Armed attacks and security operations in southeastern Iran have left at least 94 people dead and 33 wounded since March 31, with fighting growing more frequent and involving heavier weapons, US-based human rights group HRANA reported Monday.
The group recorded at least 63 armed incidents between March 31 and October 10, especially in Sistan and Baluchestan province.
The escalation has coincided with the US and Israeli conflict with Iran. HRANA said Iranian authorities had focused much of their attention on western and northwestern Iran while a sustained pattern of armed attacks and security operations developed in the southeast.
Attacks on patrol vehicles and military convoys were the most common incidents, with 17 recorded cases, followed by 14 targeted shootings. Seven of the shootings occurred outside victims' homes or workplaces or along their commuting routes.
HRANA also reported a shift toward heavier weapons and more complex attacks.
On October 2, a vehicle allegedly linked to the IRGC Quds Force's Fatemiyoun Brigade was targeted with a booby trap and gunfire near Zahedan.
Five days later, an attack on a police headquarters in Jalegh reportedly involved mines, rocket-propelled grenades and semi-heavy weapons. On October 9, a roadside bomb struck the route of a police convoy near Zahedan.
The People’s Fighters Front, an alliance formed in December 2025 that includes Jaish al-Adl and smaller Baluch armed groups, claimed six of the attacks documented by HRANA, while Ansar al-Furqan claimed one. Most attacks remained unclaimed or could not be reliably attributed, HRANA said.
Government forces also used drones, artillery, armored vehicles and heavy weapons in several operations, HRANA said. In Jahadabad, Gharibabad and Manzalab, homes and sites of armed confrontations were demolished, blown up or set on fire.
The report warned that the use of such weapons in residential areas increased the risk of civilian casualties and property damage.
The region has a long history of clashes between Iranian security forces and Sunni Baluch militants. Jaish al-Adl emerged around 2012 as a successor to Jundullah and has repeatedly targeted security forces, including in a 2019 suicide bombing that killed 27 Revolutionary Guards.
Marco Rubio’s invocation of ancient Persia in a speech championing Western power has given Tehran an opportunity to present itself as a defender of Iranian identity, even as critics recall the Islamic Republic’s own record of disparaging pride in the country’s pre-Islamic rulers.
The US secretary of state’s October 7 address in Athens drew on Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in 480 BC to celebrate Western resilience, before contrasting Western traditions of sacrifice with what he called the Iranian leadership’s “cult of death.”
The remarks drew objections even from critics of the Islamic Republic, who argued that opposition to clerical rule does not diminish Iranians’ attachment to their ancient history.
Iranian officials seized on that sensitivity to cast themselves as defenders of the country’s ancient heritage. Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf accused Iran’s adversaries of seeking to erase ancient civilizations and warned Washington that it would meet the fate of Persia’s defeated enemies.
“Those who chase Alexander’s legacy will share Valerian’s fate: you will kneel,” he wrote on X on Friday, referring to the Roman emperor captured by the Sasanian king Shapur I.
The history Khamenei dismissed
That embrace of ancient Persian power contrasts with slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s criticism of the very campaign Rubio recounted.
Addressing army commanders in April 2012, Khamenei cited Xerxes’ invasion of Greece as an example of military force serving rulers’ political ambitions rather than national interests. He described an army returning defeated, its ships wrecked, and associated the campaign with Iran’s historical taghut, a religious term used to condemn illegitimate or ungodly rule.
“These were not for national interests,” he said.
In 2018, Khamenei dismissed pride in the rule of the ancient Kayanian and Achaemenid dynasties as illusory, arguing that national esteem should rest on tangible achievements in contemporary society.
Those remarks complicate the authorities’ present effort to speak for Iranians offended by Rubio’s account. One Persian-language X user mocked government supporters’ sudden concern for Xerxes, contrasting it with their past ridicule of ancient Persian figures and people visiting historical sites.
The struggle over these symbols predates the current war. During Nowruz in March 2025, crowds gathered at Persepolis and the tombs of Hafez and Ferdowsi while authorities promoted religious mourning coinciding with the holiday.
After the June 2025 war with Israel and the United States, patriotic music entered the leadership’s own ceremonies: Khamenei asked eulogist Mahmoud Karimi to perform “Ey Iran Iran” at a July mourning gathering, a separate song from the better-known anthem.
Later, media reports documented a statue of the mythical archer Arash in Tehran, banners likening Iranian missiles to his legendary arrows, and a billboard depicting Benjamin Netanyahu kneeling before an ancient Persian emperor.
