Pop singer stirring fear in Iran bigs

WASHINGTON — As the United States and Iran traded threats these past weeks and inched closer to the brink of a military confrontation, Iranian hardliners have identified a new “political plot” by an “enemy” who is “trying different ways to create anxiety among the people,” Education Minister Mohammad Bathaei warned.

Bathaei was not speaking about the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group or a bomber task force being deployed to the region earlier in May, however.

Instead, he was referring to video clips of Iranian schoolchildren, apparently recorded in multiple schools, dancing to music by Iranian pop singer Sasy Mankan.

Mankan’s “dance challenge” for fans — centered around his “Gentleman” song — appears to have raised suspicions among Iran’s ultraconservatives of a U.S.-linked cultural attack.

Iranian state media outlets reported that an investigation was launched this month.

Pop music is strictly censored in Iran, but Mankan resides in the United States and reaches his Iranian fans via Instagram and other social networks, circumventing authorities.

Mankan’s foreign base alone may have been sufficient for Iran to ban his music, but in this case, his dance challenge also coincided with rising U.S.-Iranian tensions after President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal last year. Reimposed U.S. sanctions have strained Iran’s economy and resulted in a hike in prices.

Cracking down on arts under the pretext of politics is a common theme in Iran.

Shortly after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini compared all music broadcast on TV or radio to opium and decided to ban it, arguing it made the human brain “inactive and frivolous.”

But the Quran, Islam’s central religious text, does not explicitly ban music, singing or dancing.