President Obama sends a message to those celebrating the Persian holiday of Nowruz (Norouz), and in particular to the people and government of Iran. Here is the message in You Tube with Persian subtitles.

Balatarin web community is raising money for Iranian journalist refugees. The goal is to raise 15000 dollars.

The Iranian indie band talk about life as outlaws in their homeland, as documented in their new film No One Knows About Persian Cats

At first glance, Take It Easy Hospital look like any other aspiring indie duo. Dressed in impeccable Shoreditch chic – plaid shirt and skinny jeans for him, cute vintage dress, black tights and brogues for her – their teenage epiphanies came on copied cassettes of Nirvana and Pink Floyd, while these days they're more into Sigur Rós and Foals.

Their ambition for next year, once they find a drummer, is to get on to the bill at Glastonbury or Reading. The difference is that Take It Easy Hospital originally formed in Iran, where rock music is banned. When the local music industry is non-existent, gigs and recording studios are regularly raided by police and even MySpace is monitored, simply finding someone who shares your love of guitars and plaintive vocals is fraught with difficulties.

Ash Koshanejad and Negar Shaghaghi, the twin songwriters of Take It Easy Hospital, are the stars of a new Iranian film by garlanded Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi, called No One Knows About Persian Cats (so named because pet cats, like rock musicians, are outlawed in Iran). The film is a fictionalised account of the duo's attempts to recruit a rhythm section in order to play a local underground gig and ultimately escape to the rock-friendly west. As the two indie innocents are taken under the wing of music-loving wide-boy Nader (Hamed Behdad), the film becomes a Linklater-esque romp through Tehran's clandestine rock underground. All the bands and musicians featured are real, but whether hairy blues rockers, jazz singers, class-war rappers or indie kids, they exhibit a love for making music that overrides the fear of being arrested the moment they switch on their amps. "If you were discovered playing rock music, you'd get arrested, you'd have to pay a fine," reveals Ash, matter-of-factly. "Sometimes you'd go to prison."

The film gleans affectionate humour from the various bands' ingenuity when it comes to hiding their rehearsal spaces from the authorities in diligently-soundproofed underground caverns, shacks constructed on the roofs of tower blocks or, in one case, in a working cattle barn (much to the cows' displeasure).

By coincidence, there is a British film out this month which also documents the struggle of a couple of indie dreamers to form a band – except 1234 is based in London, so the only obstacles are their own musical inadequacy and weedy sexual tension between bandmates. Persian Cats makes 1234 look rather pathetic.

In Iran musicians are forced to behave like fugitives, even though the charges invoked against them are vague (Ahmadinejad imposed a ban on "western and decadent music" soon after becoming president in 2005). "It's a not a written law," complains Negar. "There isn't this red line. You never know when you're crossing it. [The authorities] don't even really know what they're opposing. They don't see that music brings energy and good nature to society."

In 2007, Ash's former band Font staged an open-air gig in a private garden in a suburb of Tehran. Armed police arrived en masse to shut it down, arresting everyone in the audience, and slinging the band in prison for 21 days. "They didn't have any law that said what they should do with us, so they called us satanists. They said we were against the moral law and disgracing the face of society." Ash chuckles wryly at the memory. "It was an odd experience, sleeping next to a serial killer for three weeks. But it made me believe even more in what I was doing."

Font and Take It Easy Hospital are rarities: most Iranian wannabe rockers never even get further then their bedrooms, due to the subtle pressure exerted within families. "Under this regime, you don't have any opportunity to make a living from being a musician, so families prevent their children from learning music in the first place," Ash explains. "Families are a small example of big government. They don't trust the young generation."

When Ash and Negar were kids, the only opportunity they had to hear western rock music was when somebody from their community travelled abroad and brought back CDs. "They'd be copied on to a tape over and over again," says Negar. "We used to write the track names in class when the teacher wasn't looking and take it home with such excitement to listen to it." Even so, whatever they got depended on the tastes of the traveller; often hoping for something similar to Nirvana, they'd end up having to make do with ABBA.

The advent of the internet changed everything for Iranian teenagers, who were suddenly able to participate in global youth culture, employing their technological nous to stay one step ahead of government censors. The fact that the bands in No One Knows About Persian Cats wear Strokes T-shirts and pass around copies of the NME shouldn't seem that strange. But what is the attraction to Ash and Negar of the kind of fey indie music that even within its countries of origin is often considered a bit insular?

