Tehran’s Design Week festival was shut down after a video from the event circulated online, Iran’s Guards-linked Fars News Agency reported on Sunday, saying the move followed a protest statement by the Basij student organization at the University of Tehran’s Fine Arts campus.
Pollution levels in 14 cities across Khuzestan had reached the red category, meaning the air is unsafe for all groups, Iran’s national air-quality monitoring system reported on Saturday. Four other cities were listed as orange, posing risks to vulnerable populations.
Concentrations of airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns, according to the report, had exceeded permissible limits at many monitoring stations, pushing much of the province into hazardous territory.
Rising hospital visits and wider spread
Khuzestan has faced repeated episodes of severe pollution in recent days. Farhad Soltani, acting deputy for treatment at Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, said hospital visits had risen sharply.
“The number of patients coming to hospitals increased 15 to 20 percent in October compared with the same period last year, and 20 to 25 percent in November,” he said, warning that pollution in Ahvaz and Khuzestan had reached a point where “the entire population is affected.”
Air quality has also deteriorated in other major cities. Iranian media reported that the air in the religious city of Mashhad was classified as unhealthy for sensitive groups for an eighth consecutive day on Saturday. The situation was driven by continued use of fossil fuels in industry, power plants and vehicles, combined with stagnant atmospheric conditions, Tasnim news agency wrote.
Isfahan choked for eleventh straight day
In central Iran, air quality in Isfahan remained in the red category for the eleventh consecutive day on Saturday, according to local monitoring data.
Pollution levels in the metropolis and some of its neighboring cities have risen to the point that the air is now deemed unsafe for the general population. Experts warned that conditions could deteriorate further in the coming days, citing the persistence of stagnant weather patterns and rising pollutant concentrations.
58,975 people in Iran had died from causes attributed to air pollution in the past Iranian year, equivalent to 161 deaths a day and around seven every hour, said Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi last week. Pollution-linked mortality, he added, had imposed an estimated $17.2 billion in economic losses over the same period.
The event had turned the university “into a venue for inappropriate entertainment,” according to the Basij group statement. Fars reported that music with political themes had been played over images showing unveiled participants.
Tehran Design Week, which began on November 10, brought together designers presenting creative works across multiple venues in the city.
Images of women attending without the compulsory hijab had already drawn wide attention on social media, where videos shared from the event showed strong turnout from young people.
“The movement promoting moral corruption not only rejects any boundaries, but shows a clear determination to push the situation further and make it worse. This trend – with new examples emerging every day – is intolerable for the religious majority of society and will eventually lead to a social and cultural explosion,” Fars added.
Some government-aligned social media accounts criticized the festival and directed their criticism at university officials and the science minister.
The shutdown comes as Iran shows selective signs of easing social controls while deepening its political clampdown.
A Reuters analysis last week said while signs of looser social restrictions have appeared in several Iranian cities, the government has simultaneously expanded the scope of political repression – a trend that activists and some former Iranian officials say has intensified to an unprecedented degree in recent months.
At an official ceremony unveiling a new statue in Tehran’s Enghelab Square earlier in November, participants faced no mandatory hijab restrictions.
Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, based in Washington DC, told Reuters that the strategy shows “tactical management” but the government's red lines remain firm.
The hijab, which became a central fault line after the 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, is now being enforced unevenly.
With public anger simmering and officials wary of another wave of nationwide unrest, President Masoud Pezeshkian has declined to put into effect the hardline-supported “Hijab and Chastity” law passed last year.
“That contradiction is deliberate: a release valve for the public, coupled with a hard ceiling on genuine dissent,” Vatanka added.
