4 Dec 2025 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
The line between fact and fiction often overlaps in Jafar Panahi’s films.
Take Taxi Tehran from 2015 for instance. The film takes place inside a cab with three hidden cameras. Panahi, an internationally acclaimed award-winning Iranian director, plays himself. He just so happens to be driving a taxi around the Iranian capital. What initially seems like an improv documentary eventually turns out to be a satirical conceit. Namely: the director is using the safe space of a private car to freely discuss what would ordinarily be off limits to discuss publicly in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Among the passengers that Panahi picks up is the Iranian human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh. Over the last 15 years she has been imprisoned twice in her native country. Her last stint was for defending women prosecuted for appearing in public without a hijab. Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, is also now serving a three-and-a-half year prison sentence for voicing public opposition to Iran’s compulsory hijab laws. In Taxi Tehran, Sotoudeh speaks about defending human rights and free speech in a theocratic-totalitarian-police state. “First they mount a political case,” Sotoudeh explains. “They beef it up with a morality charge, then they make your life hell.”
In that same scene, Sotoudeh notices the director looking at his back window.
“Looking for someone?” she asks.
“I heard a voice … I thought I recognised my interrogator,” Panahi replies.
Sotoudeh mentions how her clients often say this. “They want to identify people by their voices,” she says. “Advantage of blindfolds.”
“This reference in Taxi [Tehran] to prisoners hearing sounds is a communal experience shared by all prisoners of conscience,” Panahi told Index from Los Angeles, via a Farsi translator. “In my current film I wanted to talk about a [similar] experience. This time, however, the sound is coming from a disabled [prosthetic] leg, which becomes the moving engine of the film.”
Panahi’s latest movie, It was Just an Accident, won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and opens in UK cinemas this coming Friday, 5 December. The story begins in a mechanics’ workshop, where a man named Vahid is convinced he has just encountered Eghbal – a prison inspector who once caused him great pain and suffering. Vahid hears Eghbal before he sees him. He can never forget the eerie squeaking sound Eghbal’s prosthetic leg makes in motion. He remembers it from prison, where “Peg Leg” was known as a sadistic torturer. The traumatised Iranian mechanic later kidnaps Eghbal and even considers killing him. But has he got the right man? To tease out his doubts, Vahid rounds up a group of former prisoners to seek their advice.
What follows is a brilliant farcical black comedy-road trip movie. Despite the light-hearted banter, the film poses two serious ethical questions. One, how far will an individual – or a group – go to seek revenge on former enemy? Two, at what point does revenge violence make the victim the victimiser?
It was Just an Accident has been selected by France as its official nomination for the Academy Awards this coming March. It may be Panahi’s most overtly political film to date. But the 65-year-old Iranian moviemaker disagrees.
“I don’t make political films, which typically tend to divide people into good and bad,” he insists. “I make social films, where everyone is a human being.”
The film’s script was inspired from several conversations Panahi had with inmates he befriended while serving time in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. In March 2010, Panahi was convicted by a Revolutionary Court in Iran of propaganda for his film-making and political activism. He subsequently spent 86 days behind bars, he explained: “For the first 15 to 20 days I was in a small cell in solitary confinement, where I was interrogated.”
That same year, the Iranian regime handed Panahi a 20-year ban that forbade him from directing films or writing screenplays. “This [censorship] I experience presents many challenges to keep making films, but a social filmmaker is inspired by the circumstances in which they live,” said Panahi. “If I lived in a freer society what would inspire me? I don’t know.”
Despite the ban, Panahi is a prolific filmmaker who never stops creating. Many of his films have focused on the complications of making films with a state-imposed censorship hanging over his head. They include the ironically titled, This Is Not a Film (2011), which was smuggled out of Iran on a USB stick concealed inside a birthday cake, and No Bears (2022).
No Bears has two stories in it. The first is about migrants heading off to Europe and the second is about Panahi, who is stuck back in Iran, as his film crew attempt to complete the film they are shooting just across the border in Turkey. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. Panahi was unable to collect the prize. He was then back in Evin prison, after a Tehran court ruled he must serve the six-year sentence he was handed more than a decade before for supporting anti-government demonstrations.
“According to the law [in Iran] if a sentence is issued but not gone into effect for ten years, it should not be executed,” said Panahi. “However, [the regime] said that this is not true about political prisoners. They were lying though.”
During this second prison term Panahi was in a public ward with 300 or so prisoners, of whom roughly 40 were prisoners of conscience, he said: “On that occasion I did not face interrogations or solitary confinement, which meant I could speak and listen to the prisoners’ stories.”
