From cafes to buskers, Tehran tightens its grip on the fabric of everyday life

Abolfazl Ghadyani, a veteran Islamic Revolution-era official turned fierce critic of Tehran; Mohammad Najafi, a human rights lawyer jailed for exposing a protester's death in custody; and Reza Valizadeh, an Iranian-American journalist and former Radio Farda contributor, issued the joint statement from Tehran's Evin prison.

The three political prisoners said the Islamic Republic was accelerating executions to inflict revenge on defenseless citizens for military setbacks against international adversaries.

"The corrupt regime of the Islamic Republic has once again turned war into a license to kill citizens," the prisoners wrote. "Whatever collapsed of its hollow authority on the battlefield, it is now trying to rebuild on the gallows."

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Executions described as 'begging for authority'

Executing protesters following show trials does not represent the administration of justice but rather "begging for authority on a path of blood," the signatories wrote.

They said Iranian authorities were rushing executions to take out frustrations on ordinary citizens that they could not exact on the US and Israel, seeking to crush any protesting voice.

"Today the hereditary regime of Mojtaba Khamenei, who like his father is a bloodthirsty and criminal tyrant who shared and partnered in all his father's crimes and plunder, has fallen from governance to tunnel-keeping," the statement said.

The prisoners added that the regime and its military-security cliques, unable to manage severe economic and social crises, were relying on a triad of "execution, crackdown, and imprisonment" to control the population outside their power centers.

Isfahan hangings spark grief and anger

The statement follows the executions of two young protesters early on Tuesday, Amirhossein Safari and Abolfazl Sepahi, who were hanged in Isfahan amid a heavy security deployment around Alikhani Square.

The two men were among 12 defendants convicted in the Alikhani Square case stemming from clashes during protests in January. Their hangings brought the total number of individuals executed in the case to four, following the executions of Golmohammad Mohammadi and Erfan Esfandiari on July 19. Eight others remain under sentence of death.

The hangings in Isfahan triggered widespread grief, anger, and public defiance across Iranian cities and abroad. Witnesses described crowds gathering near Alikhani Square overnight despite intimidation by security forces, while messages across social media described the executions as a crime that hardened public resolve rather than suppressed dissent.

UN human rights experts led by Special Rapporteur Mai Sato had urged Iranian authorities on Monday to halt the executions, warning that closed-court trials based on televised confessions violated basic international legal standards.

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  Iranian protesters’ executions stir grief and harden resolve across Iran

Surge in capital punishment draws global alarm

The joint statement from Evin prison comes amid a broader surge in death sentences and executions across Iran over the past year, particularly following the January protests and escalating regional conflict.

Data compiled by Iran International shows that the Iranian judiciary has executed more than 50 political prisoners since the beginning of the current Iranian year, with dozens more facing execution.

Rights groups and civil society leaders have issued repeated warnings over the escalation. Amnesty International reported that at least 60 people, including three individuals under the age of 18 at the time of their alleged offenses, face imminent execution in Iran.

The three Evin prisoners concluded their statement by warning that no government achieves security or legitimacy through "the accumulation of corpses and a fear production line," adding that if the ruling establishment fails to yield to the public will, "Iran will become more ruined."

Speaking on Iran International's Titre Aval (The Lead) program on Wednesday, Des Roches said the United States had limited military options after adopting an air campaign and argued Trump was unlikely to accept the political cost of ending the operation without achieving his objectives.

Three options

"The United States went in with an air power-only strategy," said Des Roches, now an associate professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies.

"That usually is flawed because once you do that, and if you look historically at how we've used an air power-led strategy in Korea, Vietnam, even World War II, but I think the illustrative point is Kosovo."

"If you don't achieve your strategic goals initially against a small target set, your options are to either introduce another element of warfare, and we don't have time to do that. To have a credible ground invasion force would take a year to build up, or you bomb more intensively."

"You widen the target list to include dual-use infrastructure, like bridges, the power grid, the national communications, television, and radio. This is what the US did against Serbia to stop the massacre of Muslims in Kosovo, or you leave."

"Those are really your three options, and I think that President Trump does not relish the prospect of leaving. That's too close to Joe Biden."

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More strikes likely

Des Roches said he believed the White House was most likely to increase military pressure rather than expand into ground operations.

"So I think, you know, he doesn't really have the ability to introduce another domain of warfare," he said.

"But really, I think his main option is to try to increase pain on the regime, and I think that that will mean an expansion into the targets towards dual-use targets and an expansion of intensive bombing to include not just areas adjacent to the Persian Gulf, but also areas inland, and especially the capital Tehran."

