Iran's Khamenei attends first public event after weeks of war with Israel
The video carried by state media showed dozens attending a ceremony to mark Ashura, the holiest day of the Shi'ite Muslim calendar, standing chanting as Khamenei entered a hall where many government functions are held.
For apparent security reasons, Khamenei had issued pre-taped messages during the war which started on June 13, and avoided public appearances.
On June 26, in pre-recorded remarks aired on state television, Khamenei promised that Iran would not surrender despite President Donald Trump's calls.
(Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Daniel Wallis)
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Khamenei's remarks — watched closely as a signal to the thousands of bureaucrats, law enforcement officials and clerics who make the government run — represented the highest possible deployment of nationalism. This effort to tap into Iran's millennia-old civilization was not a one-off. A billboard newly installed in Tehran praises an ancient Persian king, while another in the capital depicts the mythical figure of Arash the Archer accompanied by a volley of missiles. Yet another billboard in the city of Shiraz — an adaptation of a rock carving near the ruins of the ancient city Persepolis — depicts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the role of the Roman emperor Valerian kneeling before the victorious Persians, whose empire predated the arrival of Islam in the 7th century A.D. The Islamic republic has always tended to put much more emphasis on religious legitimacy than on patriotism or nationalism. But at a religious ceremony earlier this month, Khamenei asked a performer to sing a rendition of a secular patriotic song — an especially unusual choice for such an event. 'To adopt all this stuff is to admit the ideology of Islamic revolution has failed,' said Ali Ansari, a historian at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. And though the government had used nationalist themes before, it was 'never quite on this scale, never quite on this intensity and never quite when they've been in this much trouble.' In recent years, Iran's standing in the region has suffered as several key allies, including Hezbollah and Hamas, have faced dramatic setbacks, and much of the population has struggled with dire economic conditions and government rule considered by many Iranians to be corrupt and repressive. 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A confidential government poll conducted in 2023 and obtained by BBC Persian showed that the vast majority of respondents favored the separation of religion and politics. The use of elements drawn from Iran's pre-Islamic history is not completely new for the Islamic republic or its supporters. Populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad frequently referenced the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great. And some of the recent messaging has been cautious, rather than a full-throated endorsement of an Iranian secular identity. Patriotic songs recited at religious mourning ceremonies featured adapted lyrics that referenced Iran's Shiite Muslim faith. This new nationalist tone comes at a time when top officials have repeatedly cited what they say is a 'national cohesion' and 'unity' emerging in Iran in response to the Israeli and U.S. strikes last month. 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Iranian film director Jafar Panahi, who has criticized the government openly and been jailed as a result, posted audio and images on his Instagram page this week that he described as political prisoners singing a patriotic song, and he harshly condemned a wave of executions by the government. 'This action is not only a reaction to the death machine of the Islamic republic in the prisons, but also a direct and unrestrained blow to a government that wants to rewrite history and eradicate the identity of the nation through violence,' Panahi wrote of the prisoners' singing. Mohammad Javad Zarif, a former Iranian foreign minister who recently resigned from his post as a vice president amid political pressure and is despised by Iranian hard-liners, said in an interview with a state outlet published this month that Iranian national identity was bound up with both its pre-Islamic and Shiite Muslim roots. He urged respect for both. 'It's this identity of Iran that gives strength,' he said. 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