By November 2025, authorities had also unveiled a statue depicting Valerian’s submission to Shapur I. Such imagery associated the state’s confrontation with foreign powers with a national history reaching far beyond the Islamic Republic.
A propaganda opening
Speaking at the Pnyx with the Acropolis behind him, Rubio recounted the Persian destruction of Athens’ sanctuaries and the city’s subsequent rebuilding. He also praised the Spartans’ last stand at Thermopylae, presenting ancient Greek traditions as foundations of Western courage, ambition and duty.
His explicit attack on contemporary Iran targeted its rulers, whom he called “radical mullahs.” But placing that criticism within a speech celebrating resistance to Persian armies prompted objections to the implied continuity between ancient conflict and today’s war.
Historian Touraj Daryaee told the Tehran Times that treating the ancient wars as a confrontation between East and West misrepresented a conflict between an empire and Greek city-states. He also challenged the use of that history to frame the present conflict.
Questions about Rubio’s historical framing also came from admirers of the speech. Writing in the Spectator, Alexander Munguía praised its defense of the West but argued that its celebration of relentless ambition better resembled Alcibiades, who championed Athens’ disastrous expedition to Sicily, than Pericles, whose wartime strategy emphasized restraint.
US-based Iranian journalist and analyst Omid Memarian warned on X that Rubio “may have just handed Tehran one of the biggest propaganda gifts of this war.”
“It just reframes this war as a civilizational clash. And that plays directly into Tehran’s hands,” he wrote, arguing that the rhetoric helped authorities portray Washington as an enemy of Iran itself rather than its government.
The State Department did not immediately respond to Iran International’s request for comment on the criticism and whether Rubio intended to draw a parallel between ancient Persia and today’s Iranian government.
A distinction between Iran and its rulers
Iranian political analyst Nejat Bahrami disputed the interpretation of Rubio’s speech as an attack on Iranian civilization.
“Rubio’s speech was part of a broader theme that he, the current Trump administration and right-wing political figures in Europe have pursued in recent years: that the West must return to its roots, resist the erosion of Western civilization and preserve Western values,” he told Iran International.
“Contrary to the fuss made by the Islamic Republic, Rubio did not attack Iranian civilization in the speech. He referred to a historical event: the Persian attack on Athens and the destruction that followed, before describing how the Greeks returned and rebuilt. His point was that the West today should similarly follow their example of determination and resilience.”
Rubio had previously drawn an explicit distinction between Iranians and their rulers. At his January 2025 Senate confirmation hearing, he praised Iran’s ancient civilization and culture and Iranians’ pride in their Persian heritage, saying he knew of no country with a greater divide between its people and those governing them.
Footage and images showing men wielding machetes and swords at an IRGC-backed rally in the central Iranian city of Isfahan have renewed scrutiny of the Islamic Republic's history of using unofficial armed groups to suppress anti-government protests.
The October 1 event, dubbed "Jan-Fadayan," or "Those Willing to Sacrifice Their Lives," brought together members of the Basij paramilitary force, religious organizations and other participants, according to Iranian state media.
Organizers described the gathering as a demonstration of public readiness and mobilization capabilities.
Iranian lawyer Ali Mojtahedzadeh described the public display of bladed weapons as a "show of force with weapons" and called on local security authorities to explain why it had been permitted.
A review of statements by senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders and former security officials shows that the use of unofficial groups, including individuals described as criminals and street thugs, to confront protesters dates back decades.
From the 1999 student protests to the 2009 crackdown
One of the earliest documented accounts dates to July 1999, when security forces and allied groups attacked Tehran University student dormitories, triggering widespread demonstrations.
Ali Hashemi, a former deputy security minister at Iran's Intelligence Ministry, said in an audio recording published by Iran International that approximately 250 individuals described as "thugs and hooligans" were organized during the student protests.
Hashemi said the experience later served as a model for deploying similar groups during the mass demonstrations that followed Iran's disputed 2009 presidential election.
He also described the use of individuals with criminal records to beat detainees, including at the notorious Kahrizak detention center, referring to authorization from judicial authorities.
Hashemi said similar individuals were subsequently deployed during protests in 2017, 2018 and November 2019.
One of the most explicit accounts came from Hossein Hamedani, a senior IRGC commander responsible for security operations in Tehran during the 2009 unrest.
Hamedani said the Revolutionary Guards identified approximately 5,000 people who had participated in disturbances but were not affiliated with political parties or movements. He described them as "criminals and thugs."
