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Since 1978 I've seen footage of people in Tehran burning American flags, and as far as I can tell each time it's completely destroyed, meaning that they have to get a new American flag to burn each time.

I can't imagine that there would be an America flag store in downtown Tehran, so where are they getting all these flags?

I understand that this might not sounds like a serious question, but it is. Considering that the US is regularly denounced as a "great satan" and the government is strongly influenced by religion, I would expect that US flags and other pro-US paraphernalia would be quite hard to get ones hands on.

enter image description here BBC news screenshot today

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    Why do you assume no shops stocking international flags in such a major city?
    – Patricia Shanahan
    Jan 6, 2020 at 0:53
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    My guess is that such flags are printed and distributed by some government-controlled Iranian propaganda organization(s), specifically for this purpose, but I can't find any source confirming this or even discussing the matter... They also burn the flag of Israel often, which would probably be even more problematic to possess in Iran otherwise.
    – Fizz
    Jan 6, 2020 at 1:21
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    Amazon does not ship to Iran but Alibaba does. That's China, the same place where the American flags you see in the US come from.
    – LuisTavares
    Jan 6, 2020 at 2:57
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    It's just fabric, as easy to make as the clothes they are all wearing, and there's clearly a niche for them to made and sold. You could probably just reword your question to ask if there's any laws against selling/having American paraphernalia, since that would be the only reason having an abundance of American flags would be difficult.
    – Giter
    Jan 6, 2020 at 3:07
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    I vote to leave this question closed, but for your information I'm from Tehran and as far as I know you could find anything in Tehran including the flags of any country including the US. Israel, or whatever (I had a pant in Iran with the US flag!). Tehran is a big city with more than 15 million people and you should know that in this crazy city you could find lots of bizarre things that is impossible to find in the US, but I can't name them cause it would lead to my account suspension!
    – Mithridates the Great
    Jan 13, 2020 at 3:25

2 Answers 2

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It's kinda funny that after seeing your post, I searched a lot and I finally found the source of those US flags in Iran. Guess what? They are completely produced in Iran just for the purpose of burning! Read it here. Crazy right? I mean, I'm an Iranian and it totally freaks me out that Ayatollahs' regime spend tons of money to produce the US flags just for burning but we have lots of other essential issues in Iran that could be solved easily by that money...

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    It's probably a rather negligible factor in propaganda expenditures. Just all the time that people spend demonstrating around a burning flag is more valuable economically, as an opportunity cost if they did something else. Look e.g. at the policing costs for one protest in the UK met.police.uk/foi-ai/metropolitan-police/disclosure-2020/july/…
    – Fizz
    Oct 16, 2021 at 7:06
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    @Fizz on the other hand, it's much easier to shrug off opportunity cost than material cost, psychologically.
    – John Dvorak
    Oct 25, 2021 at 21:14
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    How much can a US flag cost? I mean not one that would be used in the USa and is supposed to last for years while still looking good, that will cost, but one that is supposed to last a few days until it’s burned?
    – gnasher729
    Oct 30, 2021 at 17:29
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It is easy to get one in Iran, even it's available on online shopping websites.

enter image description here

Interestingly enough we can also buy Israel and Death to the US flag. But it should be mentioned that in anti American demonstrations the government provides enough flags, in fact they are really expensive, on this website the cheapest American flag is 5.500.000 Rials(10$).

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