Located at one of Iran’s busiest intersections, the Vali Asr billboard has been a key venue for projecting and promoting the regime messaging of the Islamic Republic since 2015. With its unique ability to frequently change its images, unlike the more traditional painted murals populating Iran’s urban landscape, the Vali Asr billboard has the capacity to convey a wide-range of regime messages tailor-made for a variety of domestic and international events, whether foreseen or unforeseen, from national holidays to the outbreak of Covid-19. This article assesses how the Vali Asr billboard’s unique features and design style allow it to present a mix of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ propaganda and succeed in attracting public engagement with its images. Through a close analysis of the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Qassem Suleimani (d. 2020), a series of murals unveiled during the holy month of Muharram in 2020, and a controversy around the 2018 World Cup, the article argues that the Vali Asr billboard is a unique communicative medium and potent tool for regime cultural producers in Iran’s twenty-first century media landscape.
Since his assassination in January 2020, the image of Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani, killed in a US drone strike at the Baghdad airport, has become an integral part of visual iconography in Iran. His immortalisation across the visual landscape of the Islamic Republic follows a familiar pattern where ever since the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) those venerated as martyrs have been prominently displayed in public (Flaskerud 2012). But times have changed since the time-consuming art of depicting martyrs on large-scale painted murals during wartime Iran. As early as 5 January 2020, only two days after his assassination, a massive billboard dedicated to Suleimani appeared in a central Tehran intersection (Figure 1). The billboard captured the stature and poise for which the widely popular general was known: a serious man in solemn contemplation, preoccupied over the challenges of the Iranian nation that presumably weighed on his conscience (Tasnim News 2020a). His face appeared alone against an all-red backdrop, above a slogan that implicitly asks for revenge for the blood that was spilled. Despite the immense respect Suleimani garnered, the mythology that surrounded his reputation, and the insistence by the regime that his death would be avenged, the billboard barely lasted a week. It was soon replaced with another one, this time in memory of the 240 victims of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 (Figure 2) that had mistakenly been shot down by the Iranian government several days prior (Tasnim News 2020b). The sudden switch from a mural seeking-out vengeance for an iconic figure of the regime to empathy over an unspeakable tragedy for which the regime bore responsibility is not as surprising as it may first appear. Aside from both murals commemorating the recently deceased, the mural hanging from a building at the Vali Asr intersection – one of Tehran’s busiest – was intended by design to be fluid and mutable, able to rollout a new image and message at a moment’s notice, whether in response to an unforeseen international event, in commemoration of an important national affair, or in support of national unity.1 This enterprising potential of the billboard once again became evident a few weeks later when the call for national unity switched to advocate perseverance amidst the worsening situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic (Schwartz and Gölz 2020b). The Vali Asr billboard’s dynamic capability to frequently change its content in one of Tehran’s busiest intersections makes it a unique communicative medium and potent tool for regime cultural producers for two reasons. First, the billboard’s prominence in Vali Asr Square establishes it as a massive symbol of regime power, but one that is ideologically flexible, even ambiguous, in the images it presents. Despite its mural-like appearance and stature, the billboard is free from the ideological constraints faced by the murals populating Iranian cities, especially in the capital of Tehran. Many of the murals depicting the core ideological messages of the Islamic Republic, like martyrdom or anti-Americanism, do so through the dogmatic, pretentious, and heavyhanded style of ‘hard propaganda.’ Despite the sometimes laughable doctrinarism of this type of propaganda, it nonetheless remains a necessity for the regime’s self-presentation to the Iranian populace and the world.
