Iran International
A new school curriculum mandated by Iran’s education ministry has cast a 12-day war with Israel in June as a national triumph, underscoring a bid by the country's clerical rulers to boost support following the punishing conflict.
Under a new directive titled “We Defend Our Iran,” the ministry ordered classes from elementary to high school to praise the actions of the country's leadership, military and people.
The new educational materials reviewed by Iran International were distributed to schools and made available online earlier this month.
The program aims to cultivate patriotic virtue, according to a directive signed by Education Minister Alireza Kazemi and circulated to provincial departments.
The initiative was “a tribute to the miraculous endurance of the Iranian nation during the 12-day imposed war,” he wrote.
New study materials, Kazemi added, seek to “strengthen national dignity, unity and deterrence,” and to raise students who can “face social and political challenges responsibly and wisely.”
Battle of narratives
As Iran-US nuclear talks appeared to falter, Israel launched a surprise military attack on its Mideast arch-foe on June 13.
The strikes killed senior nuclear scientists along with hundreds of military personnel and civilians. Iranian counterattacks killed 32 Israeli civilians and an off-duty soldier.
Joining the conflict, the United States attacked three Iranian nuclear sites and Iran responded with missile attacks on a US airbase in Qatar before US President Donald Trump enforced a ceasefire.
Israel promptly said it had achieved its military goals while Trump declared Iran's nuclear program had been "obliterated."
Tehran officialdom quickly said the US ceasefire sought to prevent further damaging missile volleys and that Iran had prevailed in the war, emerging more unified.
Hack Israeli jets
The new educational materials cast this doctrine as moral and patriotic truth, extending from missile engineering to nuclear research.
One high school assignment instructs pupils to “hold a class debate on the advantages and disadvantages of enriching uranium inside the country versus importing enriched uranium.”
Another adds: “Write a two-page outline for a movie in which Iranian students hack into the computer systems of Israeli fighter jets and change the course of events. Share your plan with your teacher and classmates.”
The tone is lively, even playful, framing national defense as a creative activity comprehensible to children.
Iranian officials quickly and now routinely characterize the perseverance of Iran's ruling system as a victory in itself and the messaging now extends beyond sermons and television news programs to the classroom.
Authorities have quashed with deadly force several youth-led protest movements in recent decades and style themselves a bulwark against foreign-led sedition plots.
Still, the course materials indicate Tehran remains determined to purvey state ideology on Iran's youth.
The textbook for younger students, “The 12-Day War,” sets out twenty-five hours of classroom teaching that encourage pupils to see unity, creativity and belief as the reasons Iran prevailed. The lessons blend moral stories with political instruction and domestic detail, grounding the idea of national defense in everyday life.
In one chapter, children visit their grandparents’ home. Over tea, the adults recall the war. “Israel thought it could disrupt the country by killing our commanders,” says Uncle Hossein in the story, “but our Leader quickly appointed successors and restored order.”
The grandfather adds, “Iran had long prepared itself for defense and built powerful, precise missiles for such days.” The grandmother reminds the children that “people helped each other during those days,” while the narrator concludes, “When we are united with our Leader, like one family, we are at our strongest.”
The chapter ends with the line that gives the book its theme: “We are stronger together.” It turns survival into a moral lesson about obedience, faith and collective strength.
Elsewhere, QR codes lead to short video clips. One shows schoolgirls, around nine years old, singing, “This is Iran. If anyone looks at my country the wrong way, I will not forgive them. If needed, I will sacrifice myself. I’m a girl, but I’m strong. God is with me.”
In Islam, nine marks the age of religious maturity for girls, giving the performance a note of solemn duty beneath its cheer.
Other exercises tie national defense to civic behavior. Students are asked to draw family members helping during blackouts or natural disasters, and to write short reflections on how “science and faith together protect the homeland.”
The blending of domestic scenes, religious devotion and military imagery makes the idea of resistance feel both intimate and ordinary.
Israel 'unnatural, dangerous'
Across all levels, Israel is portrayed as the main disruptor of peace in the region and the United States as its enabler.
High-school materials offer more advanced characterizations of arch-enemy Israel, calling it an “unnatural and dangerous regime” and asks students to prove it visually. “With three simple pictures,” it instructs, “show your classmates why Israel is an unnatural and dangerous regime. For example: it has no fixed borders.”
Another prompt begins with: “In your opinion, what does the fact that the Israeli regime, unlike other countries, has no defined borders say about its nature?”
Students are then guided to make an infographic to express the point. At the top of the page, they are told to write: "Israel is unnatural and dangerous because" and fill in the rest with short captions and sketches.
Safavid rout
In some of the new exercises, students are asked to name and build paper models of Iranian missiles and discuss how families can help defend the country.
Another passage recalls the 1514 Battle of Chaldiran, when Safavid Iran lost to the Ottomans for lacking modern weapons, a parable of vigilance and modernization.
Other sections teach how to manage blackouts or natural disasters, blending civic duty with preparedness for crisis.
The book deepens the use of national history in the curriculum, drawing on Shah Ismail Safavid and earlier dynasties alongside Islamic and revolutionary narratives, part of a broader effort to fuse religion, statehood and pride in Iranian endurance.
That emphasis mirrors the nationalist tone of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s speeches following the war. Citing a coup in 1921 and the 1953 US-backed overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, he has urged Iranians to remember “both sweet victories and bitter events” so that “they are not repeated.”
He described the United States as “inherently arrogant,” blamed foreign powers for Iran’s historic setbacks, and told young people that “the remedy for many of our problems is to become strong.”
In his telling, national power in its military, scientific, and moral forms is the safeguard of independence, a message now embedded in the nation’s classrooms.
That same logic now shapes how the next generation is taught: Iran’s strength, the school materials aim to ensure, must be shored up by its next generation.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.
