Welcome back to the MBN Iran Briefing.
Martin Scorsese once said, “Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.” This week, we’ll look at how one of Iran’s most successful filmmakers is enduring drama out of the frame. We’ll also find out about some dramatic changes at the gas pump for everyday Iranians and the sharp increase in executions in Iran this year.
We’ll also hear about how Iran’s president feels people should be kinder, how Iran may or may not play ball in tomorrow’s World Cup draw, and a new way to access food if you are very poor.
Send tips, suggestions, or questions to me at ailves@mbn-news.com. If you were forwarded this newsletter, please subscribe. Read me in Arabic here.
Quote of the week:
“My sense is we have to start thinking now about what happens later.”
— Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi
Top of the News
Accolades in New York, a Prison Sentence in Tehran
An Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran on Monday issued a sentence in absentia to Jafar Panahi, one of Iran’s most celebrated filmmakers, for “propaganda activities” against the state. Although the sentence of one year in prison and a two-year ban on leaving the country might sound unusual, there’s more to it than meets the eye.
First off, Panahi, who is internationally acclaimed for his films, is already out of the country. The news of his sentencing reached the director while he was at the Gotham Awards in New York to pick up three prizes – international feature, original screenplay, and director – for his film It Was Just An Accident. These latest awards follow a series of other prizes this year, including the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Panahi has a history with Iranian law enforcement. He was already given a six-year sentence as well as a twenty‑year ban on filmmaking and travel in 2010, was jailed again in 2022, and has lived for years under de facto surveillance and censorship. He’s done time in the notorious Evin Prison, where the regime sends the people it fears: writers, activists, students, dual nationals.
We can interpret the seemingly light punishment this time as a form of “signaling without martyring.” A long new sentence would have increased his martyr status, just as he is winning international awards. So, one year plus a two‑year travel ban sends a warning to other artists while aiming to avoid an international backlash.
The sentences also offer the regime leverage if Panahi returns. It gives the judiciary a legal pretext to arrest or pressure him at any time while still leaving room to pardon him or reduce the sentence later if Tehran wants to make a tactical goodwill gesture.
What the regime does to Panahi does not go unnoticed by international media. This latest sentence came two days after The Financial Times published an interview with the director under the headline, “Iranian director Jafar Panahi on why he must return to the country that imprisoned him.”
I wrote about Panahi in my first MBN Iran Briefing back in October, when his latest film debuted in U.S. theaters. It Was Just An Accident centers on the aftermath of a minor road accident. An auto mechanic believes he recognizes his former prison torturer, known only as “Peg Leg,” setting off an abduction and a tense night of improvised vigilante justice with other ex‑prisoners.
Panahi’s films capture what the Iran officials don’t want the world to see: the suffocating rules controlling women in The Circle, the rage of the working class in Crimson Gold, the absurd restrictions on movement in Taxi, and the legendary This Is Not a Film, incidentally smuggled out of Iran on a flash drive hidden in a cake after authorities banned him from filmmaking. When the state draws a boundary, Panahi turns the boundary into material.
Panahi’s sentencing comes at a moment when other filmmakers, such as Maryam Moghaddam, Behtash Sanaeeha, Saeed Roustayi, Javad Norouzbeigi, and Mohammad Rasoulof, have already been punished with suspended jail terms, bans, and long prison sentences for their films and for taking their work to foreign festivals without the Islamic Republic’s permission.
Iran is recognized globally for its vibrant cinema scene, and we’ll be looking at it more deeply in upcoming editions of the MBN Iran Briefing. My colleague Randa Jebai has written an excellent analysis of how Tehran has censored and suppressed Iran’s film industry over the decades in a piece whose title says it all: “Between Evin and the Revolutionary Guard: Iranian Cinema into Exile.”
Fill ‘er Up: The Three‑tiered Fuel Experiment Nobody Trusts
Photo: Reuters
The government last week approved a three‑tier gasoline pricing scheme to commence this month, adding a new “third rate” of 50,000 rials per liter on top of the two existing prices. Here’s the situation drivers now face:
- A low, subsidized rate (15,000 rials) for a limited monthly quota bought with a personal fuel card.
- A mid‑level rate (30,000 rials) for extra fuel within certain limits.
- A new top rate (50,000 rials) for any fuel beyond those ceilings or without a fuel card, effectively a “market‑style” price that hits when people run out of quota.
On paper, Iran’s new gasoline prices look low, just cents per liter in dollar terms, but in practice, they take a significant bite out of the income of an average full-time worker earning the equivalent of four or five dollars a day. Rent, food, and utilities already consume most household income, so even small fuel-price adjustments can feel disproportionately heavy.
