Musical instruments were shown live on Iranian state television for the first time in decades — for 10 seconds — and the airing has caused a religious controversy in the capital.

“[The] spell … was finally broken,” the reformist daily Sharq newspaper ran its front page, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The incident occurred on a show called “Good Morning Iran,” and now producers are calling the airing a technical error, according to the Times.

Normally, singers are not allowed to stand in front of musical instruments so that the cameras won’t pick up the taboo objects. When the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) is forced to cut away, stock images of the studio or nature are usually shown.

“The footage of instruments which was aired has nothing to do with a change in the approach or practice of IRIB, and it was just an unintentional mistake by us,” the show’s producer Gholamreza Bakhtiari was quoted as saying by Iran’s hard-line Fars news agency, the Times reported.

The mistake has prompted Iranians to wonder whether it was actually a salvo in a larger cultural battle between moderate and hard-line Islamists.

“It seems a decision was made at some level in the management [to show the instruments], but top managers did not dare to … defend the decision, and now they’re recanting,” Sobhan Hasanvand, a Sharq editor, told the Times.

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