Iran steps up pressure on women prisoners after June war, source says

Aqil Keshavarz, a student from Isfahan, was moved from the general ward to a solitary cell on December 17, sources said, adding that the transfer was carried out to prepare for the implementation of his death sentence.

Keshavarz was arrested in June during the twelve-day war between Israel and Iran and was later convicted of spying for Israel by Iran’s judiciary.

Until now, there had been no public reporting on his case, and his name had not appeared in media coverage or human rights reports.

The Kurdistan Human Rights Network identified Keshavarz as an architecture student at Shahroud University. According to the group, he was detained by agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Intelligence Organization while traveling to Urmia.

A source familiar with the case said Keshavarz was held for about a week at an IRGC intelligence detention facility in Urmia, where he was interrogated and tortured in an effort to extract a forced confession. He was later transferred to Tehran’s Evin prison.

The source added that Keshavarz was being held in Evin at the time the prison was bombed by Israel, after which he was moved to another detention center and eventually transferred to Urmia Central Prison.

In late summer, Branch One of the Urmia Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Sajjad Dousti, sentenced him to death on charges of espionage for Israel, the source said. The ruling was later upheld by a special court handling espionage cases.

According to the source, Keshavarz and his family had remained silent about the case due to threats from security interrogators. In recent days, authorities informed him that his sentence had been finalized and summoned his family for a final visit.

Iranian authorities have carried out a wave of arrests, trials and executions on espionage and security-related charges following the punishing conflict with Israel, which was capped off by US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Officials have said more than 700 people were detained on suspicion of spying or cooperating with Israel.

Human rights groups and the UN special rapporteur on Iran say at least twelve people have been executed this year on espionage charges, warning that many such cases lack fair trial guarantees.

Rights organizations say dozens of political prisoners in Iran currently face a serious risk of execution.

Catherine Perez-Shakdam, a French-born Jewish woman, offers a portrait of a political system she says is driven less by confidence than by a fear of collapse.

She says she gained rare access to Iran’s political and ideological circles after presenting herself as a sympathetic Western voice critical of the United States and Israel.

Over time, she says, that posture opened doors to senior officials in Tehran, including the late president Ebrahim Raisi, senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guards and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Perez-Shakdam said her access was neither incidental nor accidental, but carefully cultivated.

“(I wanted) to make myself into somebody that the regime would want to invite, someone that they would see as useful and an asset for them.”

‘Nobody stopped me’

Much of that access, she said, flowed through the late filmmaker and propagandist Nader Talebzadeh, a central figure in Tehran’s state-aligned media and conference circuit.

According to Perez-Shakdam, Talebzadeh’s patronage effectively removed institutional barriers.

“So Nader gave me, you know, the absolute pass in that I had been vetted by him and therefore nobody could touch me,” she said. “Nobody could stop me at the airport. I could do whatever. I mean, whatever.”

That freedom, she said, allowed her to move through Iran in ways rarely permitted to Westerners, even those with journalistic credentials, and offered a window into Tehran’s power politics.

The structure of the Islamic Republic, Perez-Shakdam argues, reflects deep insecurity within the leadership, particularly since repeated waves of mass protest have challenged its legitimacy.

‘They fear the people’

She said that fear was most visible in what she was told about the 2009 Green Movement, when millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Perez-Shakdam said an insider described to her a moment during that unrest when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appeared visibly emotional in public, pointing to footage from the period as the state faced what he described as an existential crisis.

“He told me that it was the day that the regime almost fell,” she said. “That they were so close and that the people did not realize just how close (Khamenei) was from losing everything.”

She said the episode left a lasting psychological imprint on Iran’s leadership.

“They are terrified of the people, which is why you see the repression that you see in the streets,” Perez-Shakdam said.

‘A god among men’

Perez-Shakdam also recalled being brought into the presence of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, describing the encounter as carefully staged to project dominance rather than invite dialogue.

She said Khamenei did most of the talking and appeared intent on asserting intellectual and moral authority.

