On Monday, October 20, 2025, the city of Shiraz found itself at the center of two interwoven controversies that have reignited debate across Iran and beyond: the latest arrests of Baha'i citizens by Iranian security forces and a viral video of a lavish wedding belonging to the daughter of a top regime official, both of which have exposed the deep rifts and contradictions in Iranian society.
Early Monday morning, Ministry of Intelligence agents raided the homes of Negar Misaghian and Shakib Farzan, both members of Iran’s Baha'i minority, according to reporting from IranWire. The agents confiscated personal belongings and, in a move that witnesses described as particularly distressing, arrested Misaghian in front of her young child. Both detainees were taken to Plaque 100, a detention center in Shiraz operated by the Ministry of Intelligence. The specific charges against them remain unknown, but the pattern is all too familiar for Iran’s Baha'i community.
These arrests follow the recent detention of two other Baha'is in Shiraz, Afshin Haghighat and Ferdin Bengaleh, bringing the total to at least four in just the past few days. As IranWire and other human rights organizations have frequently documented, Baha'is in Iran face systematic persecution, including restrictions on their access to higher education and employment, as well as frequent arrests on charges related to their religious beliefs and activities.
The timing of these arrests could not be more striking, arriving just as a scandal involving the regime’s own elite has erupted on social media. A video from April 2024 surfaced and quickly went viral, showing the wedding of Fatemeh, the daughter of Admiral Ali Shamkhani—a close aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and one of Iran’s most senior defense and national security officials. The footage, which began circulating widely in October 2025, depicts a scene rarely seen in the Islamic Republic: the bride in a strapless, low-cut Western-style wedding gown, her veil nearly transparent, and surrounded by other women—including Shamkhani’s wife—dressed in revealing evening gowns without headscarves.
The wedding took place at the opulent Espinas Palace Hotel in Tehran, a venue symbolic of privilege and luxury. For many Iranians, the contrast was jarring. As reported by multiple outlets, including The New York Times, the video ignited outrage among critics who accused the regime of blatant hypocrisy. Masih Alinejad, a prominent exiled Iranian activist, wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “The daughter of Ali Shamkhani, one of the Islamic Republic's top enforcers, had a lavish wedding in a strapless dress. Meanwhile, women in Iran are beaten for showing their hair, and young people can't afford to marry.” She continued, “The Khamenei regime enforces Islamic values with bullets, batons and prisons on everyone but themselves.”
These sentiments were echoed by Amir Hossein Mosalla, an Iranian journalist, who posted, “The regime officials themselves have no belief in their own laws that they support, they only want to make people's lives miserable.” Even the Tasnim news agency, closely affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, weighed in, stating, “There is no doubt that the lifestyle of officials in the Islamic Republic must be defensible,” while also criticizing the publication of the private video as unethical.
The public’s fury is not just about what happened inside the Espinas Palace Hotel, but about what it represents. For years, the Iranian government has enforced strict hijab and modesty laws, with tens of thousands of “morality police” deployed to ensure compliance. The regime’s crackdown reached a boiling point in 2022, when the death of Mahsa Amini—detained for allegedly violating hijab law—sparked nationwide protests. Hundreds were killed, and many more arrested, as women burned their headscarves and demanded freedom. According to Shargh, a reformist-leaning newspaper, the scandal has left Shamkhani “buried under scandal,” a headline that captures the mood of many Iranians who see a widening gap between the regime’s rhetoric and the reality of its elite.
Omid Memarian, an Iran expert at DAWN, a Washington-based research organization, told The New York Times, “It’s hypocrisy in its purest form.” Ellie Omidvari, an Iranian women’s rights activist, drew a poignant comparison: “Their bride is in a palace, our bride is buried under the ground,” referencing the many young women killed during the protests, some of whom were newlyweds themselves.
In response to the uproar, Shamkhani has accused Israel of leaking the private video as a form of attack. “Hacking into people’s privacy is Israel’s new method of assassination,” he was quoted as saying by Iran International. Meanwhile, some officials have tried to downplay the controversy, with former minister Ezzatollah Zarghami insisting that the ceremony was “female-only” and that “some women were veiled, and the rest were close relatives.”
Yet, for many ordinary Iranians, these justifications ring hollow. The images of luxury and privilege at the wedding have become a lightning rod for broader grievances about social inequality and government double standards. As Alinejad put it, “They preach ‘modesty’ while their own daughters parade in designer dresses. The message couldn’t be clearer: the rules are for you, not for them.”
Against this backdrop, the arrests of Baha'is in Shiraz serve as a stark reminder of the regime’s ongoing repression of religious and ethnic minorities. The Baha'i community, which has endured decades of discrimination since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, continues to face barriers to education, employment, and even burial rights. Human rights groups have repeatedly condemned these practices, noting that arbitrary arrests and detentions are often accompanied by confiscation of property and denial of due process.
For those watching from outside Iran, the juxtaposition of these two events—the crackdown on Baha'is and the scandal of the elite wedding—offers a window into the contradictions at the heart of the Islamic Republic. On one hand, ordinary citizens, especially women and minorities, are subject to some of the region’s harshest restrictions and punishments for even minor infractions. On the other, members of the ruling class appear to live by a different set of rules entirely, enjoying the very freedoms they deny to others.
As the stories continue to unfold, the sense of frustration and injustice among many Iranians appears only to be deepening. The regime’s attempts to justify its actions—whether by blaming foreign enemies or insisting on the privacy of its officials—have done little to quell the anger. If anything, the events in Shiraz and Tehran have only served to highlight the widening gulf between the rulers and the ruled, and to raise new questions about the future direction of Iranian society.
In a nation where the personal and the political are so tightly intertwined, these recent events have become a powerful symbol of the struggles—and the hopes—of millions of Iranians yearning for change.
