US deports three former IRGC members, ICE says

Jan 28, 2026, 07:53 GMT

The United States has deported three former members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in a post on X.

“Foreign terrorist organizers are NOT welcome in our country,” ICE wrote, announcing that Ehsan Khaledi, Mohammad Mehrani and Morteza Nasirikakolaki were returned to Iran over the weekend.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified the three men as former IRGC members and said they were among 14 Iranian nationals on a deportation flight to Tehran, the first such flight since widespread anti-government protests in Iran were met with a deadly crackdown.

According to DHS, Mehrani and Khaledi entered the United States illegally in Southern California in 2024, while Nasirikakolaki entered illegally in November 2024 and was apprehended by Border Patrol near San Luis, Arizona. The White House said all individuals deported had final removal orders issued by a federal judge.

The IRGC is Iran’s elite military force, separate from the regular army and reporting directly to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The United States designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization in 2019, citing its role in supporting militant groups and carrying out operations targeting US interests and allies.

The deportations come amid sharply rising tensions between Washington and Tehran, as the Trump administration has signaled it is prepared to use military force if Iran continues executions and violent repression linked to nationwide protests. The United States has also stepped up its military presence in the region in recent weeks.

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Iran judiciary says man convicted of spying for Israel’s Mossad was executed

Jan 28, 2026, 07:22 GMT

Iran’s judiciary said on Wednesday it executed a man it identified as Hamidreza Sabet Esmailipour, whom it accused of spying for Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, after his death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court.

The judiciary identified him as Hamidreza Sabet Esmailipour and said he was arrested on April 29, 2025. It said he was convicted of “espionage and intelligence cooperation,” alleging he communicated with an intelligence officer and handed over documents and classified information.

In a detailed account published by Mizan, the judiciary’s official media outlet, authorities said Sabet Esmailipour had carried out logistical and support tasks for what they described as Israeli intelligence operations, including moving vehicles between provinces and transferring funds. The report alleged some of the vehicles contained explosives intended for sabotage operations, claims that could not be independently verified.

Mizan said the man acknowledged cooperating with Mossad during interrogations and court proceedings, and that his death sentence was upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court before being carried out by hanging.

Iran has executed more than a dozen people in recent months on charges of spying for Israel, cases that human rights groups say often involve opaque legal proceedings.

Iranian authorities have said more than 700 people were detained on suspicion of espionage or collaboration with Israel following the conflict in June.

US-based rights group HRANA said in a report earlier this month that at least 313 prisoners were executed by hanging during a period of nationwide protests between late December and late January, adding that executions surged alongside mass arrests and a security crackdown as unrest spread and internet access was widely restricted.

Wealthy Iranian brothers chose protest and were killed

Jan 28, 2026, 01:53 GMT

Brothers Hamid and Vahid Arzanlou were two well-known entrepreneurs in Iran’s furniture industry who despite their wealth still chose to raise their voices in anti-government protests this month and paid with their lives.

During mass killings by security forces in the Tehranpars area east of Tehran on January 9, Hamid Arzanlou was shot in the head and Vahid was shot twice in the neck while trying to save him, according to sources close to the family.

Both brothers later died from their wounds.

At their funeral, a third brother Kiomars Arzanlou asked mourners to clap if they believed his brothers had chosen the right path, and the mourners responded by applauding the two Arzanlou brothers.

According to the sources, security agencies demanded more than one billion tomans (about $6,670) from the relatives in exchange for handing over the bodies.

Hamid and Vahid, the sources added, actively supported and helped organize walkouts during the early days of strikes in Tehran’s central bazaar beginning late last year.

The large‑scale strike on January 7 at the furniture market in the Delavaran district was organized partly through their efforts and became one of the biggest strikes in eastern Tehran.

Sources close to the family say the two brothers were also among the first on the streets on the night of January 8, standing alongside other protesters for hours before security forces unleased a two-day crackdown which killed them along with thousands of other demonstrators.

Hamid and Vahid were owners and managers of the Aysa Mobl Kian furniture company which is one of the best‑known brands in Iran’s furniture industry.