Moreover, as Huang (2015, 435) has noted, hard propaganda that seeks to surround ‘society with pompous and resource-consuming propaganda messages and activities’ is often intended to signal the regime’s ‘strength in social control and capacity to meet potential challenges.’ It is the many notable examples of the hard propaganda style that have gained widespread international notoriety: skulls and bombs replacing the stars and stripes of the American flag and any of the murals (previous or current) displayed on the walls of the former US embassy in Tehran. But such notoriety can also act as a constraint. These types of murals are recognised as representing Islamic Republic ideology for both domestic and global audiences – no matter how dismissive either audience may be of the actual content – and serve as a barometer for the regime’s capability of projecting ideological consistency and power at home and abroad. The perseverance of these murals, as well as the compulsion to create similar ones, are thus paramount. As such, core messages of the regime expressed in murals are difficult to change; the substance can only be adapted slowly as times change. The billboard-cum-mural at Vali Asr Square, by contrast, is under significantly less constraints as it is meant to change its image with frequency. This flexibility allows the billboard to diversify its messaging and often employ a sleeker and subtler style of ‘soft propaganda,’ an approach that is more likely to positively impact passers-by via themes connected to sport, national holidays, and community belonging (Huang 2015). This does not mean the Vali Asr billboard has dispensed with anti-American themes and other overtly pro-regime tropes altogether, but rather it is able to toggle back-and-forth between hard and soft propaganda whenever it chooses, something a traditional mural cannot. Second, the billboard’s dominating presence in one of Tehran’s most heavily-trafficked squares has created an engaging discourse with which the public can participate. The billboard does not simply change its images with frequency, but often does so under the cover of night and with little advance notice, creating a sense of anticipation for the arrival date and subject matter of a new image (Figure 3; Tasnim News 2020c). When the billboard does change, its images and messages are not confined to the physical location at the Vali Asr intersection, but rather enter a ‘second space’ that is open to discussion and participation. The billboard’s new image is promoted by the regimeaffiliated media company responsible for the design, shared across multiple social media platforms, and circulated by state-sponsored media outlets, all of which may be accompanied by commentary on the billboard’s topic, style, and message. Those social media users sharing and commenting on the images do not comprise a particular cross-section of Iranian society. Among them are obvious supporters and opponents of the regime, Iranians living abroad, journalists and academics in the West, and those whose identity is anonymous.
The high-level of diversified engagement with statesponsored content is indicative of what Gregory Asmolov (2019, 13) calls ‘participatory propaganda,’ whose goal is ‘to increase the scope of participation in relation to the object of propaganda.’ As Asmolov (2019, 7) notes, much of the success of participatory propaganda can be traced to twenty-first-century digital technologies and the fact that ‘propaganda distribution, consumption, and participation often share the same platform and are mediated by the same digital devices.’ In the case of the Vali Asr billboard, its vast online reach is as much the result of its promotion by Owj Art and Media Organisation (the cultural producer responsible for its maintenance) and other regime affiliates, as it is by the general public’s willingness to circulate its latest images, even by simply sharing, liking, or re-tweeting without commentary. Whether a particular user is an avid supporter of the Iranian regime (or not) matters little. What matters most is the user’s participation in circulating a regime-sponsored cultural product that contributes to an increase in its spread and, ultimately, a greater socialisation to its content (Asmolov 2019, 13–14). The strong participatory aspect of sharing content from the Vali Asr billboard partially stems from its less overt and direct association with the regime. For one, as discussed above, the Vali Asr billboard is not always inclined to present the regime’s core ideologies in a heavy-handed manner, but opts instead for more benign tropes. The soft propaganda style of many of these images, despite still being the work of a regimeaffiliated design company, makes it easier for the images to be shared online by non-regime supporters since its political or ideological message cannot be interpreted as necessarily pro-regime. More to the point, the Vali Asr billboard is less obviously associated with regime sponsorship in the same way as other venues hosting and circulating regime-friendly content. By contrast, when regime-friendly media outlets and governmental organisations, including the Office of the Supreme Leader, circulate visual content online, they do so from their official websites. Images are often tagged with the office or organisation responsible for creating the image, making the link between the political prerogatives of the producer and content clear. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a number of new companies seeking to professionalise the propaganda techniques of poster and mural production as well as graphic design. A prominent example is the aforementioned Owj Art and Media Organisation (founded in 2011), which acts as an umbrella organisation for numerous agencies and media producers and is particularly involved in the fields of film and design. Owj is associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) but acts as a private company. Equipped with a large budget, yet not directly embedded in the state’s organisational structure, Owj established itself during the last decade as a flexible player in the media landscape of the Islamic Republic of Iran. They hold film festivals, participate in television and film programming, organise billboard campaigns, and generate themselves as cultural promoters in Iran. This provides the agency with multiple opportunities to creatively pursue its messaging campaigns in an interconnected