‘The people stood up’: how war turned Iran towards ‘everyday nationalism’

Guardian -Sept7th2025

By: Patrick Wintour

Amid the ruins of the building that was once the Tehran home of the Iranian nuclear scientist Ahmadreza Zolfaghari, workmen are underway demolishing the remains, damaged beyond repair by Israel’s surprise attempt to assassinate Iran’s political, military and nuclear elite.

Zolfaghari had worked at the Faculty of Nuclear Engineering at Shahid Beheshti University, and was editor-in-chief of a nuclear energy journal, all of which was sufficient to make him an Israeli target. He was found dead in the rubble of his home, along with his wife and grownup son. The three adjoining buildings had also been blown apart, killing at least five others, including an 11-year-old child. A blue banner, draped down one of the damaged buildings, reads: “A piece of the body of Iran.”

The group of workmen wielding sledgehammers are clambering across the remaining unstable floor struts to demolish what remains of the building. Loose masonry crashes to the ground, sending dust into the air. Their perilous task – the beams on which they stand creak as they hammer – seems a metaphor for a country still in shock, neither at peace nor at war, but in need of reconstruction.

More than 1,000 Iranians died in the Israeli attack, and some professional sociologists – a broad term in Iran – argue a new nationalism has emerged into public view.

There is no doubt that, outwardly, Tehran is changing fast – and socially it is light years from western perceptions. The number of women not wearing the hijab in Tehran’s streets is about a third and it is not just young women, but sometimes whole families. A new punitive chastity law passed by the religious conservatives – still dominant inside parliament – was rejected by the consensual, but reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian on the pragmatic grounds that it would cause an uprising if it was enforced.

The burial of the measure has emboldened women. The police, once keen to bundle the “unchaste” into the back of a van, now leave unscarfed women to their individual choice. The vibrant, albeit polluted, evening streets resemble Beirut as much as Kabul. The next step is to allow women to ride motorcycles. Observers say that Mahsa Amini, the young Kurdish woman who collapsed in a police station in 2022, sparking the “women life freedom” protests, did not entirely die in vain.

The cultural sociologist and Soas alumni Nematollah Fazeli claims a deep change may be afoot. What he describes as the emergence of an “everyday nationalism” is reflected in a return to epic poetry, popular podcasts about Iranian history, and thousands of ordinary conversations across the country about Iranian identity.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/07/the-people-stood-up-how-war-turned-iran-towards-everyday-nationalism