Grammy-winning Iranian singer says he faces bans from public venues
Iranian singer and songwriter Shervin Hajipour said he is facing new restrictions, including being barred from entering a gym and attending concerts.
Iranian singer and songwriter Shervin Hajipour said he is facing new restrictions, including being barred from entering a gym and attending concerts.
In an Instagram video story, he said that when he asked a club security guard why he was denied entry, the guard replied: “Because you are Shervin.”
Iran's clerical rulers have eased enforcement of Islamic veiling laws, paused a draconian new hijab law and looked the other way as once-banned outdoor concerts proliferate.
But crackdowns on dissidents and political speech have sharply mounted since the conflict, according to rights groups.
Hajipour is the creator of the protest song Baraye (“For…”), which became a global anthem for Iran’s nationwide Woman, Life, Freedom movement following the 2022 death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in morality police custody.
He was briefly arrested in September 2022 shortly after the song went viral.
In 2023, Hajipour won the inaugural Grammy Award for Best Song for Social Change for the son.
The next year, a court sentenced him to three years and eight months in prison on charges including propaganda against the Islamic Republic and inciting and encouraging people to commit acts of violence and disturbance with the intention of harming national security.
He was also banned from leaving the country for two years.
The court ordered him to produce monthly one-page works on “the crimes of America against humanity” and compose a musical piece about “America’s crimes and its violations of human rights,” according to a copy of the verdict he shared in an Instagram post.
It also directed him to summarize books by Morteza Motahhari, a leading ideologue of the Islamic Republic whose writings on women morality and politics remain central to state doctrine, and to compile cultural and scientific “achievements of the Islamic Republic” and present them in digital form.
In September 2024, his case was dismissed under a clemency order issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader, effectively granting him a pardon.
Hajipour said in his new video that despite the restrictions, he intends to continue living in Iran.
“I did not stay in this country to sit in a corner of my house or be humiliated or be unable to work or exercise,” he said.
Under a new directive titled “We Defend Our Iran,” the ministry ordered classes from elementary to high school to praise the actions of the country's leadership, military and people.
The new educational materials reviewed by Iran International were distributed to schools and made available online earlier this month.
The program aims to cultivate patriotic virtue, according to a directive signed by Education Minister Alireza Kazemi and circulated to provincial departments.
The initiative was “a tribute to the miraculous endurance of the Iranian nation during the 12-day imposed war,” he wrote.
New study materials, Kazemi added, seek to “strengthen national dignity, unity and deterrence,” and to raise students who can “face social and political challenges responsibly and wisely.”
Battle of narratives
As Iran-US nuclear talks appeared to falter, Israel launched a surprise military attack on its Mideast arch-foe on June 13.
The strikes killed senior nuclear scientists along with hundreds of military personnel and civilians. Iranian counterattacks killed 32 Israeli civilians and an off-duty soldier.
Joining the conflict, the United States attacked three Iranian nuclear sites and Iran responded with missile attacks on a US airbase in Qatar before US President Donald Trump enforced a ceasefire.
Israel promptly said it had achieved its military goals while Trump declared Iran's nuclear program had been "obliterated."
Tehran officialdom quickly said the US ceasefire sought to prevent further damaging missile volleys and that Iran had prevailed in the war, emerging more unified.
Hack Israeli jets
The new educational materials cast this doctrine as moral and patriotic truth, extending from missile engineering to nuclear research.
One high school assignment instructs pupils to “hold a class debate on the advantages and disadvantages of enriching uranium inside the country versus importing enriched uranium.”
Another adds: “Write a two-page outline for a movie in which Iranian students hack into the computer systems of Israeli fighter jets and change the course of events. Share your plan with your teacher and classmates.”
The tone is lively, even playful, framing national defense as a creative activity comprehensible to children.
Iranian officials quickly and now routinely characterize the perseverance of Iran's ruling system as a victory in itself and the messaging now extends beyond sermons and television news programs to the classroom.
Authorities have quashed with deadly force several youth-led protest movements in recent decades and style themselves a bulwark against foreign-led sedition plots.
Still, the course materials indicate Tehran remains determined to purvey state ideology on Iran's youth.
The textbook for younger students, “The 12-Day War,” sets out twenty-five hours of classroom teaching that encourage pupils to see unity, creativity and belief as the reasons Iran prevailed. The lessons blend moral stories with political instruction and domestic detail, grounding the idea of national defense in everyday life.
In one chapter, children visit their grandparents’ home. Over tea, the adults recall the war. “Israel thought it could disrupt the country by killing our commanders,” says Uncle Hossein in the story, “but our Leader quickly appointed successors and restored order.”
The grandfather adds, “Iran had long prepared itself for defense and built powerful, precise missiles for such days.” The grandmother reminds the children that “people helped each other during those days,” while the narrator concludes, “When we are united with our Leader, like one family, we are at our strongest.”
The chapter ends with the line that gives the book its theme: “We are stronger together.” It turns survival into a moral lesson about obedience, faith and collective strength.
Elsewhere, QR codes lead to short video clips. One shows schoolgirls, around nine years old, singing, “This is Iran. If anyone looks at my country the wrong way, I will not forgive them. If needed, I will sacrifice myself. I’m a girl, but I’m strong. God is with me.”
In Islam, nine marks the age of religious maturity for girls, giving the performance a note of solemn duty beneath its cheer.
Other exercises tie national defense to civic behavior. Students are asked to draw family members helping during blackouts or natural disasters, and to write short reflections on how “science and faith together protect the homeland.”
The blending of domestic scenes, religious devotion and military imagery makes the idea of resistance feel both intimate and ordinary.
Israel 'unnatural, dangerous'
Across all levels, Israel is portrayed as the main disruptor of peace in the region and the United States as its enabler.
High-school materials offer more advanced characterizations of arch-enemy Israel, calling it an “unnatural and dangerous regime” and asks students to prove it visually. “With three simple pictures,” it instructs, “show your classmates why Israel is an unnatural and dangerous regime. For example: it has no fixed borders.”
Another prompt begins with: “In your opinion, what does the fact that the Israeli regime, unlike other countries, has no defined borders say about its nature?”
Students are then guided to make an infographic to express the point. At the top of the page, they are told to write: "Israel is unnatural and dangerous because" and fill in the rest with short captions and sketches.
Safavid rout
In some of the new exercises, students are asked to name and build paper models of Iranian missiles and discuss how families can help defend the country.
Another passage recalls the 1514 Battle of Chaldiran, when Safavid Iran lost to the Ottomans for lacking modern weapons, a parable of vigilance and modernization.
Other sections teach how to manage blackouts or natural disasters, blending civic duty with preparedness for crisis.
The book deepens the use of national history in the curriculum, drawing on Shah Ismail Safavid and earlier dynasties alongside Islamic and revolutionary narratives, part of a broader effort to fuse religion, statehood and pride in Iranian endurance.
That emphasis mirrors the nationalist tone of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s speeches following the war. Citing a coup in 1921 and the 1953 US-backed overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, he has urged Iranians to remember “both sweet victories and bitter events” so that “they are not repeated.”
He described the United States as “inherently arrogant,” blamed foreign powers for Iran’s historic setbacks, and told young people that “the remedy for many of our problems is to become strong.”
In his telling, national power in its military, scientific, and moral forms is the safeguard of independence, a message now embedded in the nation’s classrooms.
That same logic now shapes how the next generation is taught: Iran’s strength, the school materials aim to ensure, must be shored up by its next generation.