manner across a variety of platforms. In other words, its cultural productions are not limited to a single specific venue, such as the Vali Asr billboard, but transgress common boundaries between different forms. The result is that a particular message campaign on one platform can inform (or be informed by) motifs presented on another platform, often creating an overall image of cultural synergy across film, television, and graphic design.2 In the field of graphic design, companies like Owj, Khattmedia, or Studio3x4 represent a younger generation of pro-regime cultural producers, both on the level of management and design production equipped with a nuanced understanding of advertising and entertainment. They often dedicate themselves to replacing the sometimes tiresome sight of hard propaganda in the public sphere with more timely visual iconography and cutting-edge designs. In an interview in 2013, the director of the graphic design company Studio3x4, Ali Hayati, left no doubt as to his intentions when developing new campaigns for the Tehran public sphere. According to Hayati, except for a few old murals of martyrs in need of renovation, there exists no propaganda conveying the true meaning of the Islamic Revolution (Rajanews 2013). Anthropologist Narges Bajoghli has identified the major challenge for pro-regime Iranian cultural producers as the inability to rely on people’s personal memories of the foundational period of the Islamic Republic. According to the 2016 census, approximately 62% of Iran’s population was under the age of 40, meaning a majority of the Iranian population do not hold memories of the revolution of 1978–79 or the eight-year war with neighbouring Iraq, and are thus less likely to identify with the traumatic and formative experiences of that decade (Bajoghli 2017, 61). As a result, new but conservative regime-affiliated agencies more adaptive to the conditions of the social media age and operating with greater ease on platforms like Instagram and Telegram command a high presence. The emergence of this trend among regime-friendly cultural producers partially stems from the role played by new media during the 2009 presidential elections and the social media success of the Green Movement during postelection protests in garnering widespread international attention and sympathy (Tabaar 2018, 236–41). The IRGC later recognised the role played by social media and new tools for spreading information in challenging the state during and after the elections (Tabaar 2018, 238). The need for a younger pro-regime generation to win people’s hearts and minds through a professionalisation of cultural production that can compete in the social media era is now paramount (Bajoghli 2019). The billboard at Vali Asr in many ways embodies these attitudes, methods, and aspirations of the new regime producers seeking to operate in a dynamic media environment, where the state has less of a monopoly over information sources compared to the age of traditional media. By mixing different types of propaganda and promoting their content online, the regime-affiliated designers of the Vali Asr billboard have strived to make regime content more relevant in a competitive media environment. But offline and online visibility comes at a cost: being so prominently displayed in a major Tehran intersection and across social media subjects the billboard to commentary, analysis, and critique far beyond their prescribed intentions and messages. If the designers behind the Vali Asr billboard wished to capitalise on the power of the billboard to project a new type of propaganda, they must also contend with the challenges accompanying it. REIMAGINING THE MARTYR ANEW3 The Vali Asr billboard is part of Tehran’s expansive mural landscape built-up in the early days of the Islamic Republic to propagate the triumph of the revolution and promote its Islamic character (Chehabi and Christia 2008). In discussing the general matrix of postrevolutionary murals, Gruber (2008) has noted how the thematic focus of murals has shifted over time to better correspond to the dominant political events or trends of the day. The Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), for example, witnessed murals with an overwhelming focus on martyrdom whereas the tenure of reformist president Muhammad Khatami (1997–2005) saw a surge in murals more inclined to the liberal theme of ‘beautification’ (zībā-sāzī) (Zarkar 2016; Bombardier 2013). Likewise, Ulrich Marzolph (2013) has written how the image of the martyr’s body has ‘faded’ in more recent murals, having shifted from realistic, sometimes violent, depictions to ones more abstract and surreal. He posits this is largely due to the fact that younger generations, who are too young to have contributed to the Revolution and war effort or recall the early phase of the Islamic Republic at all, are turned-off by the more traditional and visceral depictions of martyrs. Such slow changes, juxtaposed with the rapid change in Iran’s age structure during the previous decades, indicate how the myth of the martyr is becoming increasingly difficult to convey. At the same time, it is a myth that requires preservation precisely because it is one on which the Islamic Republic is largely founded. At the time of the Revolution, narratives of the Battle of Karbala were reinterpreted as a call to active struggle, while during the Iran-Iraq War, a new repertoire of martyrs were created on whose memory the regime’s ideology came to be based (Ram 1994, 61–92). The dynamic handling of Qassem Suleimani’s death on the Vali Asr billboard shows how the theme of martyrdom can be reinterpreted and communicated in a new way. It demonstrates the ability of the mural to offer a flexible commentary on regime ideology in a manner that traditional or surrealist depictions of martyrs may not. Exactly one month after his sudden death, a second mural dedicated to Suleimani appeared on the Vali Asr billboard (Figure 4). The image depicts Suleimani, who had by then already been widely celebrated as a martyr, in the centre of the frame offering a military salute (IQNA 2020). Situated behind him are men, women, and children representing different strata of Iranian society. Most of those depicted are on the more youthful side, reflecting both the age structure of the population and hinting at the mural’s most sought-after audience. In imitation of the general, they have adopted the same military salute and pose.
