Smart mandate in Iranian cities: From digital sovereignty to the automated oppression of everyday life

Iran's centralized mandate for smartification—spanning fiber-optics, domestic apps, and platform governance—sustains ideological-authoritarian control over urban society, the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and infrastructures of governmentality. This system enables pervasive surveillance, censorship, and ideological discipline, while maintaining a monopolistic grip on the digital economy. This commentary conceptualizes these dynamics as a smart mandate assemblage rooted in clerical authority and a militarized oligarchy, diverging from neoliberal models of smartification in (semi-)liberal democracies. From national sovereignty policies to everyday urban life, such assemblage surveils space, disciplines marginalized bodies, and reshapes technological and infrastructural futures under the guise of modernity.