According to Hamedani, these individuals were initially prevented from leaving their homes on days when protests were planned, but some were later recruited and organized into three battalions.
"I then made them members of the battalions," he said.
Explaining the strategy, Hamedani said that training fighters required recruiting individuals accustomed to handling "blades and machetes."
Hamedani also described preparations to confront protesters during Ashura, a major Shiite religious observance, in December 2009.
He said cinemas, schools and religious halls were made available to pro-government forces, while approximately 30 religious groups were mobilized in Tehran.
"On Ashura, these same three battalions put an end to the unrest," Hamedani said, adding that approximately 45,000 Basij members had also been deployed.
Following Hamedani's death in Syria in 2015, Mohammad Ali Jafari, then commander-in-chief of the IRGC, credited him with helping suppress the 2009 protests, saying his leadership had been crucial to ending what Iranian authorities described as "sedition."
Hamedani had also played a central role in organizing local militias supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during the country's civil war.
Jafari later said Hamedani had organized approximately 100,000 local fighters in Syria.
Allegations of machete-wielding clerics in 2022 protests
Similar allegations emerged following the nationwide protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in morality police custody in September 2022.
In 2024, former lawmaker Mohammad Ashrafi Esfahani accused a group of clerics associated with influential religious figure Alireza Panahian of attacking protesters with knives and machetes while dressed as civilians.
He alleged that the men returned from the streets wearing bloodstained clothes before changing into clerical robes.
Ashrafi Esfahani also said members of the group operated in plainclothes and changed into clerical attire, including turbans, when police officers appeared to avoid being confronted.
The allegations emerged amid a legal and financial dispute between Ashrafi Esfahani and Panahian over a religious complex in Tehran and have not been independently verified.
Renewed scrutiny of unofficial armed groups
Nearly three decades after the 1999 student protests, the images from Isfahan have again raised questions about the role of unofficial groups operating alongside Iran's formal security forces.
Although the names, structures and political circumstances of the groups involved in past crackdowns have varied, accounts by former security officials and IRGC commanders describe the repeated recruitment and deployment of individuals capable of using violence against demonstrators.
The available evidence does not establish that the groups involved in different periods belonged to a single organization or were directly connected.
Nor has any organizational link been established between those previously deployed against protesters and the men seen carrying machetes and swords at the Isfahan rally.
The identities and affiliations of the armed men have not been independently verified.
Their appearance at an IRGC-backed event has nevertheless renewed attention to the Islamic Republic's documented history of mobilizing forces outside conventional security structures during periods of political unrest.
A revisionist argument is emerging in Tehran over Iran’s nuclear strategy: that its longstanding policy of nuclear ambiguity failed its most important test when it did not deter the United States and Israel from attacking, and should now be reconsidered.
Nezamoddin Mousavi, a former conservative lawmaker with longstanding ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), gave unusually explicit expression to that argument this week, declaring that “nuclear ambiguity did not prevent war” and raising the prospect of revisiting Iran’s nuclear doctrine and even its membership in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Mousavi, who helped found IRGC-linked media outlets, made the remarks in an interview with Ensaf News, a website close to President Massoud Pezeshkian.
Senior Iranian officials have previously hinted that Tehran could change its nuclear doctrine if sufficiently threatened. But such warnings have generally been directed outward, rather than framed as criticism of an established policy favored by slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Mousavi, however, is effectively arguing that a policy intended to preserve strategic uncertainty while stopping short of weaponization failed to provide the deterrence its architects expected.
That diagnosis feeds into a wider debate over what lesson Iran should draw from the war: whether the failure was one of deterrence, requiring greater military leverage, or of escalation management, requiring a different approach to diplomacy.
Iran has long cited Khamenei’s fatwa prohibiting the possession and use of nuclear weapons when confronted with accusations that it might seek a bomb.
Critics, however, have questioned how absolute that prohibition would prove in an existential crisis, especially since Khamenei’s predecessor and founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini, held that preserving the state was paramount, taking precedence even over religious obligations.
Against that backdrop, Mousavi said Tehran should reassess its international commitments, the value of NPT membership and its broader deterrence strategy following attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
He stopped short of explicitly advocating the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
His reasoning amounts to three premises and a conclusion: Iran refrained from building a nuclear weapon; ambiguity was supposed to contribute to deterrence; yet Iran was attacked and senior leaders and military commanders were killed. The assumptions underlying Iran’s deterrence strategy, he argues, must therefore be reconsidered.
