“The society is changing at a very fast speed, almost like a shedding of skin. Aside from the openings we see in social space, we have a fearless young generation that is breaking taboos,” Donya Amiri, a 33-year-old fashion critic and designer in Tehran, said in an interview. “The young generation wants its basic freedoms, and it’s getting them through sheer perseverance.”

Scores of videos shared on social media, and interviews conducted with more than two dozen Iranians — among them artists, designers, musicians, entrepreneurs, university students, as well as sociologists and political analysts — depict a country in the throes of grassroots change.

Political dissent is still not tolerated, executions and death sentences are frequent, and security agents in early November arrested at least four scholars, economists and writers who had been critical of the system. But the government of President Masoud Pezeshkian, a cardiac surgeon who campaigned on granting more social freedoms, seems unwilling or unable to confront the tide of change and is perhaps wary of crackdowns backfiring and inciting unrest.

The government is already dealing with crisis upon crisis, including a dire economy, recovery from war with Israel, and an acute shortage of water and energy resources. Dancing lifts the gloom.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/world/middleeast/iran-loosening-social-restrictions.html