He is one of Iran’s most senior defense and national security officials and a confidant of the supreme leader. Until recently, he oversaw nuclear talks with the United States and has also shepherded the enforcement of strict Islamic rules on women and girls and ordered violent crackdowns on protesters.
Now, however, Rear Adm. Ali Shamkhani is embroiled in a type of scandal seldom seen among the Islamic Republic’s top echelon. He is accused of leading a double life: preaching piety in public but practicing an altogether different lifestyle with his family.
On Saturday, a video of his daughter’s wedding taken last April was leaked, and it quickly went viral online. In the video, Admiral Shamkhani is seen walking his daughter down the aisle into a wedding hall. The bride, Setayesh, is wearing a low-cut, strapless dress that shows her cleavage, and the admiral’s wife is wearing a similarly revealing blue lace evening gown with bare back and sides. Other women in the video are not wearing the hijab.
The video of his daughter’s wedding has touched a nerve among Iran’s political class and the public for many reasons.
It is a display of exuberant wealth when most Iranians are struggling to get by and many young people can’t afford to get married; it shows disregard for conservative Islamic values; and it depicts Western-style wedding traditions, with the father walking the bride down the aisle instead of the Iranian practice of the bride and groom entering together.
On Monday, a reformist-leaning newspaper, Shargh, ran a front-page photograph of Admiral Shamkhani. “Buried Under Scandal,” read the headline. The evening before, political pundits and a group of veterans from Iran’s war with Iraq said in a discussion on the Clubhouse app that he must resign from all official roles and make a public apology.
Amir Hossein Mosalla, a journalist and editor of a political publication in Iran, said on social media that the video showed that “the regime officials themselves have no belief in their own laws that they support, they only want to make people’s lives miserable.”
Admiral Shamkhani is not just any Iranian official. He is currently the representative of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to a newly created National Defense Council. Until July, he spent a decade as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, a role that gave him formidable power and influence over national and foreign policies. He is also a former defense minister who once commanded both the navy and the Revolutionary Guards naval forces.
The United States imposed sanctions on Admiral Shamkhani in 2020 and has gone after his sons. Admiral Shamkhani and his sons own and operate a vast shipping empire, with oil tankers and fleets, that helps transfer oil from Iran and Russia to China. Critics have long accused him of profiting from the sanctions that have strained Iran’s economy and brought hardship to ordinary people.
During Israel’s 12-day war with Iran in June, the Israelis tried to assassinate Admiral Shamkhani. A missile strike destroyed his penthouse apartment in a luxury high-rise in northern Tehran. Admiral Shamkhani has said that rescue workers found him buried under the rubble.
Admiral Shamkhani reacted to the wedding controversy with a post on Monday on his official account on X, writing: “Bastards, I’m still alive!” Iranian news media reported that when he was asked at a funeral about his reaction, he reiterated the message he posted on social media.
The Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, criticized Admiral Shamkhani. “There is no doubt that the lifestyle of officials in the Islamic Republic must be defensible,” it said. But it also said that publishing a private video was not ethical.
Some of Admiral Shamkhani’s supporters say that he is a victim of a smear campaign by political rivals and that the wedding was a private event, and segregated by sex.
But some analysts noted that the Islamic Republic had not hesitated to enforce its rules on the private lives of its citizens, dictating not just how they dress and act in public, but also raiding weddings and house parties that it does not deem Islamic.
“It’s hypocrisy in its purest form,” said Omid Memarian, an Iran expert at DAWN, a Washington-based research organization that focuses on American foreign policy in the Middle East.
In 2022, Admiral Shamkhani was leading Iran’s National Security Council when a nationwide uprising convulsed Iran. Women were taking to the streets and burning their head scarves, outraged over the death of a 22-year-old accused by the morality police of violating the hijab rule.
One lawmaker reported going to Admiral Shamkhani and asking what should be done if the protesters did not retreat from the streets. “We will attack them until they return home,” he recounted Admiral Shamkhani as saying.
Addressing the wedding video on social media on Monday, one Iranian women’s rights activist, Ellie Omidvari, recalled the hundreds killed in the protests, some of them newlyweds.
“Their bride is in a palace, our bride is buried under the ground,” she said.
Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization. She also covers Iran and has written about conflict in the Middle East for 15 years.
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