At its peak, this group created jobs for at least one thousand people directly and indirectly and employed about 200 workers directly.

The two brothers hailed from a working‑class family and grew up in Tehran’s Khak‑e Sefid neighborhood and had built up wealth through their hard work and thrift, the sources added.

Vahid was the father of three children while Hamid is leaves behind two young children. Their mother, 68, survives them.

Iranian, Venezuelan dissidents call for US action to reclaim lost homelands

Jan 27, 2026, 22:30 GMT

Iranian and Venezuelan opposition figures in a meeting in Washington DC urged the United States and its allies to act against what they described as an axis of repression between their two countries.

Iranian activist Masih Alinejad met with Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado in Washington, where the two discussed the situation in Iran and Venezuela and called for stronger international action.

“Today I am in Washington, DC. The capital of the free world,” Alinejad said. “I am here with one of the most courageous woman who is leading the democratic opposition movement in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado.”

The meeting comes amid one of the deadliest periods of deadly violence in Iran's history. Iranian authorities have responded to nationwide protests with a massacre, with at least 36,500 people killed by security forces from Jan 8-9.

Alinejad said the Venezuelan and Iranian struggles are linked, arguing that the governments of Nicolás Maduro and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei support one another.

“Maduro is not alone. Ali Khamenei is his ally,” Alinejad said. “Ali Khamenei and Revolutionary Guards invaded Venezuela.”

Machado said that cooperation between the heavily sanctioned authoritarian governments has been underway for years.

“The tyrannies we’re facing have been cooperating for many years, exchanging resources, information technology agents, weapons, weapons, certainly,” Machado said. “And now at the same time, we see our people getting up and committing themselves in an unprecedented citizen movement for freedom.”

Machado’s remarks come weeks after US forces captured Maduro in Caracas and flew him to New York, where he has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges.

She rejected criticism of such actions as foreign intervention.

The meeting also follows repeated warnings by US President Donald Trump that Washington would respond if Iranian authorities escalated violence against protesters — statements that activists say raised expectations among Iranians seeking international backing.

Alinejad said Iran is currently facing mass violence by state forces.

“Right now, Iranians are facing massacre,” she said. “Up to 20,000 people have been killed ... with empty hands, unarmed people cannot win."

Machado welcomed the US military intervention which captured Maduro this month, calling it a turning point. The attack killed 83 people, according to Venezuela's defense ministry.

“Finally, in Venezuela, we’re seeing President Trump making a tremendous important decision,” she said. “January 3rd, when President Trump brought Nicolas Maduro to justice.”

“Venezuela will be free and Iran will be free as well,” she added.

A protester’s final wish: 'Bury me wrapped in the lion and sun flag'

Jan 27, 2026, 21:17 GMT

Mojtaba (Shahmorad) Shahpari, a protester from the southwestern Iranian city of Izeh who was injured during the nationwide protests and later found dead in a cold storage warehouse in Isfahan, was laid to rest wrapped in the lion and sun flag, fulfilling his final wish.

Shahpari was shot by security forces on January 8, 2026, during protests in Baharestan, Isfahan province, people familiar with the matter told Iran International.

The sources, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said security forces opened fire indiscriminately on protesters that night.

“They opened fire on everyone that night, men and women, young and old,” the source said.

Videos sent to Iran International show gunshots being heard as protesters chant “long live the King” in Baharestan on January 8.

Security forces shot Shahpari in the leg on Isar Street in Baharestan sometime between 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. local time, causing him to fall to the ground, a source said.

Wounded but alive, he was taken by ambulance to Al-Zahra Hospital in Isfahan.

“He was not dead when he was taken to hospital,” the source added.

For days afterward, Shahpari’s family searched hospitals across Isfahan. Authorities repeatedly told them he was wounded and alive but refused to say where he was, the source said.

“Then there was nothing. No answers.”

Three days later, the family’s search ended near Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery, Isfahan’s main burial ground.

With the cemetery morgue full, bodies were being kept in a storage warehouse used for fruit and vegetables near Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery, the source said.

