After a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests that left thousands dead, Iranian authorities are taking the next step to crush dissent: mass arrests.
Tens of thousands of people were arrested during the nationwide unrest, and security forces are still tracking down and detaining people they believe attended protests that called for an end to theocratic rule, according to human rights observers. But in recent weeks, authorities have also targeted specific groups perceived as threats to the regime, including reformist politicians, doctors, lawyers and journalists, rights groups say.
The arrests have not squashed the anti-government sentiment: Protests have broken out on a number of university campuses in recent days, according to state media and videos circulating on social media.
“What they have left is guns, prisons and the revolutionary courts. To kill and imprison people and in this way stay in power,” said Hossein Raeesi, a prominent human rights lawyer who practiced in Iran for 20 years and is now a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday in his State of the Union speech that Iran had killed at least 32,000 protesters.
“They shot them and hung them,” he said. “We stopped them from hanging a lot of them, with the threat of serious violence. But this is some terrible people.”
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) put the number of people killed in the protests at more than 7,000 as of Monday, with nearly 12,000 cases “under review.”
The group says that it verifies each death with a network of activists on the ground in Iran and that its data goes through “multiple internal checks.”
The U.S. is conducting a huge military buildup in the Middle East, with Trump not ruling out an attack on Iran even as the two countries hold nuclear talks.
Another round of talks was taking place Thursday in Geneva, while Iran has warned of a significant response to even a limited attack.
But while the regime seeks to hold off that external danger, it appears to be rooting out perceived internal threats.
More than 53,000 people have been arrested since the protests began, HRANA said in its report Monday. The head of Iran’s judiciary, hard-line cleric Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi, labeled protesters “terrorists” and called for fast-tracked punishments.
Among the reformists who were swept up were Azar Mansouri, the head of the Reformist Front coalition; Javad Emam, a spokesman for the reformist faction; and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, a hostage-taker at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979-turned-regime critic, according to the semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency.
The arrests may have also been a message to President Masoud Pezeshkian, who is close to the reformists and had initially mentioned holding talks with protesters, analysts say. Mansouri, Asgharzadeh and Emam were all released on bail two weeks ago, according to the students news agency.
“The reformists themselves — bereft of popular trust — are no longer the real menace,” Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, said in an email response to questions. “It is any structure, any network, any embryonic capacity to organize that the regime truly fears.”
The volume of arrests has been so high that thousands of people have spent at least part of their time at “black box detention sites,” off-the-grid locations such as warehouses, truck containers and storage facilities, according to Esfandiar Aban, the director of research at the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group.
Detainees at the black box sites, some of whom are seriously wounded, do not receive medical care, do not have access to proper toilet facilities and are not logged in official records, raising the chances of torture or even death, Aban said.
“We get so many texts from people saying: ‘This is the name of my child. We have no idea where they have been for 40 days,’” Aban said in a phone interview. “It’s terrible pressure for the family. They don’t know if they’re dead or alive.”
Some detainees are tortured to get information about other protesters or to get confessions, usually admitting to working with foreign governments, which are often televised, according to Aban, who has documented over 300 confessions carried in various state media outlets since the protests began.
The parents of some protesters who have been arrested have also been pressured to help get confessions, said Moein Khazaeli, a lawyer and human rights researcher with Dadban, a group of Iranian lawyers based outside the country who offer online legal advice and have monitored the wave of arrests.
“They’ll say, for example, go tell your son to confess and we’ll help him. Otherwise his sentence is execution, or his sentence is 20 years’ imprisonment, or we won’t release him anytime soon,” Khazaeli said, noting that other family members are also threatened with arrest.
He added, “Sometimes they have arrested the father of a detainee and taken him to jail and then bring the guy who’s in jail to show him and say, ‘Look, we’ve got your dad, so sit down and confess.’”
Many lawyers have been prevented from getting involved in cases, said Raeesi, the human rights lawyer based in Canada. Some who have offered their services pro bono on social media or have represented protesters in previous rounds of unrest have been arrested, he said.
Doctors and other medical personnel have also been arrested for providing medical care to protesters, according to human rights groups.
“The government has used different techniques to get rid of the doctors who protest the presence of security forces or who treat the patients” said Homa Fathi, a Canada-based activist and member of the International Independent Physicians and Healthcare Providers Association, who has been in touch with medical personnel in Iran and documented arrests.
“They just wanted people to die. It’s not very complicated. They just wanted to kill people. And if you are treating the people, you are a barrier in their way. It’s unfortunately as cruel and as simple as that.”
Human rights groups have documented the torture of detainees.
“Authorities have subjected detainees to torture and other ill-treatment. Those detained are at serious risk of death in custody, grossly unfair trials, and secret, summary, and arbitrary executions,” Human Rights Watch said in a report Tuesday.
The torture and ill treatment have included “severe beatings with batons; kicks and punches; sexual and gender-based violence; food deprivation; and psychological torture, such as threats of execution, and denial of medical care to those injured,” the group said.
It is unlikely that the regime will stop the arrests anytime soon, observers say.
“The regime is wielding fear as its principal instrument, hoping to terrify a weary nation into political hibernation,” said Vaez, of the International Crisis Group. “But fear is a blunt tool against a people who have exhausted their patience and, increasingly, their fear of the consequences.”