Beyond Khamenei
Mousavi also ventured into another sensitive subject: whether Khamenei’s death would fundamentally alter Iran’s strategic direction.
He argued that he would not expect dramatic change. Foreign and security policy, he said, is not simply the product of one individual but of institutional thinking and long-term calculations developed over decades.
It reflects a distinctly conservative view of regime continuity: leaders matter, but institutions matter more. Major strategic directions, in this reading, are unlikely to change abruptly regardless of who occupies the highest office.
That also gives the nuclear debate greater significance. If Iran’s strategic direction is fundamentally institutional rather than dependent on one leader, the lessons the establishment draws from the war could outlast the present leadership.
Deterrence or de-escalation?
Not everyone in Tehran is drawing the same lesson.
An article published Wednesday in Etemad newspaper highlighted a competing strand of Iranian political thinking. Where Mousavi sees a failure of deterrence, more moderate voices see a failure to manage escalation.
The hardline argument holds that the United States and Israel seek to weaken Iran regardless of its diplomatic behavior and that negotiations cannot guarantee security while military pressure continues.
The more moderate argument sees the conflict as the product of a broader strategic environment shaped by political, regional, military and economic pressures. For this camp, the lesson is not necessarily that Iran needs greater deterrence, but that it needs more effective crisis management.
The emerging argument in Tehran, then, appears to be shifting from how this war ends to what lesson should be drawn from it: whether greater military and potentially nuclear deterrence offers the best protection against another conflict, or whether security ultimately depends on preventing the next escalation before it begins.
Iran executed at least 2,003 people over the past year, a 29% increase from the previous period, rights group HRANA reported Friday, as UN experts warned that Tehran uses capital punishment to silence dissent and instill fear.
The report was released on October 9, on the eve of World Day Against the Death Penalty. Its figures cover October 10, 2025, through October 8, 2026.
The toll was the highest in 10 reporting periods, up from 1,553 the preceding year and 505 in 2016–2017. HRANA compiled its findings from 1,857 reports and said restrictions on independent monitoring may leave some executions undocumented.
According to HRANA, murder charges accounted for 57.56% of executions and drug offenses for 36.25%. About 95% of executions were not announced by official sources, while only 5% were officially reported.
Nine executions took place in public, while six other people received sentences calling for public executions. Among those executed were 47 women and four people who had been under 18 at the time of their alleged offenses.
Political executions and January protests
HRANA documented 69 political or security-related executions during the reporting period, including 35 cases linked to the January 2026 protests. Twenty-nine people were executed on charges of moharebeh, or enmity against God, alone or alongside other accusations.
Another 29 political or security-related executions occurred in April and May 2026 alone.
HRANA also documented 369 televised confessions connected to the January protests that it said had been extracted under torture. It cited the cases of Amirhossein Hatami, executed at 18, and Saleh Mohammadi, charged at 18 and executed at 19.
A separate Iran International review published on October 6 identified at least 70 executions in political and security cases between January 7 and October 5, averaging nearly two a week.
Of those, 35 were linked to the January protests, nine to the 12-day and 40-day wars, and 26 to other political and security cases.
The review also identified at least 194 people facing death sentences in political and security cases, including 113 arrested in connection with the January protests. Among those facing execution were 13 women and at least seven people who were under 18 at the time of their alleged offenses.
The review found that 44 of the 70 executions had taken place in Karaj and Isfahan. It cautioned that the figures represented verified cases rather than the full scale of executions and death sentences.
In an accompanying statement, HRANA said judicial authorities and Revolutionary Courts accelerated proceedings against political prisoners and protesters following the January demonstrations.
The group said death sentences were issued and carried out after grossly unfair trials, extending repression from the streets into courtrooms and prisons and threatening protesters with death.
HRANA's monthly figures show 1,075 executions since the start of 2026, including 334 in January and 282 in February.
UN experts warn of repression
UN human rights experts on Friday described Iran as the world's most prolific executioner per capita and called for an immediate halt to executions.
“Iran’s death penalty is used to silence dissent, with broadly defined national security offences recasting peaceful activity as a threat,” the experts said.
They warned that prosecutions of people arrested during the January 2026 protests involved torture, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, coerced confessions and denial of access to lawyers.
A UN fact-finding mission previously concluded that the killing of thousands of protesters in January amounted to crimes against humanity.
The UN experts also said executions for drug offenses often targeted low-level couriers from impoverished and marginalized communities. They criticized Iran's qisas system, under which a defendant's ability to pay blood money can determine whether a death sentence is carried out.
