Iran's Musical Paradox: State Control vs. Artistic Resistance

Bijan Mortazavi stepped off a plane in Tehran at the end of September after nearly half a century abroad. The violinist, singer, and composer—one of Iran's most celebrated musicians—had performed just three months earlier at the FIFA World Cup closing ceremony in July, his signature white violin gleaming alongside the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Now, in videos posted to social media, he and his wife walk through the streets of the Iranian capital, greeted warmly by strangers who recognize him. It is a homecoming that the Iranian government has actively orchestrated.

Mortazavi is not alone. Singer Mohsen Namjoo, known internationally for blending traditional Persian music with blues, rock, and jazz, returned to Iran after roughly two decades in exile. In 2009, a Tehran court had sentenced him in absentia to five years in prison on charges of insulting holy sites and mocking Quranic verses. Yet he came back anyway, citing a desire to spend time with family and friends. These returns are not coincidental. In August 2026, Abbas Salehi, Iran's minister of culture and Islamic guidance, revealed that his ministry had compiled a list of more than 100 distinguished Iranians living abroad, with the explicit goal of removing barriers to their return. Salehi emphasized that even "critics of the Islamic Republic" could come home. What he did not say—but what human rights lawyer Sina Yousefi pointed out—is that Iran is bound by international law to allow its citizens to return without condition. Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a signatory, guarantees this right. The government's recruitment drive, then, frames as generosity what is legally owed.

The irony cuts deeper when set against Iran's history with music itself. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was, in the words of ethnomusicologist Sepideh Raissadat, "a revolution against music." Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution's leader, declared music harmful to society and called for its complete abolition. In July 1979, he told Radio Darya employees that music was "a betrayal of the country" and "a betrayal of the youth." Days later, the newspaper Keyhan quoted him comparing music to a drug that must be "completely eradicated." For years afterward, musical instruments disappeared from Iranian television. They were confiscated and destroyed on streets. Musicians hid their instruments in cars, afraid of the consequences of being seen with them in public.

Yet the state could never fully suppress what it sought to eliminate. During the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988, music returned in the form of revolutionary and religious songs, deployed to kindle national pride and belonging. The regime discovered it could not entirely silence the female voice either. "They couldn't completely eliminate the voice of women," Raissadat said. "The female voice returned through choral singing." Over decades, Iranian pop music emerged as a form of cultural resistance—domestic artists producing new work to compete with music from Los Angeles. By the 2010s, social media, not entirely under government control, had become a space where young women could perform publicly with guitars and without headscarves, broadcasting their defiance to the world.

The most striking shift has come in the aftermath of the nationwide protests that erupted on December 28, 2025, and were violently suppressed by security forces. Human rights organizations report that thousands of protesters were killed, though exact figures remain unknown due to the regime's information blackout. Among the bereaved families, a new form of resistance has taken shape. At funerals for those who died, mourners have begun to play music and dance—a deliberate rupture from Shiite tradition and religious mourning rituals. "Music became a weapon," Raissadat observed. "Those who were mourning were able to connect with it on their own, and at the same time, it stood in opposition to what the political system stands for." Families dressed in white, singing and moving to music instead of chanting prayers, transformed grief into protest. In doing so, they exposed the paradox at the heart of Iranian cultural life: the state invites exiled musicians home while, at the same time, music has become the language through which ordinary Iranians refuse the state's vision of what their country should be.