Video: Iran's next uprising is 'when, not if', says former US adviser

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.”

"To the great, proud people of Iran, the hour of your freedom is at hand," Trump says in a video posted on X, drawing on remarks he first delivered on February 28, the day the US campaign began. "When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take."

Six months ago, that was an extraordinary signal from an American president at the opening of a war with the Islamic Republic. This time there was no accompanying policy, no explanation of what "when we are finished" means, and no sign that Washington is preparing to help Iranians seize anything.

"I don't think the Iranian regime is going to care," Eric Mandel, founder of the Middle East Political Information Network, told Iran International's Eye for Iran podcast, whose conversation with him forms the basis of this analysis. "I think they've heard these messages before."

A war shaped by a calendar

Trump said this week that Iran was "limping along" and predicted the conflict would end "immediately after" November's midterm elections. He also acknowledged, in the same week, that electoral considerations may be influencing decisions about whether to escalate military action against Iran.

That is an American president saying, in public, that the pace of a war is being set partly by a domestic election.

His own senior advisers appear to be planning for something very different. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others have privately discussed the possibility that Tehran could withstand US pressure and that the conflict could run through the end of Trump's presidency in January 2029, according to the Wall Street Journal.

So the same week produced three incompatible timelines: freedom "at hand," an end "immediately after" the midterms, and a war that may outlast the administration. If Trump is again telling Iranians their government will soon be theirs to take, what has changed since he first said it? Mandel's answer was blunt: "I haven't heard a new policy."

The gap between the promise and the means

For Mandel, the problem is not the stated objective but the distance between the promise and any way of achieving it.

"They can't ask the Iranian people to go out again into the streets and be slaughtered," he said. The last time people came out in their millions, in January, security forces killed tens of thousands in two days.

If Washington genuinely wants the Islamic Republic to fall, Mandel argued, it would have to go far beyond encouragement: bring together Iran's fragmented opposition, finance strike funds so workers can stay home rather than face security forces in the street, tighten secondary sanctions on the countries helping Tehran evade pressure, and give material support to parts of the opposition.

"The Iranian people can't take over if they're unarmed and they are not having coordination," he said. "If we're saying to the Iranian people to take over at that point, that just doesn't make any sense to me."

The operation that lost its name

Trump's original February message came as the White House described Operation Epic Fury as an effort to destroy Iran's nuclear and missile capabilities, degrade its proxy network and cripple its navy, and tied the campaign to decades of confrontation between the two countries.

Even the name has since receded. The Pentagon said Epic Fury officially ended on May 5, and military personnel were later told to stop using it for the continuing operations against Iran. The war did not end with the name.

Nearly seven months on, oil is back above $100 a barrel, the political cost of the conflict is increasingly visible ahead of the midterms, and Trump's advisers are contemplating a far longer confrontation than the president publicly predicts. That is what makes the decision to resurrect the February message striking, and it raises the question Mandel kept returning to: who was it for?

Not Tehran, he thought, which he described as in "survival mode" and betting it can outlast the administration. Not a weary American public either. "If it is for the American people, to my mind, it's the wrong way to present this," he said.

Trump would need to explain why bringing down the Islamic Republic serves US security and why Americans should prepare for a long campaign, and he has not.

Without that, ever more dramatic language loses its force. "To the regime, it's like the boy who cried wolf," Mandel said. "He keeps saying this every month."

The video appeared deliberately produced, he noted, which makes it hard to dismiss as an impulsive post. But he could not say what new message it carried. "I don't get the message yet of what it is."

That may be why an extraordinary sentence received such an ordinary response. A US president once again told more than 90 million Iranians that their government may soon be theirs to take. What remains unclear is whether Washington was announcing an objective, offering encouragement, applying pressure, or repeating a promise the world has heard before.

The contradiction is hard to miss. A government that has demanded ideological conformity from Iranians appears willing to overlook Namjoo’s past transgressions at a time when the Islamic Republic is under extraordinary military, economic and domestic pressure and is openly seeking to encourage some prominent Iranians abroad to return.

Rather than a sign of moderation, his return may reveal how flexible the Islamic Republic can become when its own rules are no longer useful.

Siavash Rokni, an expert on Iranian popular culture, and historian Shahram Kholdi told Iran International’s Eye for Iran that the apparent opening serves several purposes. It can distract from executions and political prisoners, project an image of a more tolerant Iran and send a message to the diaspora that even former critics may be able to return — although the state still decides who gets through the door.

“Diversion. I’m going to make this quite simple,” Rokni said.

Kholdi questioned whether the rules were really changing at all.

