Arash Sohrabi
Iran International
Arash Sohrabi is a digital editor for Iran International's English
Iran International
Arash Sohrabi is a digital editor for Iran International's English
Esmail Khatib, killed in overnight strikes, mattered not because he ran spies but because he helped redraw the line between politics and security, turning dissent into an intelligence battlefield and recasting protest as hybrid war.
As dusk falls across Iran on Tuesday, bonfires, fireworks and street gatherings are expected to mark Chaharshanbeh Suri, an ancient fire festival that has also become a public act of defiance, this year unfolding under war, heavy security and fears of bloodshed.
The killings of protesters in January did not end when the shooting stopped. For many Iranians living thousands of kilometers from the streets where the bullets fell, the event did not remain on their screens.
The Iran war appears to be entering a new phase as attacks increasingly target checkpoints and street-level security units, while witness reports sent to Iran International suggest many of those positions are being moved or dismantled after their locations are exposed.
Iran is still loading about 1.5 million barrels of crude a day in March while China is receiving about 1.25 million barrels daily, Kpler data show, even as days of Iranian pressure around the Strait of Hormuz and rising prices force consuming nations to tap emergency reserves.
Within hours of Mojtaba Khamenei being named Iran’s new Supreme Leader, state institutions responded with solemn messages of loyalty while Persian-language social media filled with satire, as many Iranian users reacted with disbelief, political frustration and dark humor.
President Donald Trump will step into the House chamber on Tuesday night for a State of the Union address shadowed by the prospect of new US military action on Iran, as his administration sends envoys back to nuclear talks in Geneva and builds up forces in the region.
Forty days after more than 36,500 protesters were killed in a two-day crackdown in January, Iranians are marking the traditional chehelom not only in cemeteries but also in the streets and hospitals where the dead fell – a scale of loss that is reshaping how the country mourns.
As Iranians mourn those killed in the nationwide crackdown, state-aligned voices are falling back on familiar defenses: downplaying the toll, casting the protests as a foreign plot, and stripping victims of civic status by branding them religious enemies.
Many Iranians on social media have been referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as ‘Moush-Ali’ (Rat-Ali), a nickname rooted in reports that he has repeatedly gone into underground seclusion and now echoed at rallies inside Iran and in diaspora protests.