The measure is being presented as a technical fix to rationalize consumption and curb smuggling, but few Iranians can hear “gasoline” and “price increase” without thinking back six years to November 2019, when the government suddenly raised gasoline prices by fifty percent for subsidized fuel. It announced that change in the middle of the night without warning. Within hours, protests – many in working‑class areas – spread to dozens of cities across Iran. Security forces responded with live ammunition, killing at least several hundred people over the course of a few days; Amnesty International documented over 300 deaths, and Iranian and international NGOs say the real toll may have been higher, with thousands arrested and tortured.
Everyone is waiting to see if the new policy provokes comparable reactions. Unsurprisingly, hardline IRGC-aligned Mashregh News calls the three-tiered scheme “an important and vital step towards making fuel prices reasonable, reducing unregulated consumption, and reducing fuel smuggling, which was either not done in previous governments or was done in a hasty and disjointed manner.” The outlet adds that “The reactions and analysis of public opinion towards this news were positive.” Maybe not so much: Tasnim News – also IRGC-affiliated – headlines its analysis thus: “Unjust and unprofessional decision to eliminate gasoline quota for new-license cars,” criticizing not the policy per se but its implementation.
Then there’s real criticism: moderate-reformist Rouydad24 analyzes the reactions on Twitter, noting that “the government itself does not have a clear logic for this decision,” going on to accuse officials of a damaging lack of transparency.
Iran’s Execution Frenzy
Iran carries out four executions a day. An article by MBN’s Dalshad Hussein, entitled “Execution… Iran’s Weapon Against the Next Generation,” this week reports that executions in Iran have surged to levels not seen since the late 1980s, with over 1,500 people reportedly put to death thus far in 2025. Data from the DC-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran shows that Iranian authorities executed 194 people in November alone.
Rights groups argue that the death penalty is being weaponized to intimidate a restive, youthful society rather than to deliver justice. The MBN article looks at individual cases of Kurdish teenagers to illustrate how the regime’s policy targets minors, marginalized communities, and those associated with the nationwide uprising in 2022-23 sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa (Jina) Amini after her arrest by the morality police, which rallied around the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ and demanded an end to compulsory hijab and wider repression.
The MBN article centers on Jilan, a 17‑year‑old from Mahabad, who was arrested near a protest in 2022, sentenced to death without meaningful legal defense, and executed without his family being notified or given his body. His father describes bribing officials just to see his son once, learning of the execution only via a brief court phone call, and ultimately fleeing to Iraqi Kurdistan for fear of further persecution.
A parallel case is that of Omid Rahmani, who was arrested at 16 in Urmia and recounts months of torture, coerced confessions about “Western instigation,” and a near‑certain life sentence before his family paid for a temporary release that allowed him to escape abroad. Such stories are typical of a broader pattern in which teenagers involved in protests face charges such as murder or national security offenses that carry capital punishment.
Activists interviewed by MBN argue that minors are deliberately targeted because they were in the forefront of the 2022 uprising, and that many death sentences are disguised as ordinary criminal cases, especially in the ethnic minority Kurdish and Baloch regions. Under Iranian law, criminal responsibility is tied to “religious puberty,” set at nine lunar years for girls (about 8.7 years) and fifteen lunar years for boys (about 14.6 years).
Three by Three
In this section, I share some of the most eye-catching stories from different Persian-language outlets in the past week.
Photo: Reuters
President preaches kindness: At a family‑values conference in Tehran entitled “Family, Future, Sustainable Bonds,” President Masoud Pezeshkian told an audience that “you cannot change society with threats and orders,” and that people who want to reform society must first reform themselves and treat opponents as interlocutors, not enemies. This happened the same day as the sentencing of film director Jafar Panahi. The president also observed that “people in society have different tastes and opinions, and we must learn to tolerate these differences. This rule is also true in married life and political interactions. We should not see each other as enemies because of differences of opinion.”
Sports vs. diplomacy: Iran’s football federation said it would boycott tomorrow’s 2026 World Cup draw in Washington, D.C. after the U.S. refused visas to several members of its delegation, including federation president Mehdi Taj. This announcement might be walked back. The World Cup will run for a historic 39 days next June and July, with a record 48 teams competing across 16 host cities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
Subsidies go digital: Iran’s monthly cash stipends for its poorest remain stuck at the equivalent of only a few U.S. dollars a month, despite much higher prices for food, rent, and fuel. Under a new scheme, there will be a minor increase via an electronic ration top‑up provided to low‑income households and usable only with a card in designated shops for a narrow basket of food and essentials. The new cards may lighten grocery bills a bit, but because the credit cannot be withdrawn as cash or spent on rent, transport, or medicine, the new policy underscores how tightly the state now steers everyday choices instead of simply raising people’s real incomes.