A closer look at this second depiction of Suleimani demonstrates how the billboard can deploy the myth of the martyr anew. Flanked by members of society and amidst symbolic gestures meant to make his sacrifice one of imitable heroism, the billboard encodes the image of the martyr in subtle and inventive ways, taking a ‘soft propaganda’ approach meant to elicit greater national unity. It is important to recognise that such a depiction of the prowess and stature of Suleimani did not suddenly appear following his death and designation as a martyr, rather it was cultivated and reinforced throughout his life in television documentaries, music videos, and other forms of media. During the latter stages of his career, especially during Iran’s involvement in Syria and battle against ISIS, Suleimani’s popularity soared throughout Iran: he was often viewed as a humble and selfless national hero, both on account of his willingness to defend and protect the Iranian nation as well as someone who did not harbour any political ambitions. According to a 2019 poll conducted by the University of Maryland, Suleimani was the most popular political figure in Iran among those tested, with eight in ten viewing him favourably (Gallagher, Mohseni, and Ramsay 2019, 36). By the time of his appearance on the Vali Asr billboard, his notoriety and popularity as an iconic figure in Iran was well-established. His designation as a martyr on the billboard reinforced a status and image that had been previously cultivated. At first glance, the mural represents a typical example of some of the more theoretical aspects of martyrdom. Martyrs, like Suleimani here, are often portrayed as the epitome of integrity, decency, and morality and meant to symbolise the highest standards of their community. To the living, they serve as reminders of the values for which they died and thus have a disciplining effect on all members of society, urging them (at least ideally) to honour the deceased through self-restraint and fulfiling their obligations for society (Gölz 2019). All members of society must respond to this call and ‘Step forward together, with one voice: Our Beloved Eternal Iran,’ as the writing on the billboard stipulates.4 As evidenced by their standing at attention in military salute, the billboard indicates that members of Iranian society are ready to participate in this indispensable mobilisation. Just as the idealised martyr Suleimani died in defending his belief system while defying the belief system of his enemy – an act all martyrs are seen to fulfill – members of Iranian society are asked to do the same. Remarkably, the congregation of people standing behind Suleimani includes women with and without the chador, the full-body garment propagated in Iran as the most appropriate clothing for women. This is a notable feature since, from a strict and conservative Islamic point of view, women with incorrect veiling are also being depicted. Nor is there any spatial segregation among women and men, a circumstance that applies to some of the Vali Asr billboard’s other murals but is extremely atypical in more traditional representations of the Islamic Republic’s ideology, where gender segregation and the supposedly appropriate Islamic dress of women is usually emphasised. As will be discussed below, different murals on the Vali Asr billboard have been criticised for upholding stereotypical depictions of women and their societal roles, an unsurprising development since what constitutes the appropriate moral order in Iran, as defined in terms of the clothing regulations for women and gender segregation, has been constantly contested and renegotiated since the founding of the Islamic Republic. But in this case, rather than conceal such differences, the billboard embraces them, demonstrating how the martyrdom of Suleimani can be used as an opportunity to address all of society and unite its heterogeneous members. Furthermore, despite the variety of individuals represented in the background, there is no cleric depicted, a noticeable absence for a regime dominated by clerical figures since the founding of the Islamic Republic. This absence could be explained from the perspective of Shiʿi theology: either one seeks the way of martyrdom on behalf of the community, or one remains in the background as a religious scholar and contributes to making this world as godly as possible by guiding others.5 From this point of view, clerics need not be addressed by the example of the martyr, but could stand, as it were, outside (but not excluded from) the frame. Another plausible reason for the lack of a clerical presence is to visually divorce the billboard’s message of national unity from the regime itself. The two most utilised images associated with the regime and often appearing in murals of martyrs are those of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, but they too are absent. Offered up instead are a panoply of Iranian flags waving in the background. There is no major reference to the Islamic character of the nation. Nonetheless, the nature of the state has already been defined by the martyr himself: the fact that Suleimani is venerated as a martyr is sufficient to establish the regime as a reference point, while at once hiding this fact behind a seemingly non-ideological call for national unity. For this reason, those standing behind Suleimani, like those seeing the billboard, need not be asked to step forward together for the Islamic Republic, but for Iran. The desire to depict Suleimani as a heroic martyr amongst the people, rather than one openly associated with the regime, is further conveyed by the inclusion of a small boy in the right corner of the frame. He is the