The Islamic regime held mass public weddings across Tehran for couples who registered their willingness to sacrifice their life as part of the war against Israel in a state-sponsored program, according to footage aired by state TV.
Those who signed up for the “self-sacrifice” scheme have agreed to carry out actions like forming human chains around power stations to either convince the United States and Israel not to strike the sites or cause the maximum number of civilian casualties.
The wedding ceremonies were held late on Monday and included hundreds of couples, according to the state media reports.
According to images published by Agence France-Presse, couples arrived at Imam Hossein Square in pink military jeeps mounted with machine guns and were married on a stage.
The regime has alleged that millions of people have already registered for the campaign, including parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Couples registered their willingness to sacrifice their lives
"Certainly, the country is at war, but young people also have the right to marry," one bride said in a video published by the Mehr news agency.
The agency reported 110 couples took part in the Imam Hossein Square ceremony alone.
“These mass weddings are, in essence, pure wartime theatre. The regime is broadcasting resilience and popular mobilization at a moment when the ceasefire is fragile, and President Trump is still openly threatening further strikes,” security analyst Roger Macmillan told The Jerusalem Post.
“The ‘self-sacrifice’ framing is deliberate. It draws directly on the Basij martyrdom culture that sustained Iran through the Iran-Iraq War. The regime knows the internal power of that imagery. Couples married under IRGC banners, arriving in military vehicles all lands powerfully with its domestic base, even if it means nothing militarily. It is perhaps mostly for internal consumption…”
Macmillan stressed the importance of images of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei at the ceremony, noting it is yet another event where he has failed to materialize and exists only as a “symbolic” figure of importance.
“This is propaganda, but it is functional propaganda. It is designed to hold domestic cohesion together during a period of real uncertainty, and on those terms, it is probably working,” he concluded.