In March, Nooshin Nabaei, deputy minister of sports and youth, announced that all matchmaking sites are illegal in Iran and that no entity is empowered to issue licenses for such sites. Four months later, Tebyan, a site run by Komeil Khojasteh Baqerzadeh, the nephew of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s wife, reported the introduction of an app called Hamdam, designed to provide counseling and matchmaking services for young people.
Present at the unveiling ceremony for the app was Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the current Majles speaker and a close associate of the Khojastehs, and Hojatoleslam Qomi, president of the Islamic Development Organization of Iran (IDO).
Tebyan operates under the umbrella of the IDO, which is under the direct supervision of the supreme leader.Â
The name, logo, and even the color scheme of the app exactly duplicate the attributes of an app that was released four years ago by the IranCubator project, run by members of the Paris-based feminist organization Spectrum. The original Hamdam informs women about their reproductive and legal rights.