After the protests that swept Iran in January, an estimated 50,000 people disappeared inside the regime’s detention system. They are now at even greater risk as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) facilities holding them come under attack by the US and Israel.
After strikes on IRGC and intelligence buildings last week, security forces took over part of a local hospital to house wounded detainees while keeping them under constant surveillance, said Arina Moradi of the human rights group Hengaw.
“Their families are kept in the dark,” she added. “No one knows where their loved ones are or if they are still alive.”
In the days after the assassination of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s regime hit back overseas. But it has also been fighting for survival on another front: menacing its own citizens to curb internal dissent and keep the regime in power.
‘The Islamic Republic could hold on for another decade, but the future is grim’
‘The Islamic Republic could hold on for another decade, but the future is grim’
Farzan Sabet, Geneva Graduate Institute
“The regime appears focused on two immediate priorities: continuing military retaliation under almost any circumstances, and maintaining control over the streets and key state institutions,” said Mohammad Ghaedi of George Washington University in DC.
At the heart of this internal battle is the IRGC. A behemoth inside the Iranian regime, with influence far beyond the military, it is expected to exert influence over Khamenei’s successor, and many of the regime’s remaining powerful figures are former members.
“It was built for resilience, with its tentacles into virtually every facet of Iranian political and social life,” said Frederic Wehrey of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The IRGC will play a key role in choosing the supreme leader and is likely to throw its support behind Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Ali Khamenei who was reportedly the IRGC liaison in his father’s office. “It’s a symbiotic relationship: he needs the IRGC’s coercive power, and the IRGC benefits from a trusted leader within the supreme leader’s office,” said Wehrey.
Hereditary rule is not politically popular – video from Tehran showed people leaning out of their windows to chant against Mojtaba.
Iran’s regime has tried to project an unfaltering image of continuity at the top because it fears defections lower down or deepening splits in the IRGC, said Farzan Sabet at the Geneva Graduate Institute’s global governance centre. Sabet pointed to a trickle of videos last year of discontented lower-level security officials who complained that they were unable to make ends meet. “You don’t need the whole IRGC to turn – just a sufficient fragment to crack off and join with other security or military forces and political opposition to create a powerful counterweight,” he said.
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Former Iranian nuclear negotiator and politician Seyed Hossein Mousavian disagreed that defections could happen despite Israeli and American aims to strike IRGC and Basij bases to fuel regime collapse. This, he said, “rests on a questionable reading of how these organisations function”.
While two Iranian diplomats defected in Europe earlier this year, Mousavian felt that losing a few low-level conscripts, politicians or even diplomats was unlikely to collapse the system entirely. It was built, Mousavian suggested, to withstand this pressure.
As its supporters flood the streets of Tehran nightly, the regime has moved to stoke fear. Security bodies blasted citizens with text messages warning them against subverting the internet block by using VPNs or “speaking to the enemy”.
A former deputy head of the Basij turned politician, Salar Abnoush, took to state television to threaten parents that their children would be targeted if they were caught watching opposition-aligned satellite channels. “We don’t want your child to get killed,” he said with menace.
Even as many Iranians bristled at the regime’s response to the assault, Sabet said that some version of it could still survive this latest battle. But authorities will face serious challenges running the country even if hardliners seize more control, he added.
“They can keep power, but for how much longer? The Islamic Republic could hold on for another decade – but the future is very grim,” he said.
Photograph by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images