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  What does Trump mean by 'finish the job' in Iran?

Politics driving the conflict

Asked about reports that Trump had been advised against escalating the conflict because of concerns about US weapons stockpiles, Des Roches said he believed political and economic factors were more important than military constraints.

"Some, but I think it's not really driven by military action or missile inventories," he said.

"I think it's political and economic. So we have midterm elections coming up. The Islamic Republic knows this. The leaders within the Islamic Republic know it, and they have calculated that if they can draw the war out, keep gasoline prices high, that President Trump will be in a worse position, or may even be impeached and removed."

"I think that they're kind of overplaying their hand."

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  US sanctions Iran's Hormuz scheme amid shipping standoff

Revolutionary Guards and internal divisions

Des Roches said recent Iranian actions might not reflect a unified government position.

"I'm not sure if the actions we're seeing reflect a unitary position of the Iranian government, but rather the actions of different factions of the Iranian government, probably the Revolutionary Guard, who are vying for supremacy and are trying to wreck any possibility for negotiations."

He argued that an end to the conflict would shift public attention inside Iran toward domestic issues.

"Obviously, if peace breaks out, then the focus within Iran goes from a national rally around the flag, oppose the Zionist entity and the Great Satan, towards looking at things like where has all the money gone over the year? Why is Tehran running out of water when the Revolutionary Guard controls the major construction companies in the country, and why are their children driving Lamborghinis in Spain and ours are having a hard time getting water in Tehran?"

"So it's a challenging period, but I think the hardliners, particularly in the Revolutionary Guard, are at risk of severely overplaying their hand."

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  Tehran tests a more confrontational strategy

Regime change

Asked whether regime change had become part of US strategy, Des Roches said he believed Trump was pursuing a different approach from previous US interventions.

"My view is President Trump's theory of victory is not that the US will impose a new regime the way we did, for example, in Iraq, because that didn't work out well."

"I think he feels that economic pressure will lead the Iranians to have their own regime change."

Des Roches said Trump appeared to believe the anti-government protests in late 2019 had brought Iran close to internal political change.

"I think he feels that in December that was about to happen. It was only the violence of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij, the massacres of between 1,300 and 4,000 Iranians - we don't know the exact number - that would have done it."

"I think that's why we're here now. It's not because Netanyahu led it. It's because, in the face of what he saw as a vindication of his policy, I think he believes that had he remained president after 2020, regime change would have been accomplished from within by about 2022."

Ukraine has struck the Caspian arms corridor before. In February, Ukrainian long-range drones hit a Russian warship and two sanctioned cargo ships, the Port Olya 2 and the Begey, both used to ferry military cargo from Iran to Russia, months after an earlier strike on the Russian port of Olya damaged a vessel carrying Iranian drone parts and ammunition.

What sets Saturday's attack apart is the flag and the casualty: Kyiv says it targeted ships moving military cargo between Iran and Russia in breach of sanctions, while Tehran says the vessel was an Iranian commercial ship, and the sailor killed aboard was the first Iranian death from Ukrainian fire.

The Kremlin called the strike an attack on Iran and accused Kyiv of trying to widen the war. Iranian officials warned it would not go unanswered.

Yet within days, both governments were publicly signaling that they wanted no further escalation.

"I stressed that our goal is to avoid unnecessary escalation," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote after speaking with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi. Ukraine's actions, he said, were "aimed solely at defending our country from Russian aggression" and "never intended to target civilian vessels or people."

Araghchi later said he had been assured the strike on the Iranian vessel was unintentional and that "Ukraine seeks no escalation."

"Iran does not seek escalation either," he wrote, while adding that "any attack on our citizens or interests is unacceptable" and that restitution should be made for the losses.

Analysts interviewed by Iran International say the exchange reinforces their assessment that the strike was less the opening of a new front between Kyiv and Tehran than a calculated signal.

Where they differ is over who was sending the message, and to whom.

A signal with different audiences

Nicole Grajewski, assistant professor at Sciences Po and author of Russia and Iran: Partners in Defiance from Syria to Ukraine, says the operation should be understood in the context of a relationship that has existed since Iran began supplying Russia with Shahed drones in 2022.

"For the Ukrainians, this has always been linked," she told Iran International. "It's always been a war that has had a thread that goes through Iran."

She said the Caspian Sea has become one of the clearest examples of how intertwined the two conflicts already are.

"The Caspian is a very clear example of it. It's probably the most blunt example about how they're connected because that's a conduit for both what Iran receives and also what it provided to Russia."