“Are they bending their own rules and principles?” he asked. “Or are they temporarily deactivating them?”

Namjoo is an extraordinary figure around whom to test that question.

The Mashhad-born musician left Iran in 2007 and was later sentenced in absentia to five years in prison for “insulting sanctities” over his use of Quranic verses in his music. It remains unclear publicly what became of that sentence before his return. Outside the country, he continued to ridicule religious and political symbols, including former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

He has also faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse, which he denies.

And yet he has been allowed home.

His return was also highlighted by Iranian state media, which praised what it described as his “patriotic” opposition to US and Israeli attacks. Namjoo himself said he had encountered considerable kindness since returning.

Who gets to break the rules?

The contrast is particularly stark when Namjoo’s treatment is compared with that of female musicians inside Iran.

Singer Parastoo Ahmadi drew international attention after performing without the compulsory hijab in an online concert in 2024. She was briefly detained after the performance. In June 2026, she and members of her production team were reported to have been sentenced to 74 lashes, along with two-year bans on travel and artistic activity.

Rokni also pointed to Hiva Seyfizadeh, another female singer who was arrested during a live performance in Tehran in 2025.

The juxtaposition gets to the heart of the controversy surrounding Namjoo. A male musician known for ridiculing symbols the Islamic Republic considers sacred — and who has faced sexual misconduct allegations abroad can return, while women continue to face state pressure over their clothing and their voices.

“Why are female singers not able to sing and an alleged sexual abuser is back, is invited back to the country?” Rokni asked. “What is this double standard happening in this country?”

Namjoo’s return has generated precisely the kind of attention such a contradiction might be expected to produce. Iranians have argued over his decision to return, his past and what his presence in Tehran means.

That noise may itself be useful.

Rokni described the use of popular culture as part of a sophisticated communications strategy capable of shifting attention away from far more damaging issues for the state — among them executions, political prisoners, economic hardship and the repression of women.

“Namjoo is not, in my opinion, an important subject of conversation,” he said.

The point is not that his return is insignificant. It is that the spectacle surrounding one musician can swallow up the conversation about thousands of people who do not have the luxury of choosing whether to engage with the Islamic Republic.

An invitation with conditions

Namjoo’s homecoming also carries a message beyond Iran.

If someone who mocked the Quran and the country’s former supreme leader can return, other members of the diaspora may reasonably wonder whether the rules have changed for them too. That question is no longer hypothetical. Culture Minister Abbas Salehi has said his ministry compiled a list of more than 100 cultural, artistic and intellectual figures abroad whose return it wants to facilitate.

But the door does not open equally.

“Returning to one’s country has become a game of preferential treatment,” Rokni said.

The Islamic Republic effectively retains the power to determine which Iranians can come home, which critics can be forgiven and what compromises are required to make that possible.

History gives reason to be wary of assuming that an open door will remain open.

Kholdi recalled the experience of writer and dissident Saidi Sirjani, a prominent critic of the Islamic Republic. Following the death of its founder, Ruhollah Khomeini, Sirjani believed a different political era might be emerging and encouraged other Iranian intellectuals abroad to consider returning, Kholdi said.

Sirjani was arrested in 1994 and died in custody later that year under circumstances that remain disputed.

Kholdi also pointed to Iranian-Canadian scholar Ramin Jahanbegloo, who was arrested in Tehran in 2006 and detained for months before eventually leaving the country.

“I would not consider such moves a sign of the fact that they have become more moderate,” he said.

The history even gives Kholdi reason to worry about Namjoo himself.

“As a human who deserves the security and safety of life like any other normal person, I am worried for his safety,” he said.

Today’s welcome, in other words, does not guarantee tomorrow’s protection.

The power of an open door

That uncertainty carries particular weight for millions of Iranians abroad who still have family, professional and emotional ties to the country.

Kholdi said he was warned as a young academic that outspoken criticism of the Islamic Republic could cost him access to Iran, its archives and the field research needed for his career.

The threat did not have to be explicit. Access itself became leverage.

The same calculation can apply to artists, journalists, academics and ordinary diaspora Iranians who want to see parents or relatives. The state controls the door, and the possibility of losing access can shape behavior long before anyone attempts to cross the border.

Namjoo’s return makes that door appear wider.

It also gives the Islamic Republic a useful image to present to the outside world: a former critic who once violated some of its most sensitive taboos is back in Iran. How intolerant can the system be if someone like him is allowed to return?

Kholdi warned that there is another side to that calculation. Iran has repeatedly detained dual and foreign nationals who later became subjects of negotiations or prisoner exchanges, a practice critics of Tehran describe as hostage diplomacy.

