Kish Marathon: hijab controversy or political score-settling?

Speaking at a ceremony marking Student Day, Pezeshkian addressed the controversy surrounding the preferential access system, which drew widespread criticism after a November update to X revealed that numerous journalists, officials and pro-government figures were using unfiltered connections.

“We have instructed that these white internet lines be turned black as well, to show what will happen to people if this blackness continues,” he said.

Pezeshkian has repeatedly promised to lift filtering, a key pledge of his 2024 presidential campaign. On Sunday, he again suggested that political constraints lie beyond his control. “It is not enough for me to simply order the lifting of filtering. If it could be solved by instruction, we would have done it on the first day,” he said.

The comments came as government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said that the administration seeks “free internet for all,” despite saying last year that no such promise had been made. Instagram, X, Telegram, and some other platforms remain blocked more than a year into Pezeshkian’s term.

A stalled pledge

Filtering reform was central to Pezeshkian’s campaign, when he said he would “risk his neck” to fix it. Yet in his first meeting of the Supreme Cyberspace Council he emphasized implementing the Supreme Leader’s directives on internet governance rather than easing restrictions and ordered action against the flourishing trade in VPNs.

Since then, senior officials have offered varying timelines. In December, Majid Farahani from the presidential office said filtering would be removed in three phases by the end of the year. The newspaper Farhikhtegan later reported consensus among Iran’s three branches of government to move from blocking toward “smart restrictions,” indicating the system is being recalibrated rather than dismantled.

Public anger intensified after revelations of the white SIM scheme, which critics said exposed a tiered access system contradicting the government’s rhetoric about digital equality.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s visit was particularly notable. He met not only with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi but also with Iran’s president, the parliamentary speaker, and the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.

Saudi deputy foreign minister Saud bin Mohammed Al Sati also held separate talks with Iran’s foreign minister and senior officials.

Expanded diplomatic engagement signals strategic intent

The scope of these engagements suggested that the trips were not ceremonial visits but part of a deeper, multilayered conversation on regional security and economic dynamics, reinforcing the perception that both Ankara and Riyadh sought structured dialogue with Tehran at a moment of heightened regional uncertainty.

Iranian media argue that overlapping crises—ranging from concerns of a new military confrontation between Iran and Israel to instability in Syria—has compelled major Middle Eastern actors to search behind closed doors for common ground and shared strategies.

Yet, not all experts believe these visits will produce breakthroughs. “The trips by Turkish and Saudi officials resemble goodwill gestures and attempts to assert regional roles more than representing practical solutions,” international affairs analyst Ali Bigdeli wrote in the reformist Sazandegi newspaper.

Syria’s central role

Ankara, Riyadh, and Tehran view Syria as a critical arena where their security interests and regional influence intersect, pushing them toward cautious coordination despite deep differences. Accordingly, Syria appears to have featured prominently in the Tehran talks on Sunday.

“Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia each have their own priorities regarding Syria and Syria’s strategic weight makes it impossible for any of them to overlook or bypass it,” a commentary in Donya-ye Eghtesad argued.

“Even so, all three have come to recognize the need for a workable common ground—one that allows cooperation to persist, preserves regional stability, and keeps diplomatic channels open,” the commentary added.

Jaafar Haghpanah, a university professor and Turkey specialist, told Khabar Online: “In Syria, a shared concern for both countries is preventing it from becoming an arena for Israeli influence. Both also fear Syria turning into a failed state and a haven for extremist movements.”

Rising anxiety over a renewed Israel–Iran clash

Concerns about a potential new round of hostilities between Iran and Israel have intensified and prospects of nuclear talks with Washington currently seem slim.

Meanwhile, Israel’s state radio reported last week that Tehran was accelerating preparations for a potential confrontation and Israeli fighter jets reportedly conducted threatening flights over Iraq close to Iran’s borders.

Such developments have contributed to anxiety in the region and further market instability in Iran. The rial has weakened more against the US dollar in recent days, a shift widely interpreted as reflecting fears of possible military escalation.

Ankara and Riyadh acting as intermediaries?

The combination of military activity and sensitive diplomatic exchanges has fueled debate that Turkey and Saudi Arabia may be exploring a mediatory role or delivered messages from the US government.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei categorically denied the claim on Monday, saying reports of message-passing from the American president were “not accurate.”

However, Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said it was “not impossible” that the visitors carried messages from Washington. He argued that Iran would not accept the reported US conditions for renewed talks.

According to lawmaker Mojtaba Zolnouri these conditions were “zero enrichment, ending cooperation with resistance groups in the region, and reducing Iran’s missile range.”