Panahi remained in prison until the following February. After his release, he noticed many changes in Iranian society. The previous September, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jîna Amini, was beaten to death in Tehran by Iran’s so-called morality police after being accused of defying the country’s hijab rule. The state sanctioned homicide inspired the Woman Life Freedom uprising, which saw an estimated two million take to the streets across Iran. Many ripped and burnt posters of their political leaders, while others openly chanted, “Death to the Islamic Republic!” Iranian security forces, meanwhile, responded by killing hundreds of protesters.
“The history of the Islamic Republic [will eventually] be divided into before and after the timeline of this movement,” said Panahi. “The impact has been enormous and even made its way into cinema.”
Specifically, Panahi was referring to the fact that many women who appear in It Was Just an Accident – including actors and extras – are not wearing the hijab. “Much of what you see in the background of the film is people being filmed as they are in daily life in Iran today,” said Panahi. “For example, one woman who agreed to be in the film as an extra said to me: ‘If you are going to force me to wear the hijab, I am not going to do that.’ I told her: ‘You appear as you wish’.”
It’s not a view the authorities in the Islamic Republic endorse. Just days after Index spoke to the Iranian director, he was sentenced in absentia to one year in prison and a travel ban over “propaganda activities” against Iran. The news was broken via the French news agency, Agence France Presse (AFP), who cited Panahi’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, as a source.
At the time of writing, Panahi remains outside Iran. Prior to news of his new prison sentence being issued, Panahi told Index he could not imagine living somewhere in which he has only a touristy outlook and superficial understanding of the people and culture: “I have lived in Iran for 65 years and I make films about Iranians. I don’t want to stop making films because life without cinema has no meaning to me.”
“[In Iran] when you work you will have problems as a filmmaker there and anywhere in the world the Iranian authorities can get their hands on you,” Panahi concluded. “But you accept this is the price to be paid, and you get through what you have to in order to make the film you want to make.”
15 Jul 2025 | Iran, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
Fatemeh Jamalpour: The cost of truth in Iran
When I was invited to co-write a story with an Israeli journalist, I asked myself: what could we possibly have in common? After 46 years of political hostility between the Islamic Republic and the State of Israel, it turned out we shared more than I expected. We are both inheritors of our countries’ proxy wars – and we both carry a shame that isn’t ours. It’s the shame of war-driven leaders, the shame of bombed hospitals and civilians buried beneath flags. Somehow, in that shared grief, shame became a point of connection.
Beyond the battlefield, we share something else: the impact of censorship and propaganda. Both governments declared the recent 12-day war – which left more than 930 people dead – a victory. But every civilian killed is not a victory; it’s a human life lost. In Iran, clerics have openly called for executions and mutilations of those who dare to criticise the Supreme Leader. Any dissent – even a tweet suggesting the Islamic Republic bears responsibility for the war – can lead to interrogation, summons or surveillance. In today’s Iran, truth has a cost – and more and more, that cost is freedom.
Starting on the fifth day of the Israel-Iran war, from 17-21 June, the Iranian regime imposed an almost complete internet shutdown, as reported by global internet monitor NetBlocks. Iranians were left not only without access to news but also without emergency alerts or evacuation warnings. The entire country was plunged into darkness – like a black hole – leaving defenceless civilians uncertain whether their neighbourhoods were in danger, or if they should flee.
Amid the chaos, parliament passed a law criminalising the use of Starlink internet.
“While they had cut off our internet – and during the war, I couldn’t get any news from my family and friends because both the internet and phone lines were down – I was sick with worry for every loved one,” said Leila, a 38-year-old woman from Shiraz. “And yet, when we try to access something that is our basic right, even after paying a hundred million tomans, we’re treated like criminals. These laws have no legitimacy.”
Meanwhile, the regime began targeting journalists’ families. Several relatives of reporters working with Persian-language outlets abroad, such as BBC Persian, were arrested, threatened, and labelled “enemies of God” – a charge that carries the risk of execution.
“I barely post on social media anymore because the space is under intense surveillance by security agents, and the pressure on journalists is suffocating,” said Raha Sham, 41, a parliamentary reporter in Tehran. “Many of my colleagues have received threatening phone calls. The tone is harsh, the intent clear: delete your tweets, your stories, your posts – or face the consequences.”
Iranians now face a new wave of repression in the aftermath of the war. Across cities, new checkpoints have sprung up where security forces stop civilians and search their phone photo galleries – often without a warrant. At the same time, parliament has passed new legislation effectively criminalising anti-war activism.