HRANA said executions following unfair trials violated Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and called for an immediate halt. The UN experts also urged Tehran to commute death sentences and review cases against fair-trial standards.
Tehran has seized on protests by French high school students to accuse Paris of repression, seeking to obscure its own treatment of young Iranians by turning the language of human rights against one of its Western critics.
On October 6, Iran summoned French ambassador Pierre Cochard over the crackdown on high school demonstrations in France. The following day, Paris summoned Iran’s ambassador, accusing Iranian authorities of spreading disinformation through official Foreign Ministry accounts.
The diplomatic exchange reveals how the Islamic Republic appropriates the language of rights while denying those rights at home. It is also a struggle over the meaning of protest and who can claim to defend it.
Tehran seeks to reposition itself as an accuser, turning scrutiny away from its own security apparatus and toward a government that has condemned Iranian repression.
Internationally, Tehran seeks to weaken the authority of European criticism. Domestically, the diplomatic spat offers supporters reassurance that Western governments also face rejection. Neither objective requires solidarity with the students themselves; both require their images and grievances to be repurposed in defense of the regime.
This tactic has precedent. During the Yellow Vest movement, Ali Khamenei condemned French police violence, while a small group of regime supporters gathered outside the French embassy in Tehran.
Some wore yellow vests and placed candles and photographs of injured French protesters outside the embassy. Their placards denounced police violence but also carried an explicitly ideological message: “If only the French people had an Imam Khomeini!”
A statement read at the gathering invoked France’s reception of Khomeini at Neauphle-le-Château forty years earlier and portrayed Emmanuel Macron’s government as cruel and despotic.
At the same time, Iranian authorities were cracking down on protests by pensioners, workers, teachers and students. Then, as now, the tactic allowed Tehran to answer criticism of its own repression by accusing its critics of hypocrisy. Human rights become an arena for diplomatic one-upmanship rather than obligations owed to citizens.
France’s conduct must, of course, be scrutinized on its own merits. Injuries to demonstrators, particularly minors, demand independent investigation and accountability. But the evidence concerning Iran is substantial.
In March 2024, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission concluded that violations committed during the repression of “Woman, Life, Freedom” included crimes against humanity.
Its findings encompassed murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other sexual violence, persecution and enforced disappearance. The mission documented the involvement of state institutions and security forces, undermining attempts to portray the violence as a series of isolated excesses.
On September 17, 2026, the same mission reported that Iranian authorities had also committed crimes against humanity during the crackdown on protests that began in late December 2025 and continued into January.
Generation Z played a crucial role in “Woman, Life, Freedom” following Mahsa Amini’s death in September 2022. Schoolgirls removing their headscarves, teenagers challenging clerical authority and young women demanding control over their bodies exposed the limits of decades of ideological education.
The state had sought to reproduce loyalty. Instead, many young people asserted their right to determine how they would live.
Young Iranians mobilized again in the protests that began in late 2025, bringing another generation raised entirely under the Islamic Republic into confrontation with the state. Their rejection of its prescribed norms challenges the assumption that political control necessarily produces ideological consent.
The authorities’ response combines repression with continued recruitment into structures of loyalty. The Basij, under Revolutionary Guards command, provides a network for ideological discipline and security mobilization.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported that an IRGC recruitment campaign accepts children as young as twelve, with Amnesty documenting children carrying weapons and serving at checkpoints and on patrols.
This goes beyond patriotic rhetoric: it places children directly in harm’s way. The state invokes the protection of young people abroad while drawing children into its military apparatus at home.
Yet Iranian youth cannot be divided neatly between those who serve the regime and those who confront it. Many seek simply to build lives apart from official Iran. Their resistance is not limited to protest: it also finds expression in everyday acts—choosing what to wear, loving, dancing, listening to music, nurturing friendships and keeping parts of their lives beyond the authorities’ control.
This has produced a form of what might be called “secular separatism”: an attempt to shield personal life from the regime’s ideological grip.
Within social, cultural and emotional circles, and spaces of celebration, another, fragile society is taking shape, though access to it inevitably varies with resources and social background.
Joy itself can become a way of asserting autonomy. Under a regime that glorifies martyrdom and encourages citizens to denounce one another, the simple acts of enjoying life and pursuing happiness acquire political meaning.
Tehran claims to speak for French high school students. It should begin by listening to young Iranians who aspire to build their own lives.
