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3. Behind Closed Doors: The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Reign of Fear and Death

Nothing has fundamentally changed in Iran since the June 2025 war. The regime didn’t suddenly tip into totalitarianism — it was already there. What the war did trigger, however, was a brutal acceleration of repression in a system that had long relied solely on fear. Security obsession has morphed into full-blown paranoia, and Iran’s already-tense public sphere has turned into a stage for domestic occupation.

Since the joint Israeli-American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the streets of Tehran, Isfahan, and Mashhad have been flooded with security forces. The Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran), both uniformed and in plainclothes, patrol neighborhoods alongside the Basij—paramilitary militias tasked with “moral defense.” Old neighborhood Islamic Committees, the Komiteh, have been revived. Their task: to watch, to report, to monitor every gesture, every face, every word. A hairstyle, a pair of jeans, or a post on Telegram is now enough to land you in an interrogation room — or worse.

This isn’t a step backward — it’s the regime’s long-standing course, now pushed to the brink.

“It’s also, in many ways, the reaction of a wounded animal,” says David Rigoulet-Roze, researcher and expert at IRIS in Paris. “The regime was humiliated by the ‘Twelve-Day War.’ It has long been infiltrated by Mossad, unable to protect its elites — let alone its people. And so, it turns on the population all the more because it fears them. Now more than ever, it is deploying the full weight of its repressive machinery.”

A Haunting Past: The Shadow of 1988

This isn’t the first time the regime has met an existential threat with overwhelming repression.
In 1988, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Ayatollah Khomeini reluctantly agreed to a ceasefire with Saddam Hussein. To project strength and avoid any sign of surrender, he ordered a brutal purge: thousands of political prisoners were executed in silence, following sham trials that sometimes lasted less than two minutes. The exact number remains unknown, but estimates point to nearly 5,000 victims — dumped in unmarked mass graves.

David Rigoulet-Roze sees a chilling parallel.
“The regime is driven by the same logic of vengeance: after being severely hit from outside, it now strikes just as fiercely within to make clear it won’t back down. In 1988, the thousands killed in the ‘prison massacre’—ordered by a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini—were a direct response to being forced to ‘drink the hemlock’ by accepting a ceasefire with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The message was clear: the regime would not tolerate any threat from within. Today, executions are rising under a similar logic.”

The researcher also draws a disturbing comparison to the Law of Suspects in France during the Revolutionary Terror. Enacted in 1793, the law allowed authorities to arrest anyone suspected of “counter-revolutionary behavior” — without evidence or a fair trial. It became a tool to crush society under the guise of ideological purity. Today in Iran, mere suspicion is enough. People are arrested preemptively. Punishments are imposed as warnings. The system isn’t about justice—it’s about total intimidation.

Fear: The Only Binding Force

The latest figures are chilling: over 1,000 arrests, dozens of executions, and relentless targeting of minority groups such as Kurds, Jews, and Baha’is. NGOs report forced transfers, detainees moved to secret locations, and fast-tracked sham trials. Even Hossein Ronaghi, a prominent advocate for free expression, has been detained. Artists, students, and feminist activists are being taken away — their families left in the dark about their whereabouts.

And this, warns Roya Boroumand of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, is just the beginning. “Iranian leaders rely on fear to keep their opponents from organizing — and they may have only just started.”

As Khamenei Steps Back, the Pasdaran Rule

But behind this brutality lies a deeper shift: the heart of Iranian power appears to have changed hands. Officially, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remains the Supreme Leader. In reality, holed up in his bunker, aged and withdrawn, he relies more and more on the Pasdaran. Some speak of a power transfer already completed, but in reality, the mechanism was set in place during the Twelve-Day War to ensure continuity if Khamenei were killed. He ultimately regained control.

“He bound his own hands long ago with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is theoretically the ‘praetorian guard’ of the religious regime. He no longer really had a choice,” says Rigoulet-Roze. “Today, it’s estimated that the Pasdaran, beyond their military dominance as a parallel army and in intelligence services, control nearly 40% of the economy, dominate customs to facilitate illicit trade, and oversee countless companies they’ve taken over through more or less coerced stakes. The clergy, for its part, has been completely discredited in the eyes of a population that is increasingly secularized, leading to a gradual marginalization. Today, around the Supreme Leader, it is no longer the turbans that are visible, in accordance with the principle of velayat-e faqih (the primacy of the religious over the political), but more and more the caps of the Pasdaran.”

What was once a “state within a state” has now become the state itself. The Islamic Republic no longer maintains a credible religious facade. It has transformed into a purely security-driven apparatus, where the law is no longer a framework but a weapon of psychological warfare against the population.

What Lies Ahead?

Does this strategy work? In the short term, yes. It stifles dissent, silences opposition voices, and enforces a crushing crackdown, explains the expert. But it won’t hold up in the long run. “The regime is running on fumes. It’s trapped — unable to reform without betraying itself, risking collapse from within. It has no other way to function. In many ways, it has become captive to its own repressive system,” he adds.

Iranian society—especially the urban connected youth—is no longer fooled. They oppose both theocracy and militarization. They want to leave, to escape, or simply fade away. The numbers are stark: a 24% rise in suicides over three years, a generation ravaged by depression, addiction, and exile as their only future.

“We’re not witnessing the radicalization of the opposition,” concludes Rigoulet-Roze. “For many Iranians, it’s not belief that drives them — it’s sheer despair.”

The regime senses that despair—and that’s why it escalates its violence.

This is Iran today: a regime at war with its own people. A population suffocated, traumatized, held hostage by fear. And an international community that looks away.

But by wielding the whip relentlessly, the regime forgets one thing: when fear is everywhere, it eventually loses its grip. And when it no longer paralyzes people — it ignites them.