"Well, we are indie!" declares Ash. "We had to do it ourselves in bedrooms because if you step out into the streets, you cannot even tell anyone you've just written a song. We would make our own imaginariums in our rooms."

If they'd grown up in England, Take It Easy Hospital's wan, organ-driven indie-pop, topped with earnest observations about the "human jungle", might stand accused of being a little bit twee. But once you learn how hard Ash and Negar have had to fight just to get their songs heard, they take on a whole new complexion. And despite their ugly experiences in Iran, they are determined not to make rebel rock. "Me, I don't care about politics," says Negar. "The value of art is a lot more than politics. Politics is something that passes, but art stays for years."

Ash picks up the thread: "Politics is a tool to solve a situation at one moment. We believe that art is pure and always depending on human nature, so we've always kept ourselves far from politics. Our music is not dangerous, but the current regime in Iran feels that it has to keep people away from honest expression because if they face up to the reality they will soon find out what they are missing."

Ash and Negar agreed to star in Persian Cats not to make a political point, but to try to show the older generation, including their parents, that music is a force for good. But while Ash has received some positive feedback from older Iranians – "I've heard that they walk away after seeing this film to remember what they had before the revolution" – Negar is despondent that most of them haven't been able to overcome their prejudices. "I guess that when people decide to close their eyes to something, you can't force them to see the truth."

In the light of last year's post-election protests, the police crackdown on young people involved in music and the arts has intensified. When Take It Easy Hospital's old drummer went back to Iran several weeks after the election, he was arrested and beaten. Last January, the film's co-writer, Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, was arrested in Tehran and handed an eight-year jail sentence on trumped up charges of being a US spy (she was eventually freed following a global outcry).

Reluctantly, Ash and Negar decided it was unsafe to return to Iran and have successfully applied for asylum in the UK, where they've been living since coming over to play at Manchester's In The City festival in 2008. In the film, the duo never make it to London, so in this case, truth is happier than fiction. However, Negar is at pains to point out that they never viewed England as the promised land, despite our rather more relaxed laws regarding the public airing of Farfisa-driven jangle pop.

"Some people say we've run away," says Negar. "But there is no running away. Moving from one country to another doesn't necessarily solve all the problems that are on your mind." Proof that indie introspection truly is an international language.

No One Knows About Persian Cats is out Fri; it previews at Brixton Ritzy, SW2, Tue

• World cinema

Saman – formerly Farzaneh – Arastu takes male role in Anahita a year after playing a woman in another film

She earned her acting credentials playing female characters in a host of hit films and television dramas. Now one of Iran's best-known screen actors has ditched her previous persona to embark on a new career playing male roles.

But Saman – formerly Farzaneh – Arastu's gender transformation has little to do with dramatic talents. Instead she has turned into a he by becoming the first known Iranian actor to undergo a sex change operation.

Following a career as a female actor, Arastu, 42, has already played one role as a man after taking advantage of surprisingly liberal laws that make Iran second only to Thailand for carrying out the most sex change operations.

The cameo role in Anahita, a recent film about a group of students doing research into water molecules, came only a year after playing a woman in another cinema production, The Extorter. While homosexuality is outlawed as a sin under Iran's sharia legal code, sex changes are legal as the result of a fatwa issued by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Conservative attitudes mean there is greater social tolerance for women undergoing operations to become men than the other way around. Government financial aid is available for gender change surgery.

Arastu told an Iranian magazine that the decision to change sex had been driven by the lifelong feeling of being a male trapped inside a female body. The courage to undergo surgery had been plucked up only after years of counselling. But the decision had prompted a psychological – as well as a physical – transformation.

"Now I feel totally well," Arastu said. "Previously there was only fear and depression in my eyes. I was always hiding myself and justifying myself."

• Iran
• Gender

Far from a triumph, Iraq's national elections have created a constitutional and leadership vacuum as sectarianism prevails

Although Iraq's second parliamentary elections since the US-led invasion represent a milestone, they will neither resolve the country's existential crisis nor bring it closer to genuine democracy. Results released by the inept Independent High Electoral Commission show little change in political attitudes and loyalties. On the whole, Iraqis did not vote according to party or ideology. Sect, ethnicity, and tribe trumpeted other loyalties, including the nation.

