“The regime wants to transform Iran into North Korea” – these are the words that keep coming up in my conversations with sources on the ground in Iran. It serves as a metaphor for the incoming wave of domestic suppression the Islamic Republic regime is about to wage against the Iranian people in response to its conflict with Israel.
In many ways, this campaign of suppression is already in full swing. Fearing a simultaneous domestic uprising, it began the moment Israel launched its military operations in Iran.
Just hours after the first Israeli strikes against nuclear facilities and senior military commanders on June 13, a close confident of the supreme leader who led Friday prayers in Tehran warned about the “enemy’s fifth column” and vowing to confront them.
While all eyes were on the external military conflict, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – the regime’s ideological paramilitary – would tacitly fully operationalise its internal suppressive apparatus. Not only would this lead to internet blackouts, but just under 1,000 civilians would be detained on vague charges of “supporting” Israel.
And since the ceasefire, the clampdown on the Iranian people has only increased. A number of those detained on trumped-up charges have been executed, political activists have been pre-emptively detained, and scores of civilians have simply gone missing. The effectiveness of imposing an internet blackout in terms of cutting the Iranian people’s ability to communicate with each other and the outside world is also speeding-up efforts to permanently shut-down access to the global internet, replacing it with a North Korean-style domestic intranet.
Having lost the skies to Israel, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is doubling down on consolidating the regime’s control of the streets.
Ironically, however, this domestic crackdown will not just be focused on Iranian civilians. Khamenei and his now shrinking inner circle are fully aware that the precision strikes that eliminated some of the most senior and protected military elites simply would not be possible without enemy infiltration at the highest level. This reality, coupled with an increasing sense of paranoia, will catalyse major internal purges within the IRGC and broader military apparatus to uproot any trace of collusion with Israel.
It is highly likely that Mojtaba Khamenei – the supreme leader’s power-hungry son who has his eyes on succeeding his father – will personally play a key role in spearheading personnel changes across the IRGC. Mojtaba has nurtured very strong support amongst the younger and more ideologically radical third and fourth generations of the IRGC. It is precisely this younger, more extreme and less experienced cohort that will, for the first time, look to occupy senior positions within the regime’s military.
But it won’t all be internally focused. War with Israel has effectively left the Iranian regime’s conventional resources – ballistic missiles and a nuclear weapons program – in tatters. Unable to compete with Israel and the United States’ military superiority, Khamenei will naturally turn to terrorism and the Islamic Republic’s asymmetric capabilities – a tactic they have frequently deployed. A global campaign of terrorism against Israelis abroad, Jews, Iranian dissidents and American soft targets is becoming an increasing prospect.
The likely rise of the younger, ideologically extreme and less risk-averse cohort in the IRGC as a result of purges could speed up such operations. And the regime already has
an infrastructure in place – including in Europe – to facilitate homegrown terrorism.
And it is precisely homegrown terrorism that the regime appears to be preparing the foundations for. A recent fatwa by two senior grand ayatollahs called on “all Muslims” to carry out acts of terrorism against any individual or state calling for the elimination of Khamenei. Those acting on this fatwa will be rewarded as “Mujahids (holy warriors) in God’s path” – Islamist extremist discourse that mimics that of ISIS and al-Qaeda.
The regime would have previously opted to carry out asymmetric attacks via its network of proxies, as doing so would provide enough “plausible deniability” so as to avoid any direct consequences. But with its network of proxies effectively decapitated, the IRGC is having to look for other means to deploy its plausible deniability strategy. And homegrown terrorism does exactly this – as evidenced by the lack of consequences imposed on Tehran following the attack on British-Indian author Salman Rushdie, despite the regime’s fatwa calling for his murder.
To make matters worse: the entire European continent – not least the UK – is ill-equipped to counter the IRGC homegrown terror threat. Unlike ISIS and al-Qaeda – two proscribed organisations – the current sanctions regime on the IRGC across Europe does not prohibit its ability to carry out radicalisation activities. Likewise, IRGC and Shia Islamist extremism remain complete blind spots in the counter radicalisation programmes across Europe, which have been exclusively focused on Sunni Salafi-Jihadism. Consequently, local communities – such as teachers, the police and business leaders – are not equipped with the necessary tools to identify, prevent and refer individuals subject to IRGC radicalisation.
As the ageing ayatollah grapples with unprecedented military vulnerabilities, the Islamic Republic is retreating into a siege mentality – cracking down on its own population, purging its military elite, and laying the groundwork for a campaign of global asymmetric warfare. The transformation of the Islamic Republic into a fully-fledged totalitarian security state modelled after North Korea is no longer a distant fear voiced by dissidents: it is rapidly becoming a lived reality.
This shift carries grave implications not only for the Iranian people, but for regional stability and global security. The West, particularly Europe, remains dangerously unprepared to confront this new phase of the Islamic Republic. Without urgent recalibration in counterterrorism frameworks and a recognition of the distinct threat posed by Shia jihadism and the IRGC’s global reach, democratic societies risk being blindsided by a new wave of violence – one long in the making, yet persistently ignored.
Kasra Aarabi is the director of IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran and a British-Iranian expert on Iran’s military-security apparatus