only person in the frame not offering a salute, instead making a ‘T’ sign with his hand, a signal that became popular after the killing of Suleimani. The meaning of the hand gesture is that while American soldiers may arrive vertically (i.e. in the air), they will be sent home horizontally (i.e. dead). The boy is wearing a red headband reading ‘yā muntaqim,’ which hints at one of the names of Allah (al-Muntaqim, ‘The Avenger’) and a desire for revenge. The headband harkens back to the mobilisation of volunteers willing to sacrifice themselves for the nation, as occurred during the war with Iraq in the 1980s. Gesturing at once to martyrs of an earlier struggle and the willing martyrs of a current one, the boy symbolises the future martyrs of Iran’s past. As the idealised and innocent virgin martyr, who can connect previous national struggles to contemporary ones, he is a fixture of Iran’s contemporary history and a constant ‘face in the crowd’ among the rest of society. Standing beside Suleimani as a ‘living’ martyr, he further cements the billboard’s overall message of framing the general’s martyrdom in terms of ongoing national unity, struggle, and sacrifice. By portraying Suleimani’s martyrdom in this manner, the Vali Asr billboard displays its ability to flexibly encode a core ideology in a more inventive and subtler way, foregoing much of the tired symbolism found in murals elsewhere. It can transform a topic like martyrdom – typically understood as an overt political display of hard propaganda – to a sleeker display of soft propaganda. The core ideology remains but it is redeployed anew.
The lines between hard and soft propaganda are further blurred through the billboards capacity of telling a story. Its murals are not only able to respond to contemporary processes, but can offer interpretations that relate these processes to ideological narratives. A vivid example of the billboard’s storytelling abilities can be found in a series of four murals displayed during the holy month of Muharram in 2020. Shiʿi Islam traces its origins to the idea that the charismatic and politicalreligious authority of the Prophet Muhammad was passed on to his descendants in a direct line via the marriage of his daughter Fatima with Ali b. Abi Talib. The political reality in the decades following the death of the Prophet in 632 CE, however, looked different. In Damascus, Muawiyah b. Abi Sufyan from the Umayyad family attained considerable power and eventually took on the title of caliph. In 680 the hopes of the Alid (proto-Shiʿa) faction rested on the Prophet’s grandson Husayn b. Ali, who lived in Mecca. In the month of Muharram of that year, the decisive battle of Karbala took place, in which the forces of caliph Yazid b. Muawiyah prevailed against the Prophet’s descendant and his retinue. Husayn was killed on ‘Ashura,’ the 10th day of the month. Since then, Ashura constitutes the most holy day in the Shiʿi calendar and the whole month of Muharram has been considered a period of mourning for Shiʿi Muslims. The battle represents not only the politically formative moment of Shiʿi religious doctrine in Islam, but defines the theological origin of the Shiʿi ethos of martyrdom. During Muharram 2020, a sequence of four murals reactivated the story of Karbala and connected it to the political realities of contemporary Iran. At the beginning of the month, a mural appeared with the simple slogan ‘We are Imam Husayn’s nation,’ artfully rendered in calligraphy (Figure 5; Mashregh News 2020). The appearance of such a slogan during the holy month is hardly atypical in the Islamic Republic of Iran since the reference represents and signifies the state’s religious self-image as a Shiʿi nation. However, the fact that this statement was intended to signify more than the religious character of the Islamic Republic is implied in the slogan appearing below in green lettering: ‘My whole life should be like his.’ The meaning of such a phrase would become clear two evenings before Ashura, when a new mural entitled ‘In the Fight’ was unveiled. This one showed a painting of Husayn surrounded by enemies, fighting alongside his half-brother Abbas in a hopeless battle (Figure 6; Mehr News 2020). With the appearance of the second mural, the meaning of ‘We are Imam Husayn’s nation’ is clarified. The slogan is no longer meant as a simple reference to the Shiʿi character of Iran or the nation’s steadfast adherence to the historical figure of Husayn. Rather, the graphic depiction of the battle of Karbala and its emphasis on the ‘Prince of Martyrs,’ as the grandson of the Prophet is prominently referred to in Iran, being surrounded by enemies is meant to signify the need to resist one’s enemies, hardships, and crises (Schwartz and Gölz 2020b). To strive as the ‘nation of Imam Husayn’ and live one’s ‘whole life like his’ is much more than a matter of belief. It is a call to action to fight one’s rivals. ‘Back-to-back and shattering ranks, who would be a rival to match [them] one-on-one?’ the caption on the mural comments. With the simple presentation of two subsequent murals on a symbolic date, the Vali Asr billboard linked the mythological core narrative of Shiʿi Islam to the supposed realities of the present. Together they tell the story of a nation that finds itself surrounded by enemies but prepared to fight. Appearing in 2020 – amidst US President Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign, severe international sanctions, cyber warfare, and targeted assassinations – the reference to Iran’s rivals would be unmistakable. Indeed, the power of such a messaging campaign and its ability to succeed partially lies in the extent to which it can resonate with current events.