Grajewski is not convinced the strike reflected coordination with Washington. Instead, she believes it may have involved coordination between Ukraine and Israel while advancing Kyiv's own strategic objectives.

She argues the Trump administration has reasons to avoid tying the Ukraine war and the conflict involving Iran even more closely together. For Kyiv, however, demonstrating that it can reach the Caspian and disrupt an increasingly important corridor linking Russia and Iran serves its own strategic interests.

"It's messaging," Grajewski said. "But that's also showing their capabilities or their ability to disrupt things as well."

The military relationship between Tehran and Moscow helps explain Kyiv's thinking.

Iran became an active participant in Russia's war against Ukraine in the summer of 2022 when it began supplying Shahed drones that were later used extensively against Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure.

The United States has also accused Tehran of supplying Russia with short-range ballistic missiles, while Ukraine alleges Iranian trainers helped Russian forces operate drone systems.

In her new book, Grajewski writes that Russian drone operators traveled to Iran in August 2022, where they participated in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-hosted drone competition that also served as cover for training on Iranian drones later deployed in Ukraine.

"The Ukrainians have been suffering at the hands of Iranian technology for years. Now they're giving the Iranians a taste of their own medicine," said David Patrikarakos, special correspondent for the Daily Mail, who has reported extensively from the front lines in Ukraine and has personally witnessed Shahed drone attacks.

Patrikarakos said the growing overlap reflects a broader convergence of conflicts rather than the emergence of one single war.

"I think they're still separate wars," he said. "But I'd say there's a greater overlap."

Ukraine's experience defending against Iranian-designed drones has also reshaped its own military capabilities. Kyiv developed counter-drone technologies during the war and has since exported low-cost anti-drone systems to Persian Gulf countries facing attacks from Iranian drones.

Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, agrees the strike was primarily about sending a signal but believes the intended audience may have extended beyond Tehran.

"The question isn't just what Ukraine is trying to do here. Why did the United States use Ukraine to make this point?" he said.

Vatanka, in his view, said the operation may have been intended to pressure Iran to reconsider its military cooperation with Russia while also warning Tehran that northern trade routes may be no safer than its increasingly constrained southern routes.

"The two motives there: one is for Iran to weaken its association with Russia when it comes to the Ukraine war," he said.

"The other is to raise awareness in Iran that if it's looking for alternative trade routes around the blockade, its north isn't necessarily secure either."

For months, the United States and its allies have targeted Iranian military infrastructure, ports, naval assets and logistics networks along the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz to constrain Tehran's ability to move military equipment and conduct maritime trade.

As pressure has mounted on Iran's southern access to international shipping, northern routes across the Caspian Sea have taken on greater importance, particularly the International North-South Transport Corridor linking Iran with Russia. If Vatanka's assessment is correct, the strike signaled that those routes may also be vulnerable.

Neither Grajewski nor Vatanka expects the Caspian strike to trigger a direct military confrontation between Iran and Ukraine.

"They are very careful how they horizontally escalate," Vatanka said.

Whether that message came from Kyiv alone, or with the backing of others, remains open to debate. What appears far less disputed is that neither Ukraine nor Iran has much interest in allowing that signal to become a wider war.

It is three o'clock in the morning and I am trying not to fall asleep. By the time the dawn call to prayer reaches my window, three young Iranians may be dead.

I know there is nothing I can do. Still, sleep feels like a kind of surrender. So I keep refreshing whatever scraps of internet still work, hoping to see a message saying the executions have been postponed, that the rumours were wrong, that someone, somewhere, changed their mind.

The three young men have spent weeks waiting for this night. Convicted over their alleged role in the January protests, they now face the possibility of being taken to the gallows before most of Iran has opened its eyes.

Their names are spreading quickly, far beyond their hometown of Isfahan. That is why so many of us are awake.

Videos circulating online show heavy security around Isfahan's Alikhani Square, where scaffolding has been erected ahead of the possible public hangings. Small groups of people hover nearby despite the risks. They know they are unlikely to stop anything, but they go anyway.

There is something profoundly human about it: standing in the darkness simply because another person should not have to die alone.

The authorities would probably describe it as law enforcement. Most people I know call it something else: state killing. The only thing in Iran that never pauses.

War or peace, summer or winter. Presidents come and go, mediators arrive and leave. Bombs fall. Ceasefires are declared. The scaffold remains.

That continuity has become its own form of terror. Executions are part of our lives because the state has made them part of our lives. Deliberately.

Tonight feels different only because people know where to look. Some are watching the square from nearby streets. Others, like me, stare at flickering phone screens. We tell ourselves that daylight would make it harder.