Sources in Washington told Iran International last week that Washington reaffirmed these three conditions in response to a letter allegedly sent by President Massoud Pezeshkian through Saudi channels requesting mediation for renewed dialogue.

Saudi and Turkish officials have not commented on the issue.

“Society appears to me changed a lot. Very different,” Limbert said. “If you look at the government, the ruling apparatus, it’s been remarkable, it’s basically stayed the same. The same little men’s club, elite men’s club has run the country.”

“Look at the literacy rate. When we were there, it was about 50 percent. Now it’s well over… ninety five, ninety six.”

Literacy has been one of the biggest structural changes in Iranian life.

In 1976, 48.8 percent of people aged 10 to 49 were literate. By 2021, that figure had reached 97.1 percent. The literacy gap between men and women dropped from 23.4 percent to 6 percent.

Limbert served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran and spent 14 months as a hostage after the US Embassy was seized in November 1979. Nine of those months were in solitary confinement.

“There’s a narrative out there that we were treated well, but we were not. Fourteen months I was there; nine months I was in solitary.”

Archival video online shows a striking exchange inside the embassy compound in 1979: Limbert speaking directly with Ali Khamenei who was a senior official in the new government and is now Iran’s Supreme Leader.

Limbert greets Khamenei and makes a wry remark about Iranian hospitality, saying that in Iran “even when a guest insists, he must go, he is told ‘no, no, you must stay.’” It was his polite way of saying he wanted to leave, delivered through the cultural language of taarof, the elaborate politeness that shapes everyday interactions.

'Back of beyond'

Limbert first traveled to Iran in 1962, later returned as a Peace Corps volunteer and as an instructor at Pahlavi University in Shiraz. He speaks Persian and earned all his degrees from Harvard University.

While the ruling structure of the Islamic Republic is still dominated by the same generation that took power in 1979, Iranian society itself, Limbert says, has changed in profound ways.

Limbert said the most dramatic change is visible far from Tehran, in places that once felt remote and forgotten.

“Yasuj was the back of beyond… now there’s a university there. Darab in Fars… it was a dead town. There was nobody there. Now there’s a university there.”

He praised the creative boom that has emerged under pressure.

“Culture is amazing. Look at the films that are coming out of Iran… look at the creativity.”

Recent scenes from inside Iran capture this contrast vividly. A marathon in the Persian Gulf island of Kish took place on Friday with more than 5,000 runners. Footage shows most female runners without hijab — a sight that would have been unthinkable decades ago.

Yet these images exist alongside something darker.

Authorities have executed over 1000 people thus far in 2025, the highest number of yearly executions in Iran according to Amnesty International. This includes political detainees, ethnic minorities and protesters. Human rights groups report intensified repression, mass arrests and new surveillance campaigns.

And while society has modernized, the ruling system has barely moved.

“They took power in ’79, and they’ve held it ever since. They or their followers are still around," said Limbert.

For Limbert, Iran is moving in two directions at once. “It’s going in both directions at the same time.” He does not predict collapse, but he questions endurance.

“I don’t think it can last forever. But I don’t know how long.”

On Wednesday, Iran’s parliament voted to cut the threshold for criminal enforcement from the long-standing ceiling of 110 gold coins, introduced in 2013, to just 14.

The measure passed as part of a broader bill to curb the criminalization of debt.

Legal scholar Mohsen Borhani was among the first to sound the alarm when the proposal surfaced earlier this year.

“Once again, a misogynistic bill is moving toward approval,” he posted on X, arguing that mehriyeh remains one of the few practical tools women have in a system where laws and practices heavily favor men.

Lawmakers, he wrote, should revise “all the reciprocal rights of spouses, not tilt the law to one side, and certainly not in a way that harms women.”

Mehriyeh, the inverse of dowry in Western traditions, is negotiated before marriage and legally treated as a debt. It becomes payable at divorce, on demand, or from the husband’s estate if he dies.

While it can take the form of money, property, or symbolic items, government-minted gold coins have become standard over the past few decades; amounts routinely reach hundreds of coins, each worth around $1,000.

Some conservatives inside parliament echoed that concern this week.

Lawmaker Sara Fallahi said the decision would alienate the public from religion “because it limits women’s rights in the name of Sharia.”

Supporters, including Mehrdad Lahouti, counter that more than 25,000 men have been jailed over unpaid mehriyeh and insist the reform will reduce imprisonment for debt.