“Anti-war activism is a legitimate form of civic engagement, and criminalising it is both unjust and unlawful,” a human rights lawyer in Tehran who prefers to stay anonymous told me. “What disturbs me most about the post-war crackdown is that a spirit of vengeance has taken over the judiciary. Judges now seem to think their role is to avenge those who were killed. The mindset is: ‘Our commanders have died – someone must pay.'”
But the problem doesn’t end with the state. While we’re silenced by our government, we’re also erased by much of the Western media. For many editors, it’s always about numbers, not names. They want statistics, not stories. When Western journalists do gain access, they often report only from regime-approved rallies, while just a few streets away, anti-war protests and underground art scenes go unseen.
We’re rarely shown in full light. Middle Easterners remain blurred, devout, anonymous. After years of contributing to Western outlets, I’ve learned this isn’t an accident. It’s not just regime control. It’s also the residue of a colonial gaze – still shaping coverage in 2025.
David Schutz: Control of the press in Israel
In Israel, I was under missile fire too. While everyone else huddled in shelters, glued to the news, I stood on my roof watching what looked like fireworks. But if you Google “Iranian missile hit Tel Aviv Stock Exchange” in Hebrew, you’ll find nothing – you have to know where to look to piece together the truth.
Israel’s media has always been tightly controlled: military censors, a three-second delay on live broadcasts – a well-known fact that has been confirmed by inside sources. Today it’s slicker but more repressive than ever as global opposition to Israeli policies grows. The Israeli Journalists Association said recent moves by the government “seek to eliminate free media in Israel”. But it’s worth asking whether the press here was ever truly free.
Even before 7 October 2023, it operated under a mesh of dependent commercial interests and state funding with the military and government in what journalist Oren Persico from The Seventh Eye, an independent investigative magazine focused on the media in Israel, described as a “symbiotic relationship”.
After the election of the current government in 2022, bills have been brought forward that weaken public broadcasting, including proposals to give the government increased control of the public broadcaster’s budget – effectively letting the government starve it of funds should coverage stray too far.
“Very often, journalists effectively act as representatives for the institutions they cover: legal affairs reporters serve the prosecution and the judicial system, economic reporters serve the Finance Ministry, and military reporters naturally represent the positions of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” Persico said.
My friend Sapir runs a WhatsApp group called Demanding Full Coverage for Gaza.
“Almost nothing about Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe gets through to the Israeli public. Not because the information doesn’t exist, but because editors don’t cover it – and when they do, briefly, the military and government have a well-honed strategy to muddy the waters,” she said.
When Haaretz reported at the end of June that Israeli soldiers had been ordered to fire on civilians at an aid centre, counter-reports appeared almost immediately in multiple outlets – often repeating the same phrasing, the same anonymous interview – claiming “Hamas gunmen” had fired on crowds. The effect was the same: to muddy the story and deny a pattern of conduct.
“The goal is to flood the market with information so people think there’s no way to know what’s true anymore, to make them give up looking,” Sapir said.
Andrey X, an independent Israeli journalist, explained that all security-related stories must legally be cleared by military censors before publication. This can be justified on security grounds in some cases but critics argue it adds a significant challenge to media freedom. In practice, most outlets ignore this – until the government decides to enforce it retroactively, as in the case of American journalist Jeremy Loffredo, who was detained for four days and threatened with jail time over his reporting for The Grayzone, showing the locations of the military targets of Iranian missiles.
Footage of Israeli vehicles and homes hit by Israeli Hellfire missiles and tank shells on October 7 were labelled “Hamas attacks”. A government spokesman admitted 200 Hamas fighters were misidentified as civilians.
Twenty months later, Gaza is a demolished wasteland of dust and decay. The military releases sparse reports of “accidents”, just enough to recast outrage as tragic inevitability rather than accountability, enabling ongoing abuses without meaningful scrutiny.
Cable news will mention that the army had “begun food distribution”, but in such vague, antiseptic terms that few readers realise this means just a handful of stations, a framing that distorts what is actually happening and why.
Softer repression is often more powerful. Journalists fear being fired or defunded for not toeing the military spokesman’s line. Many fear public backlash even more: boycotts, pulled advertising and social media campaigns branding them traitors. Mildly subversive correspondents have faced on-air abuse – often in deeply personal terms – from their colleagues, as detailed by Persico when he spoke with me.
For Palestinian journalists, the dangers are greater still. Reporting on police or military abuses can end careers or worse. Even inside Israel, Arab reporters face social hostility, public threats and constant suspicion about their loyalty. The same event, covered by an Israeli and a Palestinian journalist, carries different risks, but that gap is always narrowing.
