How a strapless wedding gown is at centre of a political scandal in Iran

It is well known that Iran is a conservative nation.

The majority Shia Muslim nation has been in the news in recent years for its frequent crackdowns on protesters and women’s rights activists. Now, one of the top advisors of the Ayatollah is being accused of hypocrisy after video emerged of his daughter wearing a strapless gown at her wedding.

But what do we know? How has this become a political scandal?

Let’s take a close look.

What do we know?

The video leaked last week online.

It shows Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, 70, a top advisor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his representative at the National Defence Council, at the wedding of his daughter in May 2024. Shamkhani, the former Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a close confidant of the Ayatollah, is seen walking his daughter Setayesh down the aisle.

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Setayesh is wearing a strapless, designer wedding gown with a low-cut neckline that shows cleavage and a nearly see-through veil that barely covers her head. The wedding, which was seemingly organised in a lavish manner, occurred at Tehran’s luxury Espinas Palace Hotel. It was held amid cheers and loud music.

Many other women at the wedding were also seen without hijabs or headscarves – among them Shamkhani’s wife, who was wearing a blue lace evening gown and baring her back. Many of Iran’s political elites are said to have attended the event, which cost as much as $57,000 (Rs 5 lakh).

Why this has become a political scandal

Because the clip was leaked at a time when Iran is preparing to deploy 80,000 morality officers in the capital city of Tehran to enforce the hijab rules. Tehran in June introduced a law mandating prison time and flogging for women and girls as young as 12 who refuse to wear the hijab in public.

And also because Shamkhani, a former defence minister and senior military commander, played a key role in cracking down on protesters after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022.

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Shamkhani, who was Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) at the time, led his country’s brutal crackdown on protesters. Amini, as you will recall, was a 22-year-old who was brutally beaten by Iran’s morality police for leaving her hair uncovered. She later fell into a coma and died in police custody.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has estimated that over 500 people, including 68 children, were killed during the crackdown by the Iranian government. HRW said over 20,000 people were arrested. A United Nations mission later said the Iranian government had committed “extensive, sustained and continuing” human rights violations on its people.

“The daughter of Ali Shamkhani, one of the Islamic Republic’s top enforcers, had a lavish wedding in a strapless dress. Meanwhile, women in Iran are beaten for showing their hair, and young people can’t afford to marry,” Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian activist, wrote on X.

She said millions of people are infuriated because the Khamenei regime enforces “Islamic values with bullets, batons and prisons on everyone but themselves.”

“The main advisor of Khamenei was celebrating his daughter’s wedding at a palace-like venue. The same regime that killed Mahsa Amini for showing a bit of her hair, jails women for singing, who hired 80,000 ‘morality police’ to drag girls into vans, throws itself a luxury party. This isn’t hypocrisy, it’s the system. They preach ‘modesty’ while their own daughters parade in designer dresses. The message couldn’t be clearer: the rules are for you, not for them,” Alinejad added.

Alinejad wasn’t alone.

Iranian journalist Amir Hossein Mosalla wrote on social media that “the regime officials themselves have no belief in their own laws that they support, they only want to make people’s lives miserable.”

Shargh, a reformist-leaning newspaper, led with the news story on the front page with the headline “Buried Under Scandal”.

Some political pundits and war veterans have called on Shamkhani to resign from the government and tender a public apology.

The video also leaked at a time when many in Iran are struggling to make ends meet.

Politician Ali Akbar Raefipour added on X: “Can we ask how we can tell people to be patient with economic sanctions when the former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council holds his daughter’s wedding in one of the country’s most luxurious hotels?”

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency has also taken aim at Shamkhani.

“There is no doubt that the lifestyle of officials in the Islamic Republic must be defensible,” it wrote. However, it added that publishing a private video is not ethical.

Shamkhani has blamed Israel for leaking the clip.

“Hacking into people’s privacy is Israel’s new method of assassination,” he was quoted as saying.

Other supporters, including ex-Iranian minister Ezzatollah Zarghami, have claimed that the ceremony was segregated by gender.

“Some women were veiled, and the rest were close relatives,” Zarghami claimed.

But experts aren’t taking kindly to that message.

“It’s hypocrisy in its purest form,” Omid Memarian, an Iran expert at DAWN, a Washington-based research organisation that focuses on American foreign policy in West Asia, told The New York Times.

Iranian women’s rights activist Ellie Omidvari, referring to the people killed, added: “Their bride is in a palace, our bride is buried under the ground.”

With inputs from agencies