“If you don’t like dogs then I don’t like you.”
It’s the Muslim people, the commoners, in Iran that are keeping, holding, walking and loving the dogs.
It’s the religious leaders who dislike dogs, sounds like partly on religious grounds and partly on public health grounds.
Despite being a Muslim-run country, a large minority, if not a majority, of commoner Iranians are some of the most intelligent, Westernized people in the Muslim world and a good chunk of them aren’t all that devout about their religion, except in public when the government is watching.
It’s sad, really.