“There was no space ... They had put the bodies in a warehouse. As far as the eye could see, there were bodies,” putting the total at a minimum of 500.

When the body was found, a gunshot wound was visible on the side of his head, which the source said was not present when he was taken to hospital.

The source said they believed it was a gunshot to execute him and that he had been operated upon on his abdomen without his family's knowledge and later stitched back up.

About 18 miles southeast of Baharestan, also in Isfahan province, in the provincial capital, another source told Iran International that at the height of protests, “several containers of bodies” were brought to Bagh-e Rezvan in the middle of the night and unloaded into warehouses.

According to the source, some of the bodies were still alive and semi-conscious.

Shahpari, 32, was originally from Izeh in Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran, but had moved to Baharestan in search of work.

To support himself, he worked nights as a building security guard and spent his days unloading cargo as a laborer.

“He was a freedom-seeker,” a source said. “He opposed religion and supported the monarchy.”

Shahpari was buried on January 18, 2026, in the village of Nashil-e Do near Izeh.

“He was buried wrapped in the lion and sun flag, just as he wished...just as we all do.”

Iranians burying slain protest youths mourn with dancing and defiance

Jan 27, 2026, 20:10 GMT

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Negar Mojtahedi

Iranian families are turning funerals of youths killed in a deadly protest crackdown this month into celebrations of life, with dancing and wedding music aimed at defying their heartbreak and state repression.

The transformation of funerals into celebrations is a deliberate act of resistance, said Siavash Rokni, an expert on Iranian popular culture.

“If you, the Islamic regime, are telling me that I need to cry at the deathbed of my child, I will laugh just to defy your existence," Rokni told Iran International

Rokni said the funerals-turned-celebrations strike at one of the clerical establishment's defining pillars, overturning the Islamic Republic’s long-standing use of grief and martyrdom as a galvanizing force.

With the internet crackdown still in place, footage from these funerals is only now beginning to surface.

Traditionally in Iran, funerals are defined by grief: mournful music, Islamic sermons and Quranic recitations. But what is unfolding now looks completely different.

The songs being played are the kind usually reserved for weddings. People clap. They dance.

Across Iran, families are transforming burials into acts of resistance.

The relatives and close friends of slain protesters Mohammad-Hossein Jamshidi and Ali Faraji honored their memory with music and applause as they were laid to rest at Hesar Cemetery in Karaj, west of Tehran, according to a video obtained by Iran International.

In Lordegan, mourners chanted “Death to Khamenei” and “This is the final battle — Pahlavi will return” during the funeral of Ali Khaledi, with the pre-1979 Lion and Sun flag raised above the crowd.

Sina Haghshenas, a young florist from northern Iran, was also killed during the nationwide uprisings by the Islamic Republic. At his funeral, mourners celebrated his life even in death — refusing silence, and turning grief into a final act of pride and defiance.

It is not customary in Iran to hold funerals with dancing and clapping, but this has become a form of protest among families who have lost loved ones.

Holly Dagres, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, said the scenes reflect a profound shift in Iranian society.

"For the Islamic Republic, that is a very worrying thing, that instead of these people mourning and being traumatized by what has happened, which they are to an extent, they're celebrating. And that means to me and signifies that this is a people that's no longer afraid of the Islamic Republic.”

By rejecting religious rituals and replacing them with wedding music, families are sending a clear and defiant message.

“Whether you're simply looking at the fact that Iranians are calling their martyrs, not martyrs but Javid Nam, or 'long-lived name,'" said Behnam Ben Taleblu, director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Iran Program.

"There are many, many signs that the Iranian population, even as they grieve are trying to push past the discourse imposed on them by the Islamic Republic," he said.

More than 36,500 Iranians were killed by security forces during the January 8-9 crackdown on nationwide protests, according to documents reviewed by Iran International's Editorial Board, making it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history.

For many Iranians, the celebrations are not a denial of loss but a declaration that fear has broken.

In the face of mass killings, families are reclaiming the meaning of death from a theocratic system that has long weaponized mourning and turned funerals into acts of national resistance, where even in grief, their message of defiance is clear.