IRAN IS BECOMING A PRISON
In the meantime, repression is accelerating beneath cowl of battle. Laws ostensibly geared toward espionage and collaboration with the enemy, launched late final 12 months, has turned crimes that after carried jail phrases into capital offences.
The variety of individuals executed hasn’t essentially elevated (final 12 months noticed the very best quantity killed since 1989, averaging 4 to 5 executions per day), however the proportion of political prisoners amongst them has.
I spoke about this with Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, a professor of neuroscience who additionally based a Norway-based nonprofit known as Iran Human Rights, to trace Iran’s use of the dying penalty. To this point this 12 months, he mentioned, the regime has executed 28 political prisoners, up from two in 2025. Of the 26 who have been protesters, not less than two have been hanged in public on the scene of their alleged crime. With one other 70 protesters on dying row within the metropolis of Isfahan’s foremost jail alone, Amiry-Moghaddam could be very involved that this formally sanctioned carnage will develop.
Now the Basij, a militia of ideologically pushed thugs that the IRGC makes use of to place down protests, has been given a brand new head who led earlier crackdowns and has been tasked with turning the group into an intelligence community.
A legislation “to curb international affect” is wending its means by the Iranian Majlis, or parliament. This can criminalise any communication with media from nations thought of hostile to the Islamic Republic, whereas interviews with all different international media would require prior permission from the intelligence ministry. Lengthy a police state, Iran is changing into a jail.
This fits the IRGC and different hardliners. If left to face their very own individuals with no state of battle to cow them into quiescence, this regime merely wouldn’t have the ability to reply their complaints. It’s too invested within the corrupt financial system it has developed and its officers lack the talents wanted for efficient reform and financial administration.
