Iran’s Execution Machine of Domestic Deterrence

Defense Opinion     |     By Moslem Eskandar-Filabi     |     April 13, 2026

While policymakers focus on Iran through the familiar lenses of missile exchanges, regional escalation, and nuclear risk, Tehran has been signaling something else just as important: the regime still sees its gravest danger at home.

Since March 30, Iran has carried out 10 high-profile political executions. The first six were men accused of links to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran: Akbar Daneshvarkar and Mohammad Taghavi on March 30, Babak Alipour and Pouya Ghobadi on March 31, and Vahid Baniamerian and Abolhassan Montazer on April 4.

In parallel, the regime executed four more defendants tied to the January 2026 protests: Amirhossein Hatami on April 2, Mohammad-Amin Biglari and Shahin Vahedparast on April 5, and Ali Fahim on April 6. Amnesty International and other human rights groups have warned that several of these cases were marred by torture allegations, coerced confessions, and grossly unfair proceedings.

These executions are part of the regime’s security doctrine. In moments of war, unrest and uncertainty, Tehran does not ease repression in search of legitimacy. It escalates coercion because it knows legitimacy is already gone.

The regime fears what is from within

That is the real strategic signal. Even under external military pressure, the regime is devoting urgent political energy to domestic deterrence. During the current conflict, Iranian authorities have paired arrests, executions and heavy internal deployments of forces in what outside reporting has described as an effort to head off renewed unrest. That is not the behavior of a system primarily consumed by foreign deterrence. It is the behavior of a regime that fears internal fracture, organized dissent and the social spread of rebellion.

Western policy often misreads Iran’s center of gravity. Debate usually swings between two shortcuts. The first is the belief that outside military pressure can somehow produce durable political change. The second is the belief that factions maneuvering inside the regime can yield meaningful moderation. Both miss the same hard fact: Tehran’s most immediate survival problem is organized domestic opposition.

That is why the identity of some victims matters.

The March 19 execution of Saleh Mohammadi, a 19-year-old wrestler, alongside Mehdi Ghasemi and Saeed Davoudi, was not just another judicial act. Human rights reporting described the proceedings as grossly unfair and driven by forced confessions and torture. The regime understands that athletes, students and visible young dissident leaders are not merely individuals. They are carriers of social legitimacy. They can inspire solidarity and courage beyond formal political structures.

Executions tell the population that organized defiance will carry unbearable cost. They also tell outside observers something many still resist admitting –repression at home and destabilization abroad are not separate silos. They are components of the same survival architecture.

That matters for U.S. national security analysis. A regime fighting outward while executing inward is revealing where it sees the real existential threat. These hangings are not background brutality. They are a map of Tehran’s threat perception, identifying the constituencies it considers most dangerous: organized dissidents, protest-linked defendants and public figures whose survival could inspire broader resistance.

The policy implications are immediate. Democratic governments should sanction judges, prison officials, interrogators and security actors involved in political death penalty cases. Execution data should be integrated into assessments of regime stability, not siloed into human rights reporting. Governments and international institutions should also support documentation and accountability efforts under universal jurisdiction.

A regime on the ropes

In Iran, the prison cell, the gallows and the battlefield are connected. Tehran is making its priorities unmistakable. Even in the shadow of war, it is killing the people it believes could help organize an alternative. But history is not decided by the regime’s latest brutality. In wrestling, a desperate opponent may stall, grab and foul to avoid the inevitable. That does not make him strong. It tells you he knows he is losing. The Iranian people are still in this match, and they have already shown extraordinary endurance and courage. In the end, they will be the champions.

That future does not lie in a return to the shah, nor in the survival of the current theocracy. Iran is moving forward, not backward, toward a secular, democratic republic rooted in popular sovereignty, pluralism, and the separation of religion and state.

I am proud to be part of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which has long advanced a provisional governing framework and a democratic roadmap through Maryam Rajavi’s 10-point plan. That plan offers what both dictatorship and chaos deny: a free ballot, gender equality, abolition of the death penalty, ethnic and religious equality, an independent judiciary, and a non-nuclear republic at peace with its neighbors.

https://defenseopinion.com/irans-execution-machine-of-domestic-deterrence/1177/