Iran > Quickly returns to its old self - Executions, mass arrests, etc.

 

When Trump announced that he wasn't after regime change in Iran, he broke the hearts of most Iranians who thought they saw the light at the end of a 45 year tunnel.

Why did he change his mind? What has changed here except the timeline?

Islamic Republic of Iran intensifies

‘security’ crackdown with executions,

mass arrests and military deployments

Jun 27, 2025 11:00 am By Christine Douglass-Williams10 Comments

The crackdown is specifically intended to block any possibility of regime change in the direction of secularism and free society.

Recently, frontrunners to rule the Islamic Republic emerged, as regime officials discussed possible successors to Khamenei. At the top of the list are the offspring of two supreme leaders: Ayatollah Khamenei’s 56-year-old son Mojtaba Khamenei, and Hassan Khomeini, the 53-year-old grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — the architect of the Islamic revolution in Iran. To ensure the survival of the Shia regime, the crackdown has begun, because regime officials know that Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has a transition plan in place if Khamenei falls.

Freedom activists in the country are now “lying low,” and this is exactly what regime thugs intended.

Iran intensifies internal security crackdown with executions and mass arrests

Reuters, June 25, 2025:

Iranian authorities are pivoting from a ceasefire with Israel to intensify an internal security crackdown across the country with mass arrests, executions and military deployments, particularly in the restive Kurdish region, according to officials and activists.

Within days of Israel’s airstrikes beginning on 13 June, Iranian security forces started a campaign of widespread arrests accompanied by an intensified street presence based around checkpoints.

Some in Israel and exiled opposition groups had hoped the military campaign, which targeted Revolutionary Guards and internal security forces as well as nuclear sites, would spark a mass uprising and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

While numerous Iranians expressed anger at the government, there has been no sign yet of any significant protests against the authorities. However, one senior Iranian security official and two other senior officials briefed on internal security issues said the authorities were focused on the threat of possible internal unrest, particularly in Kurdish areas.

Revolutionary Guard and Basij paramilitary units were put on alert and internal security was now the primary focus, said the senior security official.

The official said authorities were worried about Israeli agents, ethnic separatists and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq), an exiled opposition group once designated as a terrorist organisation by the US and UK.

Activists within the country are lying low…..

Lying low or absolutely terrified?