As if numbers could somehow interrupt a machinery that has spent decades perfecting itself. It is an irrational hope. But hope often is.

People outside Iran often ask why sanctions, assassinations or bombs have not broken this system. Well, perhaps look at Alikhani Square.

Bombs can destroy buildings. They cannot, on their own, dismantle a system that has learned to absorb them. Ordinary people are different. They are the only force capable of challenging it from within. So the regime continues to reserve its greatest brutality for us.

The call to prayer will come soon. I still do not know whether I will sleep before then. I tell myself that once the sun is up there will be more eyes on the streets, more phones recording, more people standing nearby.

I convince myself that staying awake might help. I know it won’t. But tonight it feels unbearable not to try.

The UNESCO listing has drawn renewed attention to Choubak’s role in identifying, documenting and conserving the fortress complex, located 120 miles northwest of Tehran, and preparing it for World Heritage status.

Alamut Castle and Related Fortifications became Iran’s 30th UNESCO World Heritage property when it was inscribed on July 26 during the committee’s 48th session in Busan, South Korea.

Images of Choubak crying as the decision was announced were widely shared online, with users praising her decades-long commitment while criticizing the prominence given to government officials at the ceremony.

Zeinab Karimian, an Iranian journalist who formerly worked for the official news agency IRNA, said the inscription was the result of Choubak’s 25 years of “perseverance, yet once again, the front row was filled by male officials who will serve as ministers or deputy ministers for only a few years, while she remained in a corner.”

“History forgets the names of those who occupy the seats, but not those who devoted their lives to this land.”

Many social media users also praised Choubak as a symbol of professional dedication, saying the UNESCO listing had finally brought overdue recognition to decades of largely unseen work.

“I wish people like Dr. Hamideh Choubak could be multiplied—people who love this country’s land and heritage,” communications specialist Negar Arab wrote on X.

The Asr-e Iran news website also published a tribute to Choubak titled “25 years of effort and love for Iran’s cultural heritage.”

The outlet said she had devoted much of her career to researching and protecting Alamut, describing the UNESCO decision as the culmination of years of work.

“Alamut’s inscription may be only a piece of news, but for a woman who devoted more than a quarter of a century of her life to this mountain and fortress, this moment marks the end of a long journey and the beginning of Alamut’s lasting place in global memory,” it wrote.

Twenty-five years at Alamut

Choubak began archaeological excavations at Alamut Castle in 2001.

Her research continued over 25 years and included 16 excavation seasons at the main fortress, surrounding areas and several associated castles.

Her team uncovered buried sections of the complex and identified the functions of different structures.

The excavations revealed the castle’s prison, main entrance, observatory and central courtyard.

Researchers also identified Molasara, believed to have been used by Hassan-i Sabbah and other Ismaili leaders, as well as storage facilities, irrigation systems and communication routes.

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Studies of six neighboring castles indicated that the fortifications had operated as an integrated network.

Botanical research conducted during the excavations also challenged some common accounts about the use of hashish during Hassan-i Sabbah’s era.

Choubak said the site had been reduced to little more than a mound of earth after years of erosion and neglect when excavations began.

Only parts of its walls remained visible.

Over the following decades, the main structures were identified, documented, conserved and restored as part of efforts to prepare Alamut for UNESCO recognition.

Protecting Alamut from development

Choubak was also praised for opposing projects that could have damaged the site and its surrounding historical landscape.

She resisted plans to construct a road, a cable car and other developments within the protected area, and sought to prevent unauthorized land occupation and construction.

Choubak, who serves as director of the Alamut World Heritage base, has said the complex was more than a military fortress.

It was also a center of government, science and culture during the Ismaili period, she said.

She pointed to the presence of scholars including Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, as well as the castle’s library and scientific activities, as evidence of its broader cultural importance.

Asr-e Iran also highlighted Choubak’s archaeological work in the ancient city of Jiroft and the Jazmourian region.

Those excavations led to the identification of a mosque, bazaar, public square, cemetery, water-distribution network and industrial workshops.

Choubak, born in 1952 in Bushehr in southern Iran, is an archaeologist specializing in the Islamic period. She studied archaeology at the University of Tehran, completing her master’s degree in 1983 with a thesis on Islamic ceramics, before earning a PhD in Islamic archaeology from Tarbiat Modares University.

Her career has included work at Iran’s Archaeological Center, the Glassware and Ceramic Museum, the Tehran Cultural Heritage Center and the Research Institute of Archaeology.

Choubak has participated in and led numerous excavations across Iran, including at Rey, Tepe Hissar, Hormuz, Jiroft and Kish.