What images come to our mind these days when we think of Iran? The Iranian president, Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wearing his usual smirk, looking like a naughty kid who has just got away with breaking the neighbours’ windows, clerics making furious speeches, women dressed in their mandatory veils, public meetings, protests, interviews with citizens forced to make the appropriate statements about the topic of the day – WMDs, for example.

Such images signify the distance between the private and public spaces, grown to such an extent that almost every public gesture implies a political declaration: women’s clothing, turbaned men in their clerical garbs, unmarried men and women consorting in public, all these become political statements rather than indications of private lifestyles.

It does not matter whether the statements are for or against the state; what matters is that none can gain significance independent of the state. Judging by such images, life in Iran is a series of urgent and extraordinary occurrences, shaped and controlled by political decision-makers.