Iran mobilisation drive extends to children under 15

The judiciary's news agency, Mizan, identified him as Hossein Pedaran and said he had been convicted of espionage and intelligence cooperation with Israel and sentenced to death, with the sentence upheld by the Supreme Court. He had been arrested in Isfahan on charges related to the war.

Mizan published a long account of what it described as Pedaran's confessions. According to that account, he first messaged the CIA offering to cooperate and received no reply, then contacted Mossad and was answered days later by an officer who introduced himself as "Ben" using a Dutch WhatsApp number.

The agency said he sent encrypted reports on military facilities and on staff who worked at them, including personal details and their spouses' phone numbers, used numerous SIM cards registered to others, and was given a remote-control device capable of taking hidden photographs.

It said he was paid in euros collected from a magnetic box behind a guardrail near a Tehran bridge and, on another occasion, from a coffee shop bathroom, and that a notebook on missile subjects marked "highly confidential" was found at his home.

Mizan said Pedaran had cut contact before the war and tried to reach Mossad again by Telegram once it began, and was arrested. It said he had a lawyer, that a forensic examination found no impairment of his judgment, and that the court held his information had contributed to strikes in which personnel were killed or wounded.

None of these claims can be independently verified, and Mizan did not provide any evidence for the allegations.

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  Iran executes student on charges of spying for Israel

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  Iran family says executed nuclear scientist confessed after threats to mother

Iran's espionage cases are heard by Revolutionary Courts, which operate without public scrutiny of the evidence, and the state routinely broadcasts and publishes confessions that defendants and their families have later said were obtained through torture, prolonged solitary confinement and threats against relatives.

Rights organizations have documented the pattern for years, and have recorded cases in which people detained during protests were subsequently charged with working for Israel.

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  Iran sentences two more protesters to death as executions surge

Iran has executed at least a dozen people on espionage or Mossad-collaboration charges since the June 2025 war with Israel, according to human rights groups, and the pace has increased since the recent war began in February.

Those executed this year include Ali Ardestani in January, Mehdi Farid, a former employee of the atomic energy organization, in April, and Omid Behzad and Pouria Safvat in August. Iran Human Rights recorded at least 1,639 executions in the country in 2025, the highest annual total since 1989.

Taraneh Rahimi, 20, is being held alongside her twin sister Romina at Dowlatabad Prison in Isfahan. Their cousin, Masoud Nourmohammadi, told Iran International’s Eye for Iran that Taraneh’s condition has deteriorated as her lawyers race to appeal her death sentence.

“Taraneh could not walk,” Nourmohammadi said. “The (hospital) doctor says you have to go to the hospital and be hospitalized and get an MRI to see what’s going on with your leg because it is in bad shape,” he said.

Nourmohammadi said the doctor considered the treatment urgent, but prison authorities refused to allow Taraneh to leave for hospital.

Her family also purchased medical equipment and medication for her and brought the supplies to the prison, he said, but authorities did not allow them to reach her.

The allegations come days after Nourmohammadi told Iran International that prison authorities had stopped providing Taraneh with food, forcing her to rely on leftovers shared by other prisoners.

“They stopped giving Taraneh food a few days back,” he said. “They ask her to use other people’s leftovers and eat those. Who does that?”

‘If you don’t confess, we’re going to rape your sister’

The new allegations come as lawyers for the twins have finally been given access to their case file after months of waiting, according to Nourmohammadi.

He said the lawyers found no substantive evidence tying Taraneh or Romina to violence during the January protests and are now preparing an appeal.

“Their consensus is that there’s no evidence against those two girls in the case,” he said. “The only thing that is left … is basically their confession.”

The family says those confessions were obtained through torture and threats of sexual violence.

“They told Taraneh, ‘If you don’t confess, we’re going to rape your sister in front of you,’” Nourmohammadi said.

He said lawyers are also filing a complaint over the alleged torture and sexual abuse of the sisters while in custody.

Human Rights Watch and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran have documented allegations of torture, coerced confessions and serious due-process violations involving defendants in the Shohada Square case.

Taraneh and Romina were among 16 defendants prosecuted over events surrounding protests in Isfahan in January. Ten of the defendants, including Taraneh, received death sentences, while Romina was sentenced to decades in prison.

The defendants faced charges including moharebeh, or “waging war against God,” destruction of public property, assembly and collusion against national security and propaganda against the state.

Rights groups have said none of the 16 defendants was charged with murder, despite prosecutors linking the case to incidents in which two people died.

