Iran’s War Within

For the past few months, Iran has intermittently fought a war with the United States, Israel, and its Arab neighbors. But throughout this period, it has never stopped waging war on its own citizens. The Islamic Republic is executing Iranians in record numbers and has sharpened its tools of repression.

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Such tactics have never succeeded in pacifying Iranian society for long. Today, some civil-society leaders, and even figures inside the establishment itself, fret that the regime’s heavy domestic hand is not only hurting Iranians but also weakening the country’s war effort.

On Tuesday, the Iranian regime executed two young men. Abolfazl Sepahi, 23, and Amirhossein Safari, 28, had been arrested in Isfahan in January in connection with the nationwide anti-regime protests. Dozens of Isfahanis came out to protest the two men’s execution in the days leading up to it, but to no avail. On Monday, security forces dispersed the crowd with paintballs, tear gas, and shots into the air. Sepahi and Safari were hanged in the very same square where they had allegedly demonstrated.

Back in January, the regime put down mammoth protests with particular brutality, killing thousands of people in the space of two days. In the months since, Iranian courts have sentenced dozens of citizens to death for taking part in the protests. According to UN estimates, 24 have already been executed. According to Amnesty International, at least 60 others, including some who were arrested as children, remain at risk of execution.

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Sepahi and Safari were among 60 people accused of killing four members of the police forces during the protests in Isfahan. The regime claims that the four officers were tied up in the city’s central square, stoned, and then burned alive. Earlier this month, two other young men—a 19-year-old Iranian and a 24-year-old Afghan national—were executed in connection with the same events, and a dozen more people face capital punishment for them. The regime media have distributed an unclear video from the incident and aired confessions of some of the arrestees. But no due process was available to the accused, and the regime media are known for airing forced confessions. Sepahi and Safari had access to no legal representation, not even court-appointed lawyers. They were reportedly tried in three virtual court sessions, each of which took about an hour and in which the accused phoned in from prison rather than appearing before the judge.

Among those alarmed by the state’s mounting repression are civil-society figures who have staunchly opposed the war with America and Israel. Emadeddin Baghi, an Iranian human-rights activist who is nevertheless not an advocate of regime change, expressed shock about the handling of the Isfahan cases on an Iranian podcast. He said that he had been trying to assist with the defense for one of the accused, but before the person could even start an appeals process, he was executed. The judiciary’s heavy hand will make citizens “question the regime” and will lead to a “fall of credibility and legitimacy, resulting in unhappiness, anger, and violence,” Baghi cautioned.

Likewise, on Tuesday, a group of 150 civic and political activists published a statement calling on the regime to free political prisoners and stop the executions. The signatories include activists such as Abdollah Momeni and Alireza Rajayi, who both oppose what they term “foreign aggression” against Iran and also call for a referendum to change the country’s constitution. They see the regime’s repression as weakening the country at a time of war.

Executions are not the regime’s only coercive instrument. Many professors at Iranian universities have been suspended or violently arrested, according to the Toronto-based Association of Iranian Studies. And other signs suggest that the regime is clamping down on public life.

Iran’s hijab laws, mandating that women cover their hair and body, have been laxly enforced since 2024, including during the war. “Even at the airports, you can now see most people without hijab,” a woman who asked to be called Elmira, 27, told me. Like others I spoke with, she used an alias for her safety. “Since it’s summer, I go around mostly with a top and without covering my hair or shoulders, and I have never been stopped once this summer.”

But last week, the police clamped down on Tehran’s Sanayi Avenue, a popular destination for nightlife and street culture. At least seven cafés were shut down; their owners were told that they could reopen only if they refused to serve hijabless women. The authorities also destroyed public benches that had become hangout spots. “The benches were where you could bring your coffee, smoke a little, have some social life in the midst of the damn war,” Maryam, 32, told me. “But now that’s gone. They don’t want us to breathe.”

A workspace-sharing business in Tehran’s Book Garden, a cultural complex, was also forced to close, casting 270 workers into unemployment. Other cities, including Mashhad and Qom, have seen a crackdown on public spaces as well. In Rasht, a particularly liberal city close to the Caspian coast, police have started accosting women on the streets and threatening them with arrest if they refuse the hijab. There, too, cafés have been pressured to refuse to serve uncovered women, a young woman who recently traveled there told me.

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Iran’s social policy is a divisive subject in national-security circles. Some inside the ruling establishment have been pushing for the draconian enforcement of the Islamic dress code. Hamshahri, a newspaper controlled by Tehran’s hard-line mayor, Alireza Zakani, recently asked the police and judiciary to punish hijab-less women for their “bad appearances” and “norm violations,” contending that such women represented an “organized project” of “cultural shamelessness.” Some members of Parliament and regional officials have made similar calls in recent weeks.

More pragmatic figures in the establishment accuse these hard-liners of upsetting the country’s social peace with needless political repression, and by seeking to micromanage the lifestyles of ordinary people. They accuse the hard-liners of doing the bidding of Iran’s adversaries, the United States and Israel, by causing instability that will ultimately hurt the regime.

Even in these dark times, Iran still roils with unrest. Shopkeepers in bazaars have staged sit-ins, not unlike those that preceded the January protests. And just in the past few days, farmers have protested for lack of water, residents of Zanjan have demonstrated for housing, oil and gas employees have rallied in several facilities in the south, and several prisons, including one in Rasht, have become flash points for crowds registering their opposition to the continued executions.  

Having fought off several rounds of nationwide protests since 2017, the Iranian regime knows full well that many of its citizens detest it. The response it reaches for is always the same: repression, which has never yet produced social peace. As the Islamic Republic seeks to manage its military conflict with the United States, it will likely find that the home front remains the hardest to win.

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