Iran courts former dissidents in postwar nationalist turn

Pro-government filmmaker Hossein Shamaghdari has been circulating videos of women and other former critics praising Iran’s hard-line forces after the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February 2026. In one clip, a young woman in a pink top and acid-washed jeans said she had not supported the Islamic Republic or the supreme leader before the war, then said the fighting had changed her view of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij. Her identity could not be verified.

It presents a “new kind of nationalism” that can include former rebels, unveiled women and urban young people with piercings, while still insisting there is “no alternative” to the Islamic Republic. Leaders are leaning on public anger over foreign attacks, even as domestic divisions and a worsening economic crisis strain the state.

In March 2025, the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran warned the government continued systematic repression and escalated surveillance against women, girls and others demanding rights. The state has kept pressure on dissent through monitoring, coercion and punishment, especially after the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

In Tehran in November 2025, unveiled women were allowed to attend a ceremony unveiling a statue of Shapur I, the pre-Islamic king, after the war with Israel. State media and officials have blended pre-Islamic imagery with Islamic rhetoric to shore up legitimacy damaged by economic hardship and the backlash from the 2022 protests.