With antigovernment protests sweeping Iran, and reports emerging on Sunday of an increasingly lethal crackdown, the government in Tehran appears locked into a campaign of intimidation and threats directed at internal critics and foreign adversaries.
The regime’s response to intensifying public unrest has been unprecedented both in breadth and depth. It has included a communications blackout since Friday that shut down access to the internet and even cut telephone landlines, as authorities sought both to minimize the spread of the protests and limit news of the reported brutality of their crackdown.
Human rights organizations said on Sunday that two weeks of street protests against the regime, which have spread across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, have resulted in hundreds of deaths and more than 10,000 people detained.
Why We Wrote This
A harsh crackdown is under way in Iran as leaders see a current wave of antigovernment protests as a threat to the regime. The protests began as economic in nature but have been fueled by anger over years of failed state policies.
Amid official concerns over the prospect of a U.S. or Israeli military strike, Iran warned on Sunday it would target American assets and Israel in retaliation.
“The regime is bringing down the iron fist because it finds itself in an existential battle for its survival,” says Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group.
“What Iran’s regime is now struggling to contain is the predictable consequence of rejecting major changes in how it governs, and the limited policy changes with which it can respond,” says Dr. Vaez, contacted in Geneva. “Its default is to use force, but the bloody success of this approach over past decades has only compounded the fundamental discontent that it faces: Problems were never resolved, only deferred.
“For now, there are no apparent cracks or defections at the top,” he adds. “But if this turns into an attritional conflict between the state and the society, those cracks will emerge.”
“Hold on to your children”
The Iranian intimidation campaign, involving multiple warning statements and mass text messaging on Iranian cellphones, included a stern message broadcast on Iran’s state-run Channel 3 on Friday night that was as much a threat as it was a warning.
“Moms, dads, hold on to your children,” said Hossein Yekta, a bearded Revolutionary Guard ideologue believed to be close to the son of Iran’s embattled supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Uncles, aunts!” said Mr. Yekta. “Make calls, tell this girl or that boy that if they go out [to protest], and if they get hurt – if a bullet is fired and something happens to them – you can’t complain later.”
The communication blackout slowed to a trickle the stream of online videos that showed the swelling scale of protesters on the streets, burning government buildings, and clashes with security forces that sometimes fired live ammunition. At first triggered by economic grievances, the protests have tapped into widespread anger at Iran’s rulers accumulated over years.
Ayatollah Khamenei set an uncompromising tone on Friday, when he reminded Iranians that the Islamic republic “came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of martyrs,” and that it “won’t back down” from crushing protests that he said were stoked by foreigners.
He labeled the protesters “terrorists” targeting Iran’s leadership in a bid to “please the president of the United States,” whose hands were already “stained with the blood of Iranians.”
“Show no leniency”
U.S. President Donald Trump has stated repeatedly that Iran would be “hit very hard” if it killed protesters. Leaders of Israel, too, another archfoe of Iran, have expressed solidarity with the protests. The United States struck Iran’s nuclear facilities during a 12-day war in June between Israel and Iran. The U.S. seizure of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro from Caracas on Jan. 3 lent weight to concerns in Tehran.
“Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Saturday, amid reports he is considering military action and has been briefed on options. “The USA stands reading to help!!!”
On Sunday, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, warned the U.S. against a “miscalculation,” telling his body’s members that, in the event of military strikes, Iran would consider Israel and American bases and ships “legitimate targets.” Israeli media cited unnamed sources as saying the country was on high alert.
Still, Iranian authorities issued stark warnings that previous bloody crackdowns – which have in prior waves of protests led to hundreds being killed – would be repeated.
One police statement described “a firm decision to show no leniency.” Tehran prosecutor Ali Salehi said “rioters and mercenaries” would be charged with moharebeh, or “war against God,” which the Islamic republic usually reserves for captured spies and is punishable by death.
State television reported damage to mosques and religious places. It broadcast what it called “confessions” by “terrorists” and “mercenaries” – including teenage girls – working for the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency.
Language indicates “something existential”
One text message received on Iranian mobile phones warned that, given the presence of “terrorist groups” and armed people “at some gatherings, and their planning to create killings, we advise families to take care of their children.”
Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, says such statements are “really showing through the language used that this is something existential.”
“We haven’t seen something so extensive for quite some time,” she says. “That’s a real indication that they are trying to halt internal-external communication, but also prevent internal coordination, and obviously control the narrative.”
Despite the communications blackout, information emerged over the weekend of continued protests, a toughening response by Iranian security forces, and a rising death toll. The BBC, for example, reported on Sunday that it had confirmed that the bodies of 70 protesters had been taken to a hospital in the northern city of Rasht, only to find the morgue there already full.
The Narges Foundation, named for Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, reported that “at least” 2,000 protesters were killed in the first 74 hours of the blackout, and posted videos showing numerous body bags at different locations. Tasnim news agency, which is linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, reported that 114 members of the security forces had been killed.
“This is a time when protesters need to maintain resilience in the face of repression,” says Dr. Vakil. “Of course, the regime has the heavier hand, and they’re gambling that the violence, the economic stranglehold that they have on this society, and that their repressive capacity will all come together [to] eventually shut it down.”
She notes that Ayatollah Khamenei’s address on Friday, uncompromising and warning of physical violence, is a familiar playbook to quell protests that dates to Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution and before.
“This is a regime and a leader that is running on empty,” says Dr. Vakil. “These are bankrupt, meaningless words that haven’t delivered anything for Iranians. So, the fact that he is just recycling his usual narrative, I think propels people to come out even more, because they realize there is nothing left to lose.”
The supreme leader “isn’t going to offer anything new. If it’s more of the same, then it’s a now-or-never moment for people.”
“This one is about bread”
Iranian leaders have sought to defuse the protests, with steps such as a $7-per-month payment to each household, to ease the cost-of-living crisis. Iran’s currency has plummeted, owing to economic mismanagement, corruption, and severe U.S.-led sanctions against Iran. The value hit a historic low in late December, triggering the protests amid fears of continued high inflation.
That payment was greeted with scorn by some on the street, including Zohreh, an accountant in her 30s in west Tehran, contacted before the internet shutdown.
“This one is about bread,” she says, describing a key driver of the protests. “The majority, say 80% to 90% of the people, are now effectively poor, and the remaining 10% are connected to corrupt individuals. This is no longer something we can cope with.”
Still, she says, foreign intervention can “only complicate things” and “raise questions” about the legitimacy of any transition.
“People want independence,” Zohreh says. “If a new ruler appointed by Trump comes to power, then we will once again get trapped in this vicious cycle of dictatorship.”
Dr. Vakil also sees risks of a U.S. military role, noting that “something symbolic could have the opposite affect inside the country.”
“Strikes and externalization of an internal conflict will keep the regime together,” she says. “Then it could propel the silent majority – or the people who are, rightly, quite scared about the future and an outcome of instability – not to protest, but to sit on their hands.”
An Iranian researcher contributed to this report.
