Hearts and minds

Last Modified: 08 Mar 2006
By: Channel 4 News

We look into how Qom, the spiritual heartland of Iran, affects the controls of the state.

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Iran is, in many ways an extremely controlling state. We have to ask permission for virtually everything we have to film.

It's only the severity of the nuclear crisis that's persuaded the authorities here to open up as much as they have, allowing us to talk to ordinary people and those who run Iran.

We've travelled from the capital Tehran to the ancient town of Qom, the religious heartland of Iran from where Ayatollah Khomeini led his revolutionary theocracy.

And even today, despite a scattering of democratic institutions, in reality Iran is still ruled by the clerics based here.

So how does it all work?