The same state that can invite people in retains the power to prevent them from leaving.

That is why Namjoo’s return matters less as a story of one controversial musician coming home than as a glimpse of how the Islamic Republic behaves when under pressure.

It can enforce religious morality against a woman who sings without a hijab while overlooking the past of a man who mocked the Quran. It can imprison critics while advertising the return of another. And it can present selective tolerance as evidence of change without surrendering the power to reverse that tolerance later.

Namjoo’s return also appears to be part of a broader effort to selectively reopen the door to prominent Iranians abroad while the state retains the power to decide who may return and under what conditions.

The Islamic Republic’s red lines have not disappeared.

What Namjoo’s return exposes is that those lines were never equally rigid for everyone and that when the regime sees an advantage in moving them, even the principles it calls sacred can suddenly become negotiable.

Rapidly rising prices are forcing families to think less about what they can afford next year or next month and more about what they should buy today before their money loses more value tomorrow.

“If you are an average Iranian, you know what you can buy today. You might not buy tomorrow — and by tomorrow, I mean 24 hours later,” economist Ali Dadpay told Iran International’s Eye for Iran podcast. .

“This is an economy that right now saving in eggs makes more sense … than saving in tomans,” he said.

An egg now costs roughly 25,000 tomans. But the story is not its dollar value. It is how quickly the purchasing power of the toman is eroding. Money put aside today may buy noticeably less within days.

“You have to tell people the frustration, the anger, the feeling of inability to provide for one’s family or afford healthcare services, pay for prescription drugs,” Dadpay said.

Average monthly income is below $200, by his estimate, while housing consumes an increasingly large share of household earnings.

Meat and other proteins are disappearing from some families’ diets. Even damaged fruit, once bought by the poorest or given to the homeless, is increasingly becoming an option for ordinary households trying to stretch their money.

“We are not approaching an economic disaster,” Dadpay said. “We are in the middle of an economic disaster.”

Economic pain, political anger

The erosion of Iran’s middle class has been underway for years, but the pressure is accelerating. Saving itself has become less about building wealth than preserving purchasing power, with gold and foreign currency used to make sure today’s earnings can still pay for necessities weeks or months from now.

“This is an economy that has stopped to invest in its future,” Dadpay said.

The political question is what happens when years of impoverishment collide with shortages, unemployment and declining public services.

Iranian authorities appear increasingly concerned about that possibility. Officials have identified gasoline, unemployment and livelihoods as potential triggers for unrest.

Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei has threatened a tougher response to renewed protests, while leaked Basij audio has exposed concerns about further unrest.

Strategic forecaster Kamran Bokhari cautioned against treating economic deterioration as evidence that political rupture is imminent. Economic misery alone does not bring down governments, particularly those with an extensive coercive apparatus.

“It’s a meltdown and we’re watching it in real time,” Bokhari said.

For now, people can still adapt. Stores open, supply chains continue to function and families cut spending, change what they eat and plan around what they can afford over the next few weeks rather than the next few years.

But adaptation has limits.

You cannot eat paper

Tehran can continue paying its forces, at least in nominal terms.

Iran is a large economy of roughly 90 million people, with extensive borders and black-market networks capable of keeping some goods moving. The government can prioritize spending and print more money.

What it cannot print is the food, medicine, fuel and other goods that money is supposed to buy.

“When there are not enough products in the society, when there is not enough bread and butter for people, then the money is not going to solve the problem,” Dadpay said. “It’s just paper. You cannot eat paper.”

That creates a problem for a government relying heavily on material benefits to maintain loyalty. A higher salary offers diminishing protection against discontent if inflation rapidly destroys its purchasing power or shortages mean there is less available to buy.

Gasoline captures the contradiction particularly well.

Iran possesses enormous oil and natural gas reserves, yet Iranians have faced fuel shortages and long lines at filling stations. Dadpay traces the problem partly to decades of cheap subsidized gasoline, inefficient domestic cars, fuel smuggling and limited competition.

For years, there was still enough wealth to keep that system functioning.

Dadpay compared it to dividing a cake. Different groups could continue receiving a piece even as the cake became smaller. Now, he said, “there is no cake.”

Few easy ways out

Even an easing of external pressure would not necessarily resolve the deeper problems.

Powerful economic networks tied to the IRGC have benefited from monopolies and restricted competition, while greater foreign investment and competition could threaten those interests.

For Bokhari, that helps explain why Iran’s crisis is about more than sanctions, war or access to money.

“The kind of reforms needed means that this regime will not be what it is today,” he said.

Neither economist nor forecaster is putting a date on political rupture. Economic deterioration can persist for years, and the Islamic Republic has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to use force to contain unrest.