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‘A few days left’ to appeal

Nourmohammadi said the family believes only days remain in the formal window for lawyers to appeal Taraneh’s death sentence, adding that the family remains deeply concerned that authorities could move more quickly.

“You never know with that regime,” he said. “Anything can happen. It’s unpredictable.”

The sisters were 19 when security forces arrested them separately on January 24, weeks after they joined demonstrations around Isfahan’s Shohada Square. They have since turned 20 in prison.

Before her arrest, Taraneh was an equestrian and horse trainer. She had previously undergone surgery on her leg following a riding injury, according to her family.

Nourmohammadi alleges interrogators knew about the injury and deliberately targeted the same leg during torture.

When the twins’ mother was eventually permitted to see her daughters after roughly three months without knowing where they were being held, Nourmohammadi said Taraneh was already limping.

He said she also had broken fingers and knuckles and alleged that both sisters had lost much of their hair after being dragged between cells by their hair.

‘She wanted a life for her kids’

The twins’ mother raised Taraneh and Romina as a single parent.

For roughly three months after their arrests, she did not know where her daughters were being held. Family members searched hospitals, courthouses and prisons, at times waiting outside detention facilities seeking information.

When their mother was eventually allowed to see them, Nourmohammadi said the twins had swollen faces, bruises and significant hair loss.

After Taraneh was sentenced to death, he said his aunt was so devastated that she has barely been able to speak.

Instead, she wrote a message about raising her daughters and working to give them a future.

“She was a single mom. She worked really hard for her kids,” Nourmohammadi said. “She wanted a life for her kids. She didn’t want a prison or execution and a rope around their neck.”

For critics of the government, the gatherings have long carried a message beyond support for Iran during the war: that the street belongs to supporters of the Islamic Republic.

Coming after the mass protests of January, critics have viewed their nightly presence as a form of intimidation and a way of denying public space to potential dissent. For many, the effect is more mundane but relentless: late-night loudspeakers, road closures and disruption to daily life.

But the rallies have increasingly taken on another function. Participants have chanted against Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, President Masoud Pezeshkian and former presidents Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Khatami.

Some gatherings have also featured demands for strict enforcement of Iran’s controversial hijab law, whose implementation has been held back following a decision by the Supreme National Security Council amid concerns over public backlash.

The shift has prompted warnings that gatherings promoted as demonstrations of national unity are becoming arenas for political score-settling.

The Supreme National Security Council-linked Nour News website described videos showing increasingly harsh slogans at recent gatherings as a “worrying shift in Iran’s political scene.”

“When street gatherings become a place for ‘death to’ and ‘down with’ slogans against domestic political figures, the first sign of a shift in the direction of popular reactions—from the foreign enemy to the domestic rival—becomes apparent,” Nour News wrote.

That shift is particularly significant because hardline media have portrayed the nightly gatherings as a measure of national opinion.

The hardline Hamshahri newspaper marked the 200th night with an article titled “200 Nights of Referendum,” presenting continued participation as an answer to politicians who have called for the public to be consulted over the country’s direction.

“Two hundred nights of participation in nighttime gatherings are a completely clear response to the doubts of some politicians who believe that the people should be consulted and a referendum held in order to continue the resistance,” it wrote.

The article was referring to Rouhani’s recent suggestion that continuing the war and confrontation with the United States and Western countries should be subject to consultation with the public.

The reformist Shargh newspaper warned that a social gathering that began in the name of “patriotism” could acquire a different meaning if it became a place for deciding “who has the right to speak about the country’s policies and who does not.”

Even the conservative daily Khorasan, considered close to Ghalibaf, called for a review of how the gatherings are organised in an article titled “200 Nights of Taking the Field.”

It questioned the use of the gatherings to promote hijab-related demands that it said exacerbate social divisions. It also highlighted complaints about the disruption the gatherings cause to residents and traffic.

“What image of these gatherings forms in citizens’ minds when the sound of loudspeakers keeps a sick person in a nearby home awake late into the night, or when hastily organized vehicle convoys create severe traffic jams and leave a driver exhausted after a day’s work stuck in traffic?” the newspaper asked.

Similar complaints have appeared on social media.

One X user urged supporters of the rallies to ask shopkeepers, residents and taxi drivers what they thought of the disruption, asking: “What has that taxi driver done to deserve sitting in traffic because of 30 government supporters?”

Another user, Morteza Rezazadeh, pointed to the changing targets of the slogans: from Israel and the United States to Iran’s president and parliament speaker. Mossad can “rest easy,” he quipped, because those chanting were doing its work for it.

