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?

Islam - Current Day > An inflection point for Iran?

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An inflection point for Iran?

A young woman's death after arrest by the morality police has sparked huge protests

Melanie Phillips

Sep 21

Protest in Tehran over death of Mahsa Amini

There have been amazing scenes in Iran. Women have been burning their headscarves and cutting off their hair in protest at the death of 22 year-old Mahsa Amini following her arrest by Tehran’s morality police. 

Amini died after three days in a coma. Witnesses have claimed she was beaten on the head with a baton while being dragged into a police van to be taken to a detention centre for not wearing a headscarf.  

Since Iran’s Islamic revolutionary regime came to power in 1979, women have not only been required to wear headscarves but have also been banned from wearing tight trousers, ripped jeans, brightly coloured outfits or clothing that reveals the knee.

Tehran’s police chief, General Hossein Rahimi, said Amini had violated the dress code. The police have rebutted the accusations of brutality and claimed she died of a heart attack. But Col. Ahmed Mirzaei, the head of the moral security police of Greater Tehran, has reportedly been suspended.

The move failed to prevent massive unrest which has now been going on for four days.  The Telegraph reports: 

Videos posted on social media showed protesters setting fire to hijabs while chanting promises to “take revenge” for “our sister” Amini, who died in hospital on Friday after three days in a coma following her arrest during a visit to the capital…

Videos of women cutting their hair to express their anger at women’s treatment at the hands of the police have also been shared widely on social media, while Googoosh — arguably the country’s most famous female singer — gave an emotional tribute to Amini at a concert in Frankfurt…

Police in the capital used tear gas and batons to disperse crowds of protesters chanting slogans denouncing the morality police — the enforcers of the Islamic republic’s draconian laws requiring women to wear headscarves in public.

Several hundred people gathered on Tehran’s hijab street — or headscarf street —chanting “Death to the Islamic republic!” as they removed their headscarves.

As ever, the courage of those protesting against Iran’s fanatical Islamic regime is astonishing. According to local rights groups, at least five people were killed and hundreds more injured on Monday when security forces opened fire on protesting crowds in Iran’s Kurdish region, with two of the deaths reportedly occurring in Amini’s home city of Saqez.  Social media videos appeared to show protesters running from gunfire in the town of Divandarreh, in Kurdistan province. Protests have also broken out in several universities in Tehran and in Iran’s second city Mashhad.

Witnesses said demonstrators poured into Tehran’s Keshavarz Boulevard, a central thoroughfare, chanting, “Death to the dictator”. They also chanted against the police and damaged a police vehicle.

As has been demonstrated by the suspension of the head of the morality police and the announcement of an inquiry into Amini’s death, the Iranian tyrants have been showing nervousness at this fresh eruption of street protest. As well they might: few know better than a revolutionary regime how fragile is the control it wields through brutality. If enough people have the courage to face that down, the regime falls.  

Until now, the protests that have periodically erupted and have been viciously suppressed — including the “Green Revolution” that followed the disputed 2009 presidential elections — haven’t achieved the critical mass necessary to bring the regime down. But under the hardline president Ebrahim Raisi — who has presided over the execution of more than 300 people this year for political crimes — and the increasing privations of economic collapse, with an approximately 300 per cent increase in the cost of basic goods, public fury and desperation have been increasing. 

For months now, there have been repeated massive demonstrations in which the protesters have somehow managed to communicate with each other even though the regime shuts down the internet.

Moreover, the Iranian people — who according to expert commentators are adept at reading the runes, as well as incubating theories about both real and imaginary conspiracies — may be sensing that the regime is weakening. 

They can see it is suffering one calamity after another  — senior Revolutionary Guards and officials involved in Iran’s nuclear programme being mysteriously killed, equally mysterious explosions at sensitive military plants — which defy the laughable explanations of accident or malfunction that the regime is offering up. Believing that Israel is one of the most powerful countries in the world, people are speculating that Israel is behind these developments and that it is preparing to attack the regime directly. 

They can see that senior figures in the security establishment are now publicly blaming each other for these calamities. Since Iranians don’t squabble in public, this is being viewed as a further sign of the regime’s weakness and internal dissension. 

Excited questions were also asked about an apparently extraordinary event on Iranian TV. In early June, the night before the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini who had led the 1979 Islamic revolution, all nine Persian-language foreign TV channels broadcasting into Iran aired simultaneously an hour-long live interview with Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah, who is the only opposition figure known to all Iranians. Since these TV channels reportedly all loathe each other, people speculated that this live simulcast suggested a decision had been taken somewhere to “greenlight” Reza Pahlavi as the symbolic or actual leader of the overthrow of the regime.

Whether any of this speculation is plausible or true is beside the point. For a popular insurrection against a tyranny to succeed, the people involved have to be sure that they have powerful backing. Absent that, they cannot sustain a revolt in which they will unavoidably suffer many casualties. 

Maybe this latest revolt will peter out like all the rest. But if the oppressed and suffering Iranian people have decided that the regime is on its last legs and that powerful forces elsewhere in the world now have their back, this might just be the inflection point for which so many of us have hoped for so long.

Syria Regime in Greater Peril Than any Time

Growing strains on Al Assad’s manpower becoming obvious, magnitude of losses are too big to hide

Rebel fighters from the Ahrar al-Sham Islamic Movement cover their ears
during the launch of grad rockets from Idlib countryside towards forces loyal
 to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, who are stationed at
Jureen town in al-Ghab plain in the Hama countryside

BY LIZ SLY, WASHINGTON POST

Beirut: A surge of rebel gains in Syria is overturning long-held assumptions about the durability of President Bashar Al Assad’s regime, which now appears in greater peril than at any time in the past three years.

