Table of Contents
- Double Life of a Hardline Enforcer
- What the Wedding Video Revealed
- Public and Political Backlash
- Hypocrisy at the Highest Levels?
- Sanctions, Power, and Privilege
- Sources
Double Life of a Hardline Enforcer
In a stunning turn of events, Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani—one of Iran’s most powerful and morally rigid officials—has been thrust into the center of a national scandal after a private wedding video of his daughter went viral.
Shamkhani, who until recently served as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and currently acts as the Supreme Leader’s representative to the National Defense Council, has long been known for enforcing strict Islamic codes, especially against women. Yet the leaked footage from April 2025 paints a starkly different picture of his private life.
What the Wedding Video Revealed
The video, shared widely on social media over the weekend, shows Shamkhani walking his daughter Setayesh down the aisle in a Western-style ceremony—an uncommon practice in traditional Iranian weddings, where bride and groom typically enter together.
More controversially, Setayesh wore a strapless, low-cut gown that exposed her cleavage, while Shamkhani’s wife appeared in a revealing blue lace dress with an open back. Female guests were seen without hijabs, directly contradicting the very laws Shamkhani helped enforce with brutal crackdowns.
“Their bride is in a palace, our bride is buried under the ground,” wrote Iranian women’s rights activist Ellie Omidvari, referencing the hundreds killed during the 2022 protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.
Public and Political Backlash
The fallout has been swift and severe. Reformist newspaper Shargh ran a front-page headline calling Shamkhani “Buried Under Scandal.” On Clubhouse, veterans of the Iran-Iraq War and political commentators demanded his resignation and a public apology.
Even state-aligned media couldn’t ignore the controversy. Tasnim News Agency, linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), acknowledged that “the lifestyle of officials in the Islamic Republic must be defensible”—though it also criticized the leak as an invasion of privacy.
Hypocrisy at the Highest Levels?
Critics argue this incident exposes deep hypocrisy within Iran’s ruling elite. “The regime officials themselves have no belief in their own laws that they support—they only want to make people’s lives miserable,” said journalist Amir Hossein Mosalla on social media.
Omid Memarian of DAWN, a Washington-based Middle East policy group, called it “hypocrisy in its purest form.” He pointed out that while ordinary Iranians face raids on private gatherings deemed “un-Islamic,” top officials appear to live by entirely different rules.
Sanctions, Power, and Privilege
Shamkhani’s influence extends far beyond domestic policy. The U.S. sanctioned him in 2020 for his role in Iran’s security apparatus and for allegedly running a vast shipping empire with his sons—facilitating oil transfers between Iran, Russia, and China despite international sanctions.
His wealth was on full display at the opulent wedding, held amid an economic crisis that has left many young Iranians unable to afford marriage. The contrast between elite extravagance and public hardship has only fueled anger.
Adding to the drama, Shamkhani survived an Israeli missile strike on his luxury Tehran penthouse during the June 2025 Iran-Israel conflict. His defiant social media post—“Bastards, I’m still alive!”—now reads as both a survival boast and an ironic commentary on his current predicament.