The billboard’s message shifted again at the end of the month when a mural appeared with the new slogan ‘We are a nation of martyrdom’ (Figure 7; Fars News 2020a). This slogan is certainly similar to the one that appeared on the first Muharram mural (‘We are Imam Husayn’s nation’) but significantly less subtle in its construction. The slogan is meant to connect Iran as a nation to the ‘Prince of Martyrs’ Imam Husayn and once again build upon the idea that the path of Husayn is one of action and potential martyrdom, not just association (Gölz 2019). The fact that the Muharram murals are unmistakably connected and must be understood as a joint project is made clear by the caption appearing below the main slogan: ‘We are a nation of martyrdom. We are Imam Husayn’s nation.
The final billboard of the Muharram quartet appeared a few days later with a mural depicting a canon of Islamic Republic protagonists revered as martyrs, including Qassem Suleimani and a generic female health care worker likely symbolising the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic (Figure 8; Fars News 2020b).6 The building logic of the billboard – developed over a series of four murals – is now undeniably clear: to be deserving of the moniker ‘Imam Husayn’s nation’ means to pursue a path of action and follow the examples set by these national martyrs. If there was any ambiguity about the precise meaning of what it means to be a ‘nation of martyrs’ this billboard laid it to rest with the timing of its appearance. Not only did the billboard appear at the end of Muharram but also at the beginning of ‘Sacred Defense Week,’ the annual event meant to recognise and revere those martyrs who died during the Iran-Iraq War. By understanding all four murals of the Muharram series as a continuum, the connection between the idea of martyrdom as a core element of regime ideology and contemporary politics is apparent. The billboard transformed a time of religious contemplation and mourning into a political programme. The first mural sought to establish the nation as one connected to a historical event through the soft propaganda technique of calligraphy and an innocent slogan stating the religiosity of the Islamic Republic as a Shiʿi country. But this attitude slowly transformed to convey a message on the importance of individual sacrifice in contemporary society by utilising the hard propaganda style as seen in traditional martyrdom murals throughout the Islamic Republic. Thinking of all four murals together as a collective propaganda project points to how regime producers can use storytelling to blur the lines between religious mourning and collective action, between historical events and contemporary politics, and between techniques of soft and hard propaganda to promote a core element of the Islamic Republic’s messaging: the propagation of individual sacrifice for the country as heroic ideal. Such a technique is not new for regime cultural producers, but has been used since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War and utilised in other mediums, such as television and film. The Vali Asr billboard represents a continuity with this tradition, one in which it can participate due to its flexibility in changing images, unlike more traditional murals, but also an advancement. Whereas television and film require consumers to seek out regime storytelling, the Vali Asr billboard has brought it directly to ‘the street’. Cognisant of its place in the tradition of regime cultural producers, despite its clear capabilities to overtake them, the designers decided to pay homage to the artists and designers of an earlier era by stylising the final billboard in the motif of a traditional mural and even depicting the labour that went into ‘producing’ it. Of course, the current media producers have taken the traditional mural motif one step further by repackaging it with super sharp graphics, highly saturated colours, and a style much closer to the aesthetics of consumerism found in advertising. The Muharram sequence of murals is not merely notable for articulating a coherent and accessible story of national unity and sacrifice through the blurring of hard and soft propaganda techniques. After the replacement of the slogan ‘We are Imam Husayn’s nation’ with the battle of Karbala mural, Owj published a video that presented the overnight change of murals as a communal event. The video depicts the changeover as being eagerly awaited by onlookers in a religiously charged atmosphere (Owj Art and Media Organisation 2020).7 The video is an example of how the designers of this series of murals did not restrict their storytelling techniques to the content of the Vali Asr billboard itself, but extended it into the virtual world of social media. By releasing the video, Owj made its desire known to exert greater control over the meaning and interpretation of the billboard’s murals by seeking to tell the story of how the images are received.
