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3. Iran Escalates Crackdown on Opposition Figures, Detains Prominent Reformists

Iran has ramped up its crackdown on opposition figures on Sunday and Monday, arresting activists and reformists weeks after its brutal suppression of January’s anti-regime protest movement.

Tehran has stated that the arrests were made against people seeking to disrupt the country’s social order, claiming that they were acting as operatives of U.S. and Israeli interests.

Azar Mansouri, a key Iranian reformist politician, was detained on Sunday for speaking out against the regime’s clerical establishment. Prior to her arrest, she had called for transparency, accountability, and that the protest movement’s casualties not be covered up. 

Mansouri was apprehended alongside several other opposition figures including Hossein Karroubi, son of the 2009 reformist presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, a former member of Iran’s parliament.

According to Iranian human rights groups, over 6,000 protesters had been killed, with some estimates reaching over 20,000 deaths during a nationwide information blackout.

While the protest movement’s pace slowed following the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on demonstrators, the crackdowns and dissent did not fully cease. 

As international attention has turned away from human rights concerns and towards U.S. military escalation and nuclear talks, suppression of dissent is once again on the rise.

This development occurs amid a diplomatic showdown between the U.S. and Iran. The Iranian regime seeks to maintain its hold on power within the country, and Tehran has sought to leverage the nuclear issue for the sanctions relief it would need to sustain its grip on power.

As part of its escalation against Iran, the U.S. and EU have been sanctioning shadow fleet oil and gas vessels, businesses, and regime officials in Tehran to restrict the financing from which the Iranian regime benefits. The U.S. has also targeted institutions and individuals affiliated with Hezbollah in addressing Tehran’s influence abroad. 

Iran’s internal and external policies are interconnected, and its crackdowns on this year’s protest movements have pushed the regime past an unprecedented threshold; to hold onto power, the persistence of the nuclear issue abroad is linked with an increasing reliance on force to manufacture control within.