The capture on April 25 of the town of Jisr Al Shughour in northern Idlib province was just the latest in a string of battlefield victories by rebel forces, which have made significant advances in both the north and the south of the country.

As was the case in the capital of Idlib province last month, government defences in Jisr Al Shughour crumbled after just a few days of fighting, pointing as much to the growing weakness of regime forces as the revival of the opposition.

The battlefield shifts come at a time when the Obama administration has set aside Daesh (IS) in Syria to focus on its chief priorities: defeating Daesh in Iraq and concluding a nuclear deal with Iran.

Yet the pace of events in Syria may force the United States to refocus on the unresolved war, which remains at the heart of the turmoil engulfing the Middle East, analysts say. Iran backs Al Assad, Saudi Arabia backs the rebels, and a shift in the balance of power in Syria could have profound repercussions for the conflicts in Iraq and Yemen.

Game Changer

“We’re seeing a game changer right now in Syria,” said Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist. “I think we are going to see an end to the Al Assad regime, and we have to think now about what will happen the day after, because the day after is near.”

Other observers say the prospect of a government collapse in Damascus is still remote. The capital is well defended, and the rebels’ gains have come mostly on the periphery of the country, where the regime’s supply lines are stretched.

But perceptions that Al Assad will survive indefinitely or serve at least as an interim counterbalance to Daesh and its strongholds in northeastern Syria are in doubt, said Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The growing strains on Al Assad’s manpower and resources “are becoming extremely obvious, and the magnitude of his losses are now too big to hide,” Hokayem said.

“This destroys the narrative that he is winning, which he was counting on, and also the argument that he is the best option against Daesh,” the analyst added. “If he’s not able to take on or even defend against the rebels, he’s going to have a hard time presenting himself as able to fight Daesh.”

The revival of rebel fortunes is attributed to a large degree on the recent rapprochement between a newly assertive Saudi Arabia and its erstwhile rivals for influence over the rebels — Turkey and Qatar.

Since inheriting the throne in January, Saudi King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud has moved forcefully to challenge the expanding regional influence of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s biggest foe, most publicly by embarking on an air war against Houthi militiamen in Yemen. He has also acted to shore up the flagging and deeply divided rebels in Syria against the Iranian-backed Al Assad, in coordination with Qatar and Turkey, Khashoggi said.

Saudi Arabian air strike

‘Major rifts’

The result has been an unexpectedly cohesive rebel coalition called the Army of Conquest that is made up of Al Qaida affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra, an assortment of mostly Islamist brigades, and a small number of more moderate battalions. The coalition, which launched last month, has proved more effective than expected.

After seizing most of Idlib province in recent weeks, the rebels are pressing south toward the government strongholds of Hama and Homs and are threatening the Al Assad family’s coastal heartland of Latakia. A separate, more moderate rebel coalition has been making swift advances in the south, challenging government control over the key provincial capital of Daraa and making progress north toward Damascus.

Just as significantly, government forces have been proving increasingly ineffective. The collapse of two much-trumpeted offensives earlier this year, in southern Syria and in Aleppo, presaged the success of the recent rebel offensives, suggesting that even if the government can remain in control in Damascus, its chances of regaining the rest of the country are slipping.

There are signs that the regime itself is fraying under the strain of the four-year-old war. On Friday, pro-government news outlets reported the death of political security director Rustom Gazaleh, a longtime Al Assad stalwart, after months of rumours that he had fallen out with the regime, been badly beaten up by a rival and was languishing in hospital.

The reports followed the firing last month of the military intelligence chief, Rafiq Shehadeh, another inner-circle loyalist. Western diplomats monitoring events in Syria from Beirut say the two men appear to have clashed with the Al Assad family over the growing battlefield role played by Iran.

The tensions are reaching into the heart of the Al Assad family, whose four-decade-old rule had seemed unshakeable until the revolt erupted in 2011.

Hafez Makhlouf, Al Assad’s cousin, was fired late last year as head of security in the province of Damascus and has since fled the country, the diplomats say. Another cousin, Munzer Al Assad, was detained this month amid rumours that he had been plotting a coup.

Sudden collapse possible

“It looks like there are major rifts going on inside the Al Assad regime,” one of the diplomats said. “A military collapse on the regime side is not impossible.”

Much will depend on Iran, which has stepped up in the past to dispatch men, money and arms whenever Al Assad seemed to be faltering. But Iran is stretched, too, by the economic effects of continued international sanctions and by the competing demands of the war next door in Iraq, which has diverted some of the Iraqi militias that had been fighting for the regime in Syria.

In a commentary for the Middle East Institute in the past week, Robert Ford, a former US envoy to Syria, said a regime collapse cannot be ruled out. The regime’s schisms, its battlefield setbacks and its manpower shortages “are all signs of weakness,” he wrote. “We may be seeing signs of the beginning of their end.”

Then what?

That's the big question. What or who will take Al Assad's place if and when he falls? Will he align with Iran, with Saudi Arabia, with Daesh, or none of the above? The only thing I would take odds on right now, is that whatever happens, it will probably be worse than anyone expects. Wait, darn, my glass is half empty already.