After 200 consecutive nights, the dispute over the gatherings is therefore no longer simply about noise, traffic or even demonstrations of support for the state. It has become a dispute over who controls the street, who can claim to speak for the public and who inside the Islamic Republic is considered a legitimate political voice.

Instead, the latest speculation fits a pattern that has followed Pezeshkian since taking office in 2024: recurring calls for resignation or impeachment that intensify during periods of political, economic or geopolitical pressure.

The latest round was partly triggered by cryptic comments from Qom MP Mojtaba Zarei referring to a possible “coup” or coordinated political move against Pezeshkian.

Rouydad24 examined whether hardline networks, particularly Sharyan—the Persian acronym for the Strategic Network of Islamic Revolution Supporters—and allies of Saeed Jalili, Pezeshkian’s rival in the 2024 presidential election, were seeking early presidential elections.

The outlet presented no formal evidence of such a plan but pointed to repeated calls by radical lawmakers to invoke Article 89 of the Constitution, under which parliament can declare a president politically incompetent.

Mohsen Gharavian, a seminary and university lecturer, described the campaign to portray Pezeshkian as politically incompetent as a “targeted political conspiracy” and a soft “coup.”

Writing for Khabar Online, he argued that ultra-conservatives angered by their 2024 electoral defeat were using political networks and sustained media pressure to weaken the government.

In a separate Khabar Online report, moderate politician Hassan Rasouli criticised proposals to impeach Pezeshkian or transfer executive authority to First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref.

Rasouli said such moves, particularly amid heightened national security pressures, amounted to “a direct attack on high-level governance cohesion.” He dismissed comparisons with the 1981 removal of Iran’s first president, Abolhassan Banisadr, as political theatre rather than a serious legal pathway.

Threats to use parliament against sitting presidents have a long history in the Islamic Republic.

During Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s second term from 1993 to 1997, conservative opponents mounted sustained pressure on his government, including the impeachment of cabinet ministers.

Hassan Rouhani also faced repeated impeachment threats during his presidency, particularly from opponents of his diplomatic engagement with Washington.

The only successful precedent remains Banisadr in 1981. Parliament declared him politically incompetent during the Iran-Iraq war, after which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini formally dismissed him.

Banisadr’s removal has since become a recurring reference point in disputes over presidential authority. Hardline lawmakers have invoked his case in attacks on Pezeshkian, particularly over diplomacy, economic policy and the conduct of the war.

But invoking Article 89 and successfully removing a president are different things. There is currently no indication that Pezeshkian’s opponents have assembled the parliamentary support required to declare him politically incompetent.

Opposition to Pezeshkian has nevertheless persisted since he took office following Ebrahim Raisi’s death in 2024. Calls for his resignation, comparisons with Banisadr and threats to invoke Article 89 have resurfaced during periods of economic turmoil, currency volatility and war.

The repeated threat of impeachment can serve a political purpose even without enough votes to remove the president: keeping his competence under question and constraining his room for manoeuvre on economic and diplomatic policy.

This week’s talk of a “coup” and renewed debate over presidential competence therefore appears less a new escalation than the latest iteration of a political struggle that has accompanied Pezeshkian for much of his presidency.

Four years have passed since Zhina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had travelled to Tehran to visit family, died after being detained by the morality police.

She could never have imagined how her name would appear on walls, streets and university campuses, or on the lips of millions of Iranians, or how three simple words, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” would become one of the most enduring slogans in Iran’s modern history.

The story of 2022 is not only the story of a slogan. It is the story of the price thousands paid to break through the wall of fear.

Zhina’s death on September 16, 2022, sparked protests across Iran. Human rights organizations documented live ammunition and pellet fire, mass arrests, torture, sexual violence and the killing of protesters. HRANA later recorded protests in all 31 provinces, 160 cities and 143 universities, and reported at least 530 people killed, including 68 children and teenagers.

Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh were both sixteen. Kian Pirfalak was nine, remembered for “In the name of the God of the rainbow” and the small boat he built with his own hands. Khodanour Lojei, a 27-year-old Baluch man, lives on in videos of him dancing, alongside the haunting image of him with his hands tied to a pole and water placed before him while in detention.

Their stories were different, but each became part of the collective memory of Woman, Life, Freedom.

Then came the gallows. Mohammad Mehdi Karami, a 22-year-old karate champion, was executed after being sentenced in connection with the fortieth-day commemoration for Hadis Najafi. Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, who worked at a poultry farm and taught martial arts to disadvantaged children for free, was executed the same day; human rights reports say his confessions were obtained under torture. Majidreza Rahnavard, executed only 23 days after his arrest, asked before his death that people not cry at his grave but celebrate and play happy music.

