Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used to only wear the chequered keffiyeh scarf on special, mainly military, occasions: visits to war fronts with Iraq in the 1980s or army ceremonies. But since 2000, Iran’s supreme leader, the highest authority in the country for more than 30 years, has rarely been seen in public without it draped over his shoulders.
His adoption of the symbol of Palestinian nationalism — chaffiyeh in Persian — was triggered, says a relative, by the surprise 1997 victory of the reformist president Mohammad Khatami who swept to power promising political development at home and detente with the west. The scarf has subsequently become an outward symbol of resistance in Iranian minds — a resolute defence of Islamic ideology at home and abroad covering everything from its nuclear programme to regional and military policies and relations with the west.
Given the strain that Tehran has been under for the past three years, Ayatollah Khamenei could have been forgiven for wearing two keffiyeh at once. The country has weathered the most extensive sanctions in its history — costing the economy at least $200bn according to officials and hurting ordinary Iranians — as well as constant rhetoric around US military strikes.
But the regime — at least its hardline elements — have in many ways been emboldened by surviving the “maximum pressure” policy of Donald Trump’s administration without the system collapsing and millions of protesters pouring on to the streets in mass demonstrations.
In 2018 Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — signed with world powers three years earlier to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Despite Iran’s compliance Washington accused it of violating “the spirit” of the agreement, through its regional and military policies. It imposed sanctions that fuelled Iranian suspicion that the US wanted regime