In another sign of its ever more improvisational approach to governance, the Iranian regime has outlawed Valentine's Day. "Symbols of hearts, half-hearts, red roses, and any activities promoting this day are banned," announced state media last month. "Authorities will take legal action against those who ignore the ban."

Some 70% of Iran's population is said to be under the age of 30, so it seems natural that Valentine's Day has caught on in a country where the young keep trying to find non-state-mandated rituals to call their own. The state, for its part, continues to respond with a Whack-a-Mole approach to any social ripple not dreamt of in its philosophy.

Theocratic regimes invariably suffer from the same besetting sin: As the world evolves, they must either revise their antiquated doctrines or try to hold the world rigidly in stasis. Iran's ruling mullahs keep choosing the latter option. And with mosque and state firmly conjoined, there's no stray detail of daily life so arcane that the scriptures can't be mobilized to rein it in.

The Iranian state has pronounced against unauthorized mingling of the sexes, rap music, rock music, Western music, women playing in bands, too-bright nail polish, laughter in hospital corridors, ancient Persian rites-of-spring celebrations (Nowrooz), and even the mention of foreign food recipes in state media. This last may sound comically implausible, but it was officially announced by a state-run website on Feb. 6. So now the true nature of pasta as an instrument of Western subversion has been revealed.

The regime's posture turns the smallest garden-variety gestures into thrilling acts of subversion. Slipping a Valentine card to a girlfriend takes on the significance of samizdat. Every firecracker set off during Nowrooz diminishes the police state's claims to omniscience. The mullahs have appointed themselves the enemy of fun; as a result, wherever fun herniates into view, it is a politicized irruption of defiance.