As a child, Benny Sabti recalls receiving an unusual school prize. “For being an excellent student, I got a Persian translation of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf,” Sabti told Digital. “They translated Hitler’s book into Persian and handed it out to students.”
The experience stuck with him. In hindsight, Sabti—now an Iran expert at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS)—says it reflected a broader effort by Iran’s ruling clerical establishment to shape how young Iranians viewed politics, religion and the world around them.
Schools, mosques, workplaces and media all became part of an ideological ecosystem built to strengthen loyalty to the regime. But critics of Iran’s leadership argue religion itself was often not the ultimate aim.
“Faith is their tool,” Banafsheh Zand, an Iranian-American journalist and editor of the Iran So Far Away Substack, told Digital. “It’s not the be-all and end-all. It’s something they can hide behind to commit all their crimes.”
The Islamic Republic was founded on the doctrine of velayat-e faqih, or “guardianship of the Islamic jurist,” which gives ultimate political and religious authority to the country’s supreme leader.
But Zand says that in practice, the system functions less as a purely religious project and more as a mechanism of political control. “It’s more like a mafia,” she said. “They use faith to keep people down.”
According to Zand, ideology is reinforced through a mix of financial incentives and intimidation. “They tried using rewards, money and buying people’s loyalty,” she said.
Programs tied to the Basij—a militia linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—often provide benefits like jobs, housing and education to families aligned with the regime.
“If you’re poor and join the Basij, they give you perks,” Zand said. “But you have to go along with whatever they ask of you.”
Sabti says the Islamic Republic is designed to embed ideology in everyday life. “In banks, offices, public spaces and even bazaars, regime representatives walk between shops telling people it’s time to pray and checking who isn’t participating,” Sabti said.
Mosques themselves are deeply integrated into the political system. Friday prayer leaders frequently deliver sermons that match government messaging.
“Iran has 16 propaganda bodies,” Sabti said, describing a network of state institutions tasked with spreading the regime’s interpretation of Islam and the ideals of the Islamic Revolution.
Some institutions also focus on exporting that ideology abroad. “There’s a university dedicated to ,” he said. “They bring people from Africa and South America to Iran, convert them to Shiism and send them back to export the Shiite Islamic revolution.”
Schools play a central role in the regime’s ideological apparatus.
“Schools are heavily indoctrinated,” Sabti said. “In civil studies textbooks, Islam was promoted as superior to all other ideologies.”
appears across the curriculum. “You can’t separate any school subject from Islam,” Sabti said. “Not history, not geography—everything is mixed with ideology. The only thing missing was adding it to math.”
For Sabti, the Mein Kampf episode symbolized the ideological environment students faced. The message, he said, reinforced hostility toward perceived enemies and planted a political worldview from a young age.
Sabti says the system’s credibility is also undermined by the behavior of Iran’s own elites. “You can see it in the second generation,” he said. “The elites live in palaces in Iran and other countries. It’s hypocrisy.”
Zand says ideology has always been backed by intimidation. “They make examples of people in the most vicious way possible,” she said. “It’s fear and manipulation.”
According to Zand, that shapes daily life for many Iranians. “Everyone is afraid of the police,” she said. “Everyone is afraid of their neighbors.”
Despite the regime’s vast ideological machinery, Sabti believes many Iranians never fully accepted the worldview the government tried to impose.
“Over the years, the indoctrination has stopped working,” he said. “Most of the public doesn’t truly believe it.”
Still, the Islamic Republic remains in power. “The regime maintains control through ,” Sabti said.
Zand agrees the system never fully reshaped Iranian society. Many people, she said, complied outwardly just to avoid punishment.
“They won’t have a problem transitioning as long as they realize the new Iran has no room for the violence and horrific traits of the Islamist regime,” Zand told Digital.
She said that beneath the surface, Iran’s cultural identity stayed intact even after decades of state pressure.