In a stage-managed out pouring of grief Iran’s chest-beating fundamentalists are in full voice: “Death to America” they chant. But this is the fading rhetoric of a revolution some 20 years past. Behind the façade fewer Iranians are listening, the real chant now is for social and political reform. But for the powerful and well-armed Bahij, Iran is again being polluted with the decadent western influences so many of their number died to defeat. And that sense of betrayal is being drummed into the young. “Their only aim is to become a martyr for Islam,” explains a teacher inside a rarely accessed Bahij school. Despite huge support for reform, Iran’s future could still belong to fundamentalism.

Produced by ABC Australia