New Delhi: ‘Buried under scandal,’ screamed the headline of an Iranian newspaper that featured a front-page photo of Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, a powerful national security figure of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei regime.
That was after a wedding video of Shamkhani’s daughter surfaced on social media in which she is seen without covering her head and donning a strapless gown.
The bride’s wedding dress and the lavish celebrations have triggered outrage and accusations of hypocrisy at the highest levels of power in Iran, where dress codes of women are strictly imposed by the so-called morality police.
In the video, Shamkhani escorts his daughter Setayesh down the aisle, a break from Iranian tradition in favor of a Western-style ceremony. The bride’s low-cut, strapless white gown, and the blue lace gown with an open back of Shamkhani’s wife were slammed as ‘revealing’.
Several other women in the footage appear without headscarves, whose absence or improper dressing can lead to cases like that of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini. The opulence of the event, held in a palatial hall, also stood in stark contrast to the economic desperation many Iranians face.
Considered as a long-time confidant of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Shamkhani is one of Iran’s leading strategists. He had escaped an attack on his residence on the first day of the Iran-Israel war in June.
The video footage from the wedding that took place in April has generated a swift and severe backlash. According to The New York Times, on the social media app Clubhouse, a group of political analysts and Iran-Iraq War veterans demanded Shamkhani’s resignation and a public apology.
For many, the video is not just a matter of personal indiscretion but a symbol of systemic hypocrisy within Iran’s ruling elite. Shamkhani, who once led the enforcement of Iran’s strict morality laws and oversaw violent crackdowns on anti-hijab protests, is now seen celebrating in the very style his regime punishes others for.
“The same regime that killed #MahsaAmini for showing a bit of her hair, jails women for singing, whose hired 80,000 “morality police” to drag girls into vans, throws itself a luxury party. This isn’t hypocrisy, it’s the system (sic),” Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad wrote on ‘X’. “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.”
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. This video made millions of Iranian furious. Because they… https://t.co/MAb9hNgBnN pic.twitter.com/WoRgbpXQFA
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 19, 2025
Women’s rights activist Ellie Omidvari posted a stark comparison, referencing the deadly 2022 protests following the death of Amini while in the custody of Iran’s morality police. “Their bride is in a palace. Our bride is buried under the ground.”
Criticism has even emerged from within conservative media. Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, condemned the video as damaging to the Islamic Republic’s image, while also cautioning against the ethics of leaking private footage. Nonetheless, it acknowledged: “The lifestyle of officials in the Islamic Republic must be defensible.”
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Importance of Shamkhani
Shamkhani remains a central figure in Iran’s security and political establishment. A former commander of both the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy and the Iranian Navy, he served as Defense Minister and, until May 2023, spent a decade as Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. The 70-year-old was also a chief negotiator in nuclear talks with the US.
His personal wealth and extensive influence have long raised eyebrows. U.S. sanctions imposed in 2020 targeted Shamkhani and his sons, accusing them of operating a shipping enterprise that helped Iran and Russia circumvent sanctions by exporting oil to China. Critics allege that Shamkhani’s opposition to the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal stemmed from the profits his family reaped under current sanctions.
Following the leaked video, many Iranians are revisiting Shamkhani’s role in the regime’s crackdowns, particularly during the 2022 nationwide uprising. At the time, he reportedly told a lawmaker, “We will attack them until they return home,” referring to demonstrators who defied the government’s hijab rules.
“This video made millions of Iranians furious,” Alinejad wrote in her tweet. “Because they enforce Islamic values with bullets, batons, and prisons on everyone but themselves.”
The usual suspect
In his first public response, Shamkhani lashed out at his critics with a defiant message to state media: “As I said earlier: Hey you bastards, I’m still alive”, referencing a line from the 1973 film ‘Papillon’ that he previously invoked after surviving in June.
The same phrase appeared again on his official ‘X’ account this time posted in Hebrew that too, in a move widely interpreted as an accusation of Israeli involvement in the release of the footage. According to news channel Iran International, the leak coincided with cryptic posts from an ‘X’ account believed to be linked to Israel’s Mossad.
In the wake of the scandal, the state-aligned media quickly moved to shield Shamkhani from mounting criticism. The IRGC-affiliated Javan newspaper asserted that the event did not involve “alcohol or moral corruption,” citing unnamed eyewitnesses who described Shamkhani’s conduct as “proper and acceptable.” The paper also warned that any focus on “personal ethical or behavioral misconduct” was off-limits.
Others in Iran’s conservative establishment went further, framing the leak as an act of foreign aggression. Ezzatollah Zarghami, the former head of Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB, compared the exposure of the video to “a new form of Israeli assassination.”
Moderate cleric Mohammad-Ali Abtahi downplayed the content of the footage, insisting it simply showed unveiled women in a segregated, women-only section of the venue. Similarly, Tehran mayoral adviser Abdullah Ganji labeled the leak “immoral,” calling it a case of “revenge by any means.”
(Edited by Tony Rai)