Spies, Burgers and Bombs: After a New War, Old Wounds Resurface in Tehran

NY Times _oct15th2025

By Declan Walsh Visuals by Nanna Heitmann

The elephant had been clinging to a rope for months, swinging from the rafters of a disused factory outside the Iranian capital, waiting for an audience to turn up.

He was made of fiberglass, not flesh, part of a surrealist art exhibition that was supposed to open in June. Then Israeli warplanes struck, marking the start of a blistering 12-day war that also drew in the United States. The show was postponed and the artists, unable to return home, were stranded at the gallery.

Every night they pulled chairs into the courtyard to watch “the fireworks,” as the gallery owner, Houman Dayhimi, tartly put it — missiles streaking across the sky, the dark glow of explosions with a terrifying orchestra of booms and thuds. Reality took on the air of the art show.

“It was surreal,” Mr. Dayhimi said.

Like many Iranians, Mr. Dayhimi was used to bending to the vagaries of geopolitics. A decade earlier, his gallery space, the Dayhim Art Society, was a sprawling furniture plant with 700 employees. Then American sanctions forced it into bankruptcy, so he filled its workshops with artworks and the offices of tech start-ups.

“We know that change is coming, but we don’t know what or how,” Mr. Dayhimi said. “And that’s what makes it worse. It’s so unpredictable.”

Nearly half a century after Iran’s revolution, people are accustomed to navigating the fraught space between the dictates of their government, pressure from foreign powers, and their own identities and desires.

Signs in upmarket restaurants order women to wear the hijab, yet are roundly ignored by young diners with flowing hair. The internet is censored, so people used VPNs to scroll through Instagram and TikTok. American sanctions make for a thriving black market.