Each day, more people choose to shed the ideological masks their states have forced upon them in ’48 Palestine, Israel and Iran. Despite relentless propaganda and censorship, the number continues to grow. The future of our countries will not belong to war-hungry leaders – it is being shaped from the ground up, in the streets and in the digital space. In this age, every post, every story, every tweet by ordinary citizens is a quiet act of resistance – a revolution in itself.
This piece is published in collaboration with Egab, an organisation working with journalists across the Middle East and Africa
2 Jul 2025 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Newsletters
As I wrote the newsletter last week we were closely following events in Iran but didn’t have a full picture in terms of free speech ramifications, in part because of censorship itself – internet blackouts and media bans meant that information was slow to leave the country. One week on, it’s different. Many alarming stories have emerged.
The conflict between Israel and Iran was of course marked from the start by free speech violations – early on there was the bombing of Iranian state television. Then later there were strikes on Tehran’s Evin Prison. While these acts may have been intended as symbolic blows against key institutions of Iranian repression, the consequences were grimly real: media workers killed, political prisoners endangered. And in between? Lots of repression.
At Index, some developments were personal, including when our 2023 Arts Award winner – the rapper Toomaj Salehi – disappeared for three days. Beyond our immediate network, according to the Centre for Human Rights in Iran, more than 700 citizens have been arrested in the past 12 days, some for alleged “espionage” or “collaboration” with Israel. There have also been six executions on espionage charges carried out, with additional death sentences expected.
The Supreme Council of National Security announced that any action deemed supportive of Israel would be met with the most severe penalty: death. The scope was broad, ranging from “legitimising the Zionist regime” to “spreading false information” or “sowing division”.
As mentioned above, Iran also began restricting internet access before shutting down access altogether. Officials claimed the blackout was necessary to disrupt Israeli drone operations allegedly controlled through local SIM-based networks. The result: ordinary Iranians were cut off from vital news. International journalists from outfits like Deutsche Welle (DW) were banned from reporting inside Iran. The family of a UK-based journalist with Iran International TV was even detained in Tehran, in an attempt to force her resignation. Her father called her under duress, parroting instructions from security agents: “I’ve told you a thousand times to resign. What other consequences do you expect?”
Yet amid the bleakness, there have been a few positive instances. Iranian state media aired a patriotic song by Moein, a pop icon long exiled in Los Angeles. Some billboards replaced religious slogans with pre-Islamic imagery, such as the mythical figure Arash the Archer. There has also been an unexpected digital reprieve: on Wednesday, following the agreement of an Israel-Iran ceasefire deal brokered by the US administration the day before, Iranians reported unfiltered access to Instagram and WhatsApp for the first time in two years.
Given everything else it feels unlikely that this openness will last. This week’s proposals by Iran’s judiciary officials to expand espionage laws and increase the powers of Iran’s sprawling security apparatus imply as much, too. So while the world’s eyes might have moved away from Iran, our gaze is still there – documenting the free speech violations and campaigning for their end.
9 May 2025
Join Index on Censorship and Some Great Reward for a Listening Party celebrating the music, resistance and solidarity of Iranian rapper, Toomaj Salehi.
Toomaj is a Farsi-language rapper who has never shied away from using his music to stand up for those raising their voices calling for human rights and democracy in Iran. For his courage and music, he has long been persecuted by the Iranian regime – facing harassment, surveillance, imprisonment and a death sentence as a result.
Toomaj has been persecuted for his music so there is no more powerful way to stand in solidarity with him than to celebrate his music. That is why we are inviting music fans to come together on the southside of Glasgow to share his songs, learn about his life and stand in solidarity with him and everyone in Iran standing up for human rights and democracy. This is not a ticketed event – just turn up.
About Toomaj Salehi’s persecution
Over the last four years, Toomaj has faced continuous judicial harassment, including arrest and imprisonment. He has been more intensely targeted following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody September 2022, when he became a vocal supporter of the Women, Life, Freedom movement. After publishing songs in support of the courageous protesters and taking part in the protest himself he was arrested and sentenced to over 6 years in prison. On 18 November 2023, Toomaj was released on bail. But his freedom was not to last.
Days later he was rearrested after he uploaded a video to YouTube documenting his treatment and torture while in detention. In April 2024, an Iranian court sentenced him to death on charges of “corruption on earth”. It took the Supreme Court to intervene to quash the death sentence, leading to Toomaj being released from prison in December 2024.