But the immediate crisis is less abstract. Families are getting poorer, shortages are adding to the strain and money itself is becoming increasingly unreliable as a store of value.

Dadpay’s measure of that decline is strikingly simple. “This is an economy that right now saving in eggs makes more sense … than saving in tomans.”

“The mere threat out there, just the threat of these, is enough to deter traffic, certainly commercial traffic,” Votel told Eye for Iran podcast. .

“It has a huge deterrent effect and it puts the burden on us to keep really, really close watch on this area.”

That creates a paradox in the latest battle over Hormuz: Iran may be turning to rocket-launched mines because more powerful options have been degraded, yet Washington must still behave as though the threat could get through.

The latest US-Iran flare-up began after the US military said it detected Iranian forces on Larak Island preparing to launch rockets carrying sea mines into the Strait. US forces struck the launchers before they could fire.

Iran has traditionally been able to deploy naval mines using small boats, submarines or aircraft. Firing them from rockets would allow Iranian forces to place mines at a distance without exposing boats and crews to US forces watching the waterway.

Why Iran may be turning to rockets

Iranian state television reported on the Fajr-5 multiple-launch rocket system as a weapon for mining Hormuz as early as January 2025, and military analysts have said Iran had been testing the concept.

What has changed is the battlefield around it.

Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and an expert on Iran’s military and asymmetric warfare, told Eye for Iran that Iran’s conventional military capabilities were significantly degraded during the war, followed by attacks on important IRGC Navy infrastructure.

Nadimi said Iran has lost much of its ability to deploy the larger and more dangerous sea mines it could once put into the water through more traditional means.

“They have little choice but using these smaller, less capable rocket-launched mines,” he said, adding that Iran has also repeatedly tried to strike shipping with anti-ship cruise missiles and one-way attack drones, many of which have been intercepted or jammed.

Iran’s apparent new weapon can therefore be read not simply as evidence of innovation, but as adaptation after military losses.

Less destructive does not mean less disruptive

Rocket-launched mines come with significant compromises. Naval mines capable of badly damaging large ships are heavy. Fitting one into a rocket requires a smaller weapon, limiting its destructive power.

Nadimi said Iran’s rocket-delivered versions are significantly smaller than some older naval mines in its arsenal and consequently less capable of inflicting major damage on large tankers.

But a mine’s effectiveness is psychological as much as it is physical: once mines are believed to be in the water, uncertainty over their location can deter ships from entering.

Votel pointed to the history of mine warfare in the Persian Gulf, including US Navy encounters with Iranian mines during the Tanker War of the 1980s.

Commercial vessels and their insurers therefore do not necessarily need evidence that a mine will hit a ship before taking the threat seriously.

Washington’s burden

That uncertainty shifts part of the burden from Iran to the United States.

The US does not simply have to destroy mines once they enter the water. It has to watch the Strait, Iranian coastal positions and potential launch sites closely enough to prevent Tehran from putting them there in the first place.

“It puts a lot of pressure on us to make sure that we have constant surveillance, not only of the waterways themselves and the main transit routes, but really of the locations where these mines or these weapons can come from,” Votel said.

The latest US strike suggests Washington currently has the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to do that. American forces identified the Iranian launchers and struck them before the mines could be fired.

But Iran does not necessarily have to defeat that surveillance system to impose a cost. Simply retaining the capability forces the US to keep watching and commercial operators to trust that nothing has slipped through.

For Tehran, that creates an asymmetric advantage even after significant military losses: the US must repeatedly demonstrate that Hormuz is safe, while Iran only has to preserve doubt that it might not be.

Degradation or restraint?

There is an important caveat. The smaller scale of Iran’s recent attacks does not necessarily mean Tehran is incapable of doing more.

Nadimi said there are signs Iran is deliberately exercising restraint with some weapons, particularly ballistic missiles, to avoid triggering a larger escalation involving both the United States and Israel.

The rocket-launched mine claim itself also remains contested. Some maritime specialists have questioned whether Iran has operationalized the system as the US describes, while others consider it technically plausible.

Even if the system is operational, however, Iran would not need to mine the Strait extensively for it to have an effect. All Tehran needs is for military planners, ship operators and insurers to believe there is a credible possibility that it could get some mines into the water.

Votel sees that as part of a broader Iranian strategy: “Their intention is to make this painful for us and for those that are supporting the United States.”

Iran may now have fewer options for mining Hormuz than it once did. But if the threat of a mine is enough to make a ship hesitate—and enough to make the US military watch Iran’s coastline around the clock—Tehran can still impose a cost without a mine ever hitting a vessel.