Iran International
Israel’s campaign in Iran has reached far beyond missile depots and military command. Over roughly a month, it has also hit the architecture of domestic repression: intelligence compounds, police stations, Basij bases, judicial buildings, and senior officials tied to crackdowns.
That matters not only because of the damage done, but because of what these places meant. In Iran, repression has never depended on one institution alone. It has been built as a layered system, running from the top decision-making bodies in Tehran down to the neighborhood police station, the local Basij outpost and the courthouse where detainees are processed.
A review by Iran International of citizen reports and source material found that, in about one month after the war began, at least 130 sites tied to internal repression were destroyed or hit.
They included 57 Basij buildings or bases, 43 police (FARAJA) facilities, 10 Revolutionary Guards compounds, and 11 security complexes involved in repression. Other targets included judicial buildings and the state broadcaster, institutions that helped complete the chain through prosecutions, propaganda and coerced confessions.
Iran International sources also put the toll among security forces at nearly 5,000 dead and about 21,000 wounded.
From the command center to the street
The internal security system has long worked in three layers.
At the top sits the command structure: the Supreme Leader, the Supreme National Security Council, provincial security councils and, in Tehran, the IRGC’s Tharallah headquarters, which can take control of multiple security organs during major unrest. Around the capital, a similar role has been played by the Seyyed al-Shohada corps.
Below that are the operational forces: The Police Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran (abbreviated as FARAJA); special anti-riot units; provincial Revolutionary Guards formations; and IRGC’s specialized units such as Saberin and Fatehin.
Alongside them is the Basij, the paramilitary network embedded in neighborhoods across the country. Its Imam Ali battalions, often arriving on motorcycles, became one of the most recognizable instruments of street repression after the 2009 protests.
The third layer is institutional support: intelligence bodies, courts, prisons and state media.
The strikes appear to have touched every layer.
Senior figures reported killed include Ali Khamenei, the longtime ultimate authority over crackdowns; the intelligence minister and several of his deputies; senior Guards and Basij commanders; commanders tied to Tehran’s suppression apparatus; police intelligence officials; and members of the judiciary, including officials linked to Evin prison and Tehran’s prosecutorial system.
The symbols that fell
The targets were not only militarily useful. Many were symbols.
In Tehran, the Ministry of Intelligence and compounds linked to the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence arm were hit again after earlier strikes in the June 12-day war. Tharallah-linked facilities in northern Tehran, security clusters in eastern Tehran, anti-riot police facilities and Basij sites across the capital were also struck.
Some locations had an importance that went beyond their walls. Tehran’s Revolutionary Court building on Moallem Street was one of them. For decades, it stood as a symbol of summary trials, political prosecutions and death sentences. Its destruction carried a message larger than the physical damage.
The same was true of the state broadcaster. For many Iranians, it was not just a media institution but a place associated with forced confessions and public humiliation of dissidents. Seeing it hit again mattered for that reason.
Even when buildings had been partly emptied, they still housed the tools of coercion: files, servers, records, communications systems, vehicles and equipment.
In some post-strike videos, papers and official documents could be seen scattered in the streets after blasts ripped through buildings that looked outwardly residential or commercial.
One attack in western Tehran offered a different picture: a strike on the 12,000-seat Azadi sports hall, where anti-riot personnel appear to have been moved. Iran International’s reporting estimates that between 900 and 1,200 security personnel may have been killed there.
From the capital to small towns
What happened in Tehran was echoed outside it.
On the capital’s outskirts, command centers in Rey, Karaj and Mahdasht were hit, along with Basij and police-linked sites in surrounding towns.
In the provinces, Iran International identified heavy strikes on intelligence, police, judicial and Guards facilities in cities including Isfahan, Khorramabad, Ilam, Sanandaj, Semnan, Shiraz, Urmia and Tabriz.
In small towns, local police posts carry a special weight. They are often the clearest symbol of the central government’s presence, and one of the first places where people encounter coercion directly.
That is what makes a place like Abdanan important. The town had already become known for the violence used against residents during the January uprising. Even a mourning ceremony for local victims was met with gunfire.
Days later, residents watched their police station and Guards facilities explode. For people who had just buried their dead, the collapse of those buildings was not just another wartime image. It was the visible breaking of a local order that had seemed untouchable.
What remains after the strikes stop
If the campaign ends soon, the central question will not be only what has been destroyed, but what has been exposed.
The Islamic Republic’s internal coercive machine appears weaker, less insulated and less imposing than before.
Walls around intelligence compounds have fallen. Buildings long associated with fear have been reduced to rubble. Officials who once threatened subordinates from the top of the pyramid are gone.
But the country that remains will also be poorer and angrier.
Official figures show point-to-point food inflation in the last month of the Persian year running above 113%, with some staples such as cooking oil up as much as 220% and bread up 140%, while wages rose only 20% to 30%.
Power cuts, already worsening before the war because of years of underinvestment, point to deeper structural decay that long predates the current fighting.
The war will end. What will remain for ordinary Iranians is a country already battered by record food inflation, stagnant wages and years of neglected infrastructure long before the current fighting began.
For many of those who lost relatives in the January crackdown, that larger story may be distilled into one image: not an oil turbine or a military depot, but the police station, Basij base or courthouse that once embodied fear, now lying in ruins.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.