For the foreseeable future, Iraqi politics will be toxically fragmented along sectarian, ethnic, and personality lines, though fear of all-out civil war is unwarranted. A week after the balloting, prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition and the cross-sectarian Iraqiya coalition, headed by ex-premier Iyad Allawi, were projected to win roughly the same number of seats – about 87 each – in Iraq's 325-member parliament.

The Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a grouping of Shia religious parties closely linked to Iran, is set to come a close third with 67 seats, while the powerful main Kurdistan alliance of President Jalal Barzani and Massoud Talabani led as expected in Erbil, the autonomous Kurdish region, with 38.

Far from a triumph for democracy, the results threaten to plunge Iraq into a constitutional and leadership vacuum. With Maliki and his main rival, Allawi, falling short of the 163 seats needed to govern alone, they will probably need to ally with one or two blocs to form a coalition government – a complicated negotiating process fraught with security risks and that might last months, putting sectarian leaders back in the driving seat.

After the last parliamentary poll in 2005, sectarian violence erupted as political leaders clashed for more than five months in an effort to form a government. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed, plunging the country to the brink of all-out civil war.

Although the security situation has improved today, the next few weeks will test Iraq's fragile institutions to breaking point. Unless Iraqi political leaders build a reformist, cross-sectarian government, they could squander precious security gains made over the last three years.

Early signs are not reassuring. A stream of fraud allegations by the two leading blocs risks delegitimising the whole electoral process. As his coalition's lead slipped, Maliki called for a recount, accusing election officials of doctoring tallies in some of the country's 50,000 polling stations – a serious charge. Likewise, Allawi made fraud allegations when the count showed him trailing behind Maliki.

On the face of it, the fierce electoral struggle bodes well for transition to democracy. But the reality is much more complex and alarming, as sectarianism is deeply entrenched in the body politic.

For example, Allawi – a secular Shia – has drawn heavily on Sunni support in central and western Iraq, appealing to Sunni Arab voters who are frustrated with their own incompetent religious leaders while attracted to Allawi's non-sectarian and anti-Iran stance.

In contrast, few Sunni Arabs voted for Maliki, a Shia, who failed to finish in the top three in all but one of Iraq's Sunni-majority provinces. That in itself speaks volumes about the polarisation of Iraq seven years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. Sensing public dissatisfaction with sectarian-religious parties, Maliki recast himself as a non-sectarian nationalist who has brought law and order to the war-torn country.

Maliki's gamble did not fully pay off. Resenting his decision to ban hundreds of mostly Sunni candidates suspected of links to Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party, many Sunnis are unconvinced that the prime minister has shed his sectarian inheritance and consider al-Dawa, a Shia-based organisation, the driver behind the State of Law coalition. Others are suspicious of his continued, if reduced, ties to Iran.

While the results indicate that conservative sectarian-based parties like the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) did very poorly, the radical Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, and his supporters are the big winners. Defying predictions that they were a spent force after suffering repeated military setbacks, the Sadrists are expected to win more than 40 seats. That would be roughly the same size as the Kurdish bloc, making it a potent Shia rival of Maliki.

The Sadrists' spectacular gains complicate the effort to cobble together a governing coalition. They are bitter enemies of Maliki, who in 2008 sent the army to Basra and Baghdad and put down a challenge by Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. Sadr, who lives in Iran and has close ties with the Iranian regime, has spearheaded resistance to the US military presence among Iraqi Shias. His victory is welcome news to the Iranian regime.

With the exception of Allawi's secularist, cross-sectarian alliance, the balance of power favours sectarian orientation cloaked in various disguises. In the end, Maliki will probably try to form a government composed of some of his estranged former Shia partners and current Kurdish allies – a move likely to alienate Sunni Arabs who, for the first time, voted in large numbers.

Regardless of which blocs form the new government, the US and Iran will be Iraq's two most influential external players. As Maliki often states, Iran will still be there after the Americans leave, but the election results mean the Iranian regime will be unable to call the shots. The new coalition government in Baghdad, whether led by Maliki or Allawi, will seek to maintain good relations withboth Iran and the US, and will try and avoid putting all its eggs in one basket. Despite their previous criticism of US interference, Maliki and Allawi view the relationship with the US as critical to maintaining stability and peace in the short term.

By honouring its commitment to withdraw American troops from Iraq, the Obama administration will begin the process of repairing the damage done by its predecessor and building a new relationship based on mutual interests, not domination. Iraqis must take ownership of their country, security and their future.

• Iraq
• US foreign policy
• Middle East
• Foreign policy
• Politics and Iraq