Reuters reported on Wednesday that Iran is staging an “internal security crackdown across the country with mass arrests, executions, and military deployments, particularly in the restive Kurdish region.”
The crackdown actually began shortly after Israel began striking Iran’s nuclear sites and military commanders on June 13, when the regime moved to quell potential uprisings. The regime’s strategy seems to have worked, as there have been no widespread protests or demands for a new government.
Some Iranians are unhappy with the regime’s dogged insistence on enriching uranium and its utter inability to defend itself against Israeli and U.S. airstrikes, but the regime has previously weathered much higher degrees of anger in the streets. Nothing close to the Green Revolution of 2009 or the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising of 2022 has emerged since the conflict began.
Several Iranian security officials told Reuters the regime was most concerned about unrest in the Kurdish regions of Iran, which lie mostly along the Turkish border, so the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the brutal Basij militia were “put on alert.”
There are several long-standing causes of tension in the Kurdish region. Iran has several Kurdish separatist groups, the Kurds are an unhappy Sunni Muslim minority in the region’s major Shiite power, and the event that inspired the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising was the death of a young Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s infamous “morality police.”
Hundreds of arrests were made in the aftermath of her slaughter, and the regime executed at least three people. All three of the execution victims were reportedly Kurds. All of the major Kurdish separatist movements reported being hassled by security forces.
Iran quickly established checkpoints throughout the Kurdish region so the population could be obsessively searched for incriminating documents and cell phone messages. A few days after the Israeli strikes began, Iranian security forces began searching Kurdish homes for weapons.
Iran sent troops to reinforce its borders with Pakistan, Iraq, and Azerbaijan to keep out “terrorist” elements who might try to take advantage of the chaos of the 12-Day War. The IRGC also took steps to keep its supply lines into the Kurdish region open, sending a message that it would quickly dispatch reinforcements in the event of trouble.
The regime moved quickly to shut down Internet access across the country, preventing protests from becoming organized. Young Iranians compared the 13-day online blackout to being “walled in,” turning their apartments into prison cells.
“We’ve lost access to each other, to independent news, to help. There’s just state media and silence followed by the sounds of bombs,” complained a student in Tehran.
Human rights activists said the regime made it clear it would harshly repress protests, and the IRGC was eager to imprison and execute anyone who might be an “Israeli spy.”
“We are being extremely cautious right now because there’s a real concern the regime might use this situation as a pretext,” a human rights activist in Tehran told Reuters.
Iranian dissidents living overseas were outspoken in hoping the people back home might take the humiliation of the regime as an opportunity to rise up and demand their freedom. The Iranian expatriate community in Los Angeles donned “Make America Great Again” hats in salute to President Donald Trump and called for regime change.
Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, who lives in the United Kingdom, predicted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be toppled now that his people “realized what a paper tiger this administration is.”
“The people will not trust a leader who hides during times of war. I predict the people will succeed this time around and this regime will be gone,” Ebadi said, referring to Khamenei’s disappearance during the conflict.
For the moment, the ayatollah remains securely in power. The regime wasted no time reminding its subjects that Iran’s military might be woefully ineffective at blocking Israeli airstrikes, but it excels at imprisoning and killing unarmed Iranian civilians in vast numbers. That intimidating message appears to have been received.
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