Despite the best efforts of the billboard’s organisers to regulate how its images are received, either through online circulation or ‘offline’ events, as seen above, the billboard has at times faced harsh public backlash. This was no better seen than in the controversy surrounding a series of images in the summer of 2018 during the lead-up to the World Cup, football’s premier competition. Football has long been an area of contestation among different segments of Iranian society dating back to the sport’s introduction into the country through engagement with Europeans and missionary schools. Already in the early-twentieth century, there was concern in some quarters about the importation of a game favoured by ‘infidels’ and the way the players’ shorts violated traditional dress codes (Chehabi 2006, 237). Later during the Pahlavi era (1925–79) football thrived on the national level and by the 1960s had become a major spectator sport (Chehabi 2006, 141). But under the Islamic Republic the sport entered a more complicated relationship with the state. While the newly installed Islamic regime was not able to stem football’s popularity, they were able to restrict access to it, most notably in 1981 when women were banned from entering stadiums to attend matches (Chehabi 2006, 246). Certain exceptions were made over the years, such as for government officials or visiting dignitaries, but these were temporary. The ongoing exclusion of women from stadiums led to the emergence of grassroots groups like Women in White Scarves and Open Stadiums advocating the rights of women to attend matches. The struggle was made famous and garnered international attention with the critically-acclaimed 2006 film Offside by Jafar Panahi, where women attempted to sneak into a football stadium dressed as men. As Shahrokni (2019) has noted, football and the issue of women entering stadiums has been a major flashpoint amongst government factions in the Islamic Republic, with both reformers and conservatives seeking to instrumentalise the issue to please their respective political bases. The ban on women attendance was finally lifted for international play in late 2019 after FIFA threatened to bar Iran from international competition – a move partially instigated by a young girl having recently immolated herself in front of a stadium – but back in 2018, with Iran’s participation in the World Cup underway, the issue was as politicised as ever and in the international spotlight (Panja 2019).
The first World Cup mural to appear on the Vali Asr billboard was unveiled on 13 June 2018. The mural depicted 15 men wearing the medals awarded to the World Cup winners and clutching the trophy in joyous celebration amidst tri-coloured confetti representing the Iranian flag, as if the nation had emerged victorious in the competition. The men appeared in varying clothes and dress, presumably in an effort to depict the different ethnic, tribal, and territorial affiliations found across the country. The slogan at the bottom read: ‘Together We Are Champions; One Nation, One Pulse’ (Figure 9; Asr-i Iran 2019). The billboard was immediately subjected to criticism and scorn across social media for failing to depict a single woman. One Iranian sports editor questioned why previous billboards had no problem including women in religious situations, but when ‘the name of Iran’s national team is raised, the presence of women is prohibited?’ (Amirpoor 2018). Zahra Nejad-Bahram, a reformist politician and member of Tehran’s city council, noted that ‘it’s a concern that in the city images of a single gender are published and half of the population – women – are forgotten’ (Kayhan London 2018). She demanded the billboard be taken down immediately. The head of Tehran’s Beautification Organisation, which is in charge of managing the city’s murals and along with Owj was responsible for the World Cup billboard, responded to the criticism by noting that the intention of the billboard was to depict the different ethnicities present on Iran’s national team, not to comment on male or female spectators (BBC Persian 2018). Nonetheless, several days later the image was replaced. This time the mural depicted members of the Iranian national team standing with members of the general population (Figure 10). The new mural included a woman, but only one (Kayhan London 2018). She was located far enough down the line making it hard to notice she was even there. Predictably, this mural too was met with criticism.