For decades, criminal enforcement has been central to the function of mehriyeh: it gave women a swift and powerful remedy when husbands refused payment and acted as one of the few bargaining tools available in divorce or marital disputes.

Ankle monitor

Under the new rule, a man unable to pay more than 14 coins could be fitted with an electronic ankle monitor rather than jailed while the remaining debt is pursued.

The legislation still requires approval by the Guardian Council. If finalized, only claims up to 14 coins could trigger criminal sanctions; everything above that would fall into slow and often uncertain civil litigation.

Many families choose 14 coins in reference to the 12 Shi’a Imams plus Prophet Mohammad and his daughter, Fatima.

In many divorces, women surrender part or all of their mehriyeh in exchange for custody or simply for the husband’s consent to dissolve the marriage—another reason reform critics view mehriyeh as a crucial form of leverage in a system already tilted toward men.

Iran’s Sharia-based legal framework contains numerous provisions that disadvantage women, particularly in family and inheritance law.

Men can divorce without proving fault, bar their wives from working or traveling abroad, and legally marry multiple wives. Women must establish serious grounds to obtain a divorce and often rely on mehriyeh as the only enforceable financial safeguard available to them.

Critics fear that without the threat of criminal consequences, many wives—especially those without independent income—will be left to pursue claims through years of civil litigation with little guarantee of recovery.

“Such an approach will easily widen the gender gap and undermine public trust in the process of reforming family laws,” the conservative Farhikhtegan daily warned.

Rouhani has become the focal point of a succession debate that appears to be increasingly unavoidable after a June war with Israel and the United States which the theocrat largely watched from hiding.

The dovish former president invoked hardliners' ire with a call after the conflict to open up the country's politics and rein in Tehran's confrontational foreign policy.

Reading like implicit criticism of Khamenei’s military and governance record, his plea was decried as weakness and treason by detractors determined to shape the post-Khamenei future.

The most striking came from Babak Zanjani, the billionaire tycoon whose 2016 death sentence for embezzling $2.8 billion in oil funds was quietly commuted before his conditional release this year.

On 2 December, Zanjani posted a message on X that did not name Rouhani but included an image of the moderate cleric along with a headline that floated the former president as Iran’s next leader.

“They will carry this wish to the grave,” Zanjani wrote. “Iran will be cleansed of incompetence and unqualified managers. Iran needs young, educated, and capable people, not holders of fake and baseless degrees.

The swipe at Rouhani’s disputed academic credentials—and the suggestion that his aspirations should be taken to the grave—was difficult to mistake even without the image he had quoted.

Avoidable no more

It was not the first such threat against the moderates’ foremost figure. Hardline MP Kamran Ghazanfari recently argued that Rouhani should be tried and executed if accusations of treason “prove true.”

Rouhani championed the 2016 international nuclear deal from which US President Donald Trump later withdrew but has a deep background as a security and political apparatchik of the Islamic Republic with broad support among insiders.

Zanjani’s intervention stands out among the criticism: a convicted billionaire, pardoned by Khamenei, now declaiming on the succession—a sign, perhaps, of a system losing its old constraints because the stakes have changed.

Tehran’s sharpened confrontation with Israel has revived speculation that the 86-year-old cleric could become a target. War and economic crisis, coupled with the unavoidable fact of age, have created unusual license.

Zanjani, indebted to and no doubt confident in the powers of those who secured his release, speaks with a confidence unthinkable even a year ago, treating Khamenei’s departure as inevitable and focusing solely on blocking Rouhani.

Until the US and Israeli strikes on Iran in June 2025, few dared to broach succession without the ritual “God forbid.”

Even reformist academic Sadeq Zibakalam has prefaced remarks on the succession with the formulaic blessing—“after Khamenei lives for 120 years”—before saying plainly that Rouhani considers himself better suited for leadership than any other contender, including Khamenei’s son Mojtaba.

It’s just the beginning

For Khamenei, less visible after the war and perhaps aware of the system’s erosion, such discussions are perilous.

Openly grooming Mojtaba risks signaling vulnerability; suppressing the conversation only highlights how exposed the system has become when its future rests on a single, ageing figure.

Without a designated heir—even informally—the system remains brittle, its future hostage to uncertainty and factional strife.

At a moment when external adversaries may be girding for further war, living standards are collapsing and public anger is close to boiling point, stepping forward as a potential leader requires nerve, discipline and broad support.

Few, if any, among Iran’s political elite possess all three.

The result is a succession struggle waged through innuendo: a contest as bitter and murky as any yet seen in Tehran, which may last until Khamenei is no more, if not longer.