These names are reminders that behind every statistic was a family.

The repression did not end with the street protests. Students, schoolchildren, journalists, artists, athletes and activists were arrested. Families sometimes went weeks or months without news. Some detainees appeared in televised “confessions” that human rights organizations said were tainted by torture. Families seeking the truth about those killed also faced pressure. Others eventually left Iran after imprisonment, threats and persecution, carrying the cost of the uprising into exile, lost careers, interrupted education and separation from family.

And yet one of the movement’s deepest legacies is visible in an ordinary scene: a woman walking down an Iranian street without compulsory hijab.

The state responded with fines, vehicle seizures, arrests, flogging, business closures, cameras and surveillance. But women’s defiance continued. Four years after Zhina’s death, a woman without compulsory hijab is no longer the exceptional image it was in September 2022; it has become part of Iran’s social reality.

That is also where the connection to Dey 1404 (December 2025 and January 2026) becomes important.

The new protests began amid the collapse of the currency, inflation and protests by Tehran bazaar merchants, but quickly moved beyond economic demands. According to HRANA data cited in a UK government report, by January 27 at least 656 gatherings had been recorded in 201 cities across all 31 provinces, compared with 160 cities during the 1401 protests.

There are no reliable data to compare total participation, but the later uprising was documented across more cities and had a far higher reported toll. By March 2026, HRANA had recorded information on more than 7,000 people killed and more than 53,000 arrested in connection with the Dey and Bahman protests, far above the Iranian government’s figures.

HRANA described the confirmed cases as the minimum it could verify, with thousands more still awaiting review. Internet shutdowns, pressure on families and the lack of independent access inside Iran made the full scale harder to establish.

But the difference was not only scale. The society that entered January 2026 was not the same society that had existed before September 2022.

Iranians had lived through a national experience of disobedience, broken taboos, solidarity, bullets, prison, executions, migration and grief.

Abolfazl Hajizadegan’s research on “The Lives of Dey,” based on the social-media traces of 957 of those killed, found people from widely different professions and backgrounds, from baristas, repair workers and sports coaches to lawyers, professors, filmmakers and musicians.

The uprising also entered families in ways that made the breadth of the upheaval painfully visible.

Mehdi Shafiei, 44, and his 18-year-old son Mani were killed in Eslamshahr less than two hours apart. In Bushehr, 37-year-old nurse Mansoureh Heydari and her husband, Behrouz Mansouri, were both killed, leaving behind two children. Elsewhere, fathers and daughters were arrested together.

This does not mean that the 1401 and 1404 uprisings were identical, or that all protesters shared one ideology, leader or vision of Iran’s future. Their immediate triggers were different. But something had changed in society’s relationship with fear.

Repression continued, but the memory of disobedience could not simply be erased. Hajizadegan’s research suggests that those who came into the streets in 1404 did not acquire their anger overnight. Their earlier posts showed dissatisfaction and protest stretching back through previous protest waves, including the November 2019 protests and the 2022 uprising.

Dey 1404 was therefore not simply the explosion of an economic crisis. It was part of a longer accumulation of experience. Perhaps this is one of the most important legacies Woman, Life, Freedom left behind: not a single organization or leadership, but a social experience of the possibility of saying “no.”

The government’s response in Dey 1404 was severe. From January 8, the internet was almost completely shut down. Amnesty International reported widespread killings, mass arrests, enforced disappearances, torture and systematic pressure on victims’ families.

Yet behind every new number was another life: Hamid Mahdavi, Mohammad Jabbari, Mehdi and Mani, Mansoureh and Behrouz, just as Nika, Sarina, Kian and Khodanour had been lives, not statistics, four years earlier.

From September 2022 to January 2026, the names and faces changed and the sparks were different, but each chapter left something for the next: memory, wounds, language, courage and sometimes hope.

Zhina is not only the name of a young woman, and Woman, Life, Freedom is not merely the name of a few months of protest. It became part of the social and political language of a generation that paid an extraordinarily heavy price and emerged with a different understanding of choice, dignity and the possibility of standing firm.

Zhina and thousands of others killed in Iran’s protest movements are no longer with us. But something of them remains: in the hair of a woman who chooses not to cover it; in a mother who refuses to let her child’s name be erased; in a father who rejects the official account of his son’s death; in a family that dances at a loved one’s grave despite threats; and in a generation that has not abandoned its questions about freedom, dignity and the future.

Repression can empty the streets for a time, but it cannot erase what a generation has lived through.