Finally, on 20 June 2018, a week after the original World Cup billboard appeared, the Vali Asr billboard operators seem to have gotten it right. The third version depicted a crowd of intermixed men and women spectators cheering on an Iranian player striking the ball in the foreground (Figure 11; ISNA 2018). The mural was greeted by general approval. Shahindokht Molaverdi, who previously served in President Rouhani’s (2013- 2021) cabinet as vice president of women and family affairs, observed that while the first two billboards had been subjected to heavy criticism, the third version displayed the gender and ethnic diversity of the national team’s supporters and demonstrates how ‘sports have the power to cross borders and unite us’ (ISNA 2018). The World Cup episode reveals a striking example of how state-sponsored propaganda in Iran is flexible enough to recalibrate its message more in line with the public when facing heavy criticism. Much like other regime cultural producers in Iran have learned, the organisers of the Vali Asr billboard witnessed the extent to which their cultural output can be subjected to new interpretations and redeployed to appear in contexts beyond what was originally intended, especially when circulating on social media (Akhavan 2013, 74–5). As the head of Tehran’s Beautification Organisation made clear amidst public criticism of the original billboard, the intention was to promote national unity around the diverse ethnic backgrounds of the national team members, and no more. But public outcry on social media, which included journalists, activists, and politicians, overlooked the rather benign message aimed at ethnic diversity and instead related the image to the hot-button issue of Iranian women’s relationship with football. Running the potential risk of seeing the Vali Asr platform being discredited despite the intentions of the designers, the organisers chose to be drawn in by the public’s criticism and leveraged one of the Vali Asr billboard’s greatest assets: its ability to quickly change its image to respond to a particular political event or social situation. The final World Cup image seems to have alleviated public criticism and returned the focus to a moment of national unity as Iran vied for glory on the global stage. The switch from an original focus on the unity of the national team to one that highlighted the unity of the spectators may have even garnered the billboard some goodwill. Coincidence or not, on 20 June 2018 – the very day the final image was unveiled – women were allowed to enter Tehran’s Azadi Stadium for the first time in 37 years and watch a livestream of Iran’s World Cup match against Spain.
The value of the Vali Asr billboard to the Iranian state – like that of any other billboard utilised for propagandistic purposes – is its ability ‘to summarize and strategically condense in short phrases and slogans otherwise lengthy policy positions and narratives articulated via mainstream media outlets’ (Terrone 2020, 42). In this way, the Vali Asr billboard is not necessarily different from the numerous murals that populate Tehran’s urban landscape: both afford the Iranian regime the visual means to present its message directly to the populace without first being filtered through the news media and shaped by journalists across the political spectrum. But the Vali Asr billboard is not your typical mural. First, it has a significantly greater capacity to respond to rapidly unfolding events. Whereas the first painted mural dedicated to the martyrdom of Suleimani did not appear until nearly a month after his death in the city of Qum, the Vali Asr billboard raised a mural in his commemoration in a matter of days. Attempting to capitalise on a news cycle dominated by Suleimani’s death, the billboard even featured Persian and English hashtags in the hopes of an increased social media presence for the regime’s message. The Vali Asr billboard very much lives in the moment. Second, because the Vali Asr billboard changes so frequently, it is able to continually diversify the type of regime messaging imparted on the viewing public in a way a painted mural cannot. The Vali Asr billboard can go from displaying examples of overt political propaganda, such as a gruesome re-imagining of an iconic American photograph (Figure 12a; Tasnim News 2015), to promoting an innocent greeting for the day of the tree and forestry (Figure 12b; SNN 2021). With the capacity to toggle between such divergent types of messages, the Vali Asr mural can mix more thematically controversial – and to many, distasteful – images with more mundane ones. While a singular focus on, say, anti-Americanism or martyrdom may lead many to dismiss the Vali Asr billboard as yet another tired example of the regime’s hard propaganda, by placing such depictions alongside more commonplace themes, such as holiday greetings, the viscerally charged and more controversial messaging becomes normalised. But any attempt to normalise the regime’s political propaganda goes beyond simply presenting it amidst less controversial and ideologically-driven images. Individual images have a role to play as well by redeploying long standing ideological tropes in inventive and subtler ways. The depiction of Suleimani’s martyrdom was encoded in such a way as to downplay his association with the regime, promote Iranian national unity, and present him as a hero of and for the people. In this way, his exceptionality as a general of the IRGC is reduced: he is a hero among the living and made accessible to all. He may appear distant due to his martyred status, but is also made to feel close by implying his heroism is imitable and achievable by everyday, ordinary citizens. It is a myth of the martyr rebranded, rendered sleek and subtle, further blurring the line between hard and soft propaganda and between regime ideology and everyday nationalism. It is but one of many examples among the Vali Asr murals where this is the case.
The question remains as to whether these attempts at national unity have been successful. A conclusive answer is hardly possible. But what can be determined with more certainty are the public reactions to newly appearing murals: lively discussions are being held about the depiction of women and the noticeable absence of clerics, such as occurred in both the Suleimani mural and one connected to the COVID-19 pandemic (Asr-i Iran 2019). These ongoing debates show that the billboard’s form of soft propaganda does not merely tell a story of top-down indoctrination, but represents a place where ideology is being articulated, newly arranged, and renegotiated in a process that includes public participation.
