Iran International
Authorities in Iran have resorted to marking the pre-Islamic Winter Solstice festival to placate the people angered by economic crisis and corruption scandals.
Iranian media reported in November that the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution (SCCR) had renamed certain events on the official calendar including the pre-Islamic winter Festival of Yalda, which millions of Iranians celebrate on the night of December 21 when winter begins.
The council which is tasked with neutralizing non-Islamic cultural influences and ideologies, among other things, had decided that the day of the Winter Solstice be referred to as "Day of Promoting the Culture of Hosting and Connecting with Relatives” in the calendar.
Family of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, remembering their daughter on the longest night of the year.
Many believed that this irrelevant name was an onslaught on the deep-rooted culture and customs of Iranians.
Iran's religious establishment and hardliners often refer to ancient festivals as "pagan" calendar events and sometimes even demand that they should be banned. But despite endless religious propaganda, ancient traditions appear to have gained more popularity since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In defiance of the regime, social media users vowed to celebrate their beloved festivals such as Yalda, which they celebrate with family and friends, with even more splendor and merry-making this year, and shared numerous jokes about the lengthy new names assigned to their cherished festivals.
Municipality billboard in Tehran Honoring Yalda
The public's reaction to the renaming of the ancient festivals was so strong that the Council's spokesman, Abbas Mirza Hosseini, had to deny the removal of the names of ancient festivals from the official calendar. He claimed that the new names were only complementary and emphasized the "national identity and Islamic-Iranian culture and civilization."
In the past few days, presumably in response to such criticism, IRIB, which has a monopoly on broadcasting in the country, has shown unprecedented interest in the celebration of Yalda. It has also aired some Yalda entertainment programs including one with stand-up comedian Hassan Reyvandi who had been persona non grata at IRIB for some time.
The municipality of Tehran and some other cities also displayed an unprecedented interest in honoring Yalda. A massive billboard in Tehran’s Vali Asr Square congratulated citizens for Yalda and municipality trucks decorated with balloons and mascots played music on the streets.
The family of a victim of last year’s protests, Erfan Khazaei, celebrated Yalda at his grave.
The celebration of Yalda on the night of Winter Solstice and the Iranian New Year (Nowrouz) on the day of Spring Equinox both date to ancient, pre-Islamic times. The non-Islamic Nowrouz is still the main calendar event for most Iranians. The strength of the Nowrouz tradition is such that even the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei makes a televised speech on that day.
Iranians send each other millions of text messages to congratulate Yalda just as they do on Nowruz, and increasingly more in recent years, Christmas and western New Year.
“I do not understand the resistance that some [in the religious and political establishment] show against elements that build culture and a sense of national identity,” former government spokesman, reformist politician and sociologist Ali Rabiei wrote in a commentary in Etemad newspaper Thursday entitled “The Indelible Yalda”.
Rabiei opined that introducing a new name for the festival in the calendar was an attempt to obscure the festival’s ancient roots through “historical transformation”. He also urged the regime to stop “engineering cultural calendar events”.
“The pressure of the people and public opinion has forced the Islamic regime to retreat repeatedly in the past 44 years in trying to ban music, short-sleeved clothes, video players, satellite TV, Yalda night, even Nowruz … Don't underestimate your power,” a tweet said.
Parviz Mohammadnezhad Ghazimahalleh said on Thursday that the the attack which cut off 70% of the country's petrol stations was a “physical” one. “They entered the system via a USB or a program from inside,” he added without specifying the identities of the people involved.
On Monday, the cyberattack which crippled gas stations across Iran was claimed by the hacking group "Gonjeshk-e-Darande" or Predatory Sparrow which announced the attack on X, claiming that they took out “a majority of the gas pumps throughout Iran.”
Iran accuses “Gonjeshk-e-Darande” of having links to Israel. The group rose to prominence as a hacktivist two years ago for a similar cyberattack on fuel distribution centers across Iran on the eve of the second anniversary of the bloody suppression of the November 2019 protests. In a separate incident, they claimed responsibility for hacking the state railway company.
It is the second time such an attack has taken place, Ghazimahalleh said, accusing the responsible officials of “negligence” and “carelessness.”
The remarks came a day after Hadi Beigi-Nezhad, another member of the Energy Commission of Iran’s parliament, said a cyber virus had infected the fuel system, attributing it to an individual and a network that had infiltrated the country.
Last year, “Gonjeshk-e-Darande” garnered attention for successfully penetrating the computer systems of major steel companies in Iran.
Tejarat News, an economic news website, announced on Thursday that the majority of gas stations in Tehran province have been reconnected to the online distribution system.
Out of a total of 330 gas stations in the province, 239 are now connected to the national fuel system, Tejarat News quoted a local official as saying.
Also on Thursday, Morteza Mahmoudvand, another Iranian lawmaker, blamed “Zionists” and Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad for the fuel system attack and urged “an equilibrium of fear” in order to fight what he called the country’s enemies.
Equilibrium of fear means doing to them what they do to us, added Mahmoudvand, who is a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian parliament.
He claimed that Israel’s cyber operations against Iranian targets will go on even after the Gaza conflict. We need to prepare ourselves in digital, technological and virtual domains not to be vulnerable to future attacks, he went on to say.
This is while the Islamic Republic has already been involved in several cyber operations against Israeli targets.
Earlier in the month, Iran-linked hackers targeted a water facility in the rural area of County Mayo in Ireland, leaving the residents without water for two days.
The attack was carried out by pro-Iran Cyber Av3ngers group which wrote a message on the infected computer system and claimed that the facility was targeted because it used Unitronics Vision Series programmable logic controllers (PLCs), an Israeli-made piece of equipment.
In November, Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center reported that the Islamic Republic has intensified its cyberattacks and influence operations since 2020, targeting the likes of Israel and Bahrain, one of the Persian Gulf states to make peace with Israel under the 2020 Abraham Accords, brokered by the US.