“I think he just wanted to impress upon me that, you know, he was a god among men.”

One exchange, she said, left a particularly lasting impression.

“The first thing he asked me was whether or not I thought that God was genocidal,” she said. “I looked at him and I was like, no, obviously not.”

She said Khamenei then compared deaths ordered by the state to a natural cycle of life, suggesting that killing in service of the Islamic Republic should not be considered genocide—a comparison she described as deeply disturbing.

Looking at Iran today, Perez-Shakdam argued that fear of popular revolt remains the leadership’s defining trait, particularly when it comes to women. Iranian women, she said, pose the greatest challenge to the system’s ability to control future generations.

Speaking on Thursday during a visit to South Khorasan province, Pezeshkian said that although Iran had launched missiles during the fighting, Israel’s arsenal proved superior in both quantity and capability.

“It is true that we had missiles, but their missiles were more numerous, more powerful, more precise and easier to deploy,” Pezeshkian said.

He added that it was the people who ultimately frustrated Israel, without elaborating.

Pezeshkian rejected calls for Iran to curb its missile program, framing it as essential to national defense.

“They tell us not to have missiles, while they arm Israel to the teeth so it can come here whenever it wants, raze everything and leave,” he said. “I will not accept that.”

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  Iran's buoyant missile arsenal vexes Israel, analysts say

US officials have said any talks with Tehran would hinge on sweeping conditions that include Iran ending uranium enrichment and dismantling key parts of its nuclear program, curbing or accepting limits on its missile program, and rolling back support for regional proxy forces.

The missile issue is politically charged in Tehran after the June conflict, in which Israel relied heavily on layered air and missile defenses – alongside US support – to blunt waves of Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, while still suffering some strikes that penetrated defenses.

The report said an expansion of relations in North Africa would strengthen Tehran at a time when it has been weakened by losses to its leadership and regional allies, adding that closer ties would reinforce “the Iranian regime and its so-called Axis of Resistance, now looking for avenues to rebuild its regional standing and power.”

It said Tunisia’s leadership also sees political benefit in closer alignment with Iran, noting that deepening relations would serve President Kais Saied’s agenda by allowing him to “retain legitimacy while continuing his wide-scale crackdown on Tunisia’s institutions,” while reinforcing his anti-West posture.

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The analysis said Tunisia could also offer strategic value for Iran beyond economic ties, warning that Tunis “may represent a safe haven for Iran-supported Hamas operatives” if pressure increases on other countries hosting the group’s leadership.

In September, Israeli broadcaster i24 reported that the US and Israel were holding discussions, with indirect involvement from Iran and other states, over a possible plan to relocate senior Hamas leaders from Gaza to Tunisia, citing security sources, though the talks and their scope have not been independently confirmed.

The report said Iran operates “a sophisticated, law-evading mechanism to support its aviation industry,” relying on shell and front companies in countries with limited transparency, including parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and Central Asia, to acquire aircraft and components and transfer them rapidly to avoid detection.

Aircraft are moved through layered ownership structures and “burst activity” transfers before filing flight plans that pass near Iran, allowing planes to enter Iranian airspace and make “fabricated critical malfunction” emergency landings, after which they are absorbed into Iranian fleets, the report said.

It said airlines such as Mahan Air and Qeshm Fars Air function as logistical arms of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, operating under the Quds Force to move weapons, equipment and funds to regional proxy groups, adding that the sector has shifted “from a civilian transportation tool to a core component of the regime’s economic and security strategy.”

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The report said sanctions have severely degraded Iran’s civil aviation, with about 60% of passenger aircraft grounded and the average fleet age at around 28 years, forcing airlines to cannibalize planes for spare parts and rely on smuggling networks to remain operational.

It added that the aviation sector illustrates “a sophisticated integration of state, market, and underground networks that operate in regulatory gray zones and disrupt efforts to globally enforce the sanctions,” even after the UN Security Council reimposed sanctions under the snapback mechanism and the US maintained broad restrictions under laws such as IFCA, ISA and CAATSA.