegedly contravened oppressive and arbitrary laws on veils, demonstrators are taking to the streets in towns and cities across the country. Ever since Ebrahim Raisi became president last summer in a widely derided Potemkin election, a crackdown on those who refuse to wear the veil has been gathering pace, with women manhandled and harassed by Iran’s notorious ‘morality’ police. Raisi regards veiling as the frontline in a continuing cultural war against western moral corruption, which he clearly feels Iran is losing. But now the crackdown on the veil has backfired.