In the wake of the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, the regime appears to be turning inward \u2014 escalating repression with chilling speed. <\/p>\n
According to Kasra Aarabi, director of IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran, the Islamic Republic is accelerating toward what he said is a ‘North Korea-style model of isolation and control.’<\/p>\n
‘We\u2019re witnessing a kind of domestic isolation that will have major consequences for the Iranian people,’ Aarabi told Fox News Digital. ‘The regime has always been totalitarian, but the level of suppression now is unprecedented. It\u2019s unlike anything we\u2019ve seen before.’<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A source inside Iran confirmed to Fox News Digital that ‘the repression has become terrifying.’<\/p>\n
Aarabi, who maintains direct lines of contact in Iran, described a country under siege by its own rulers. In Tehran, he described how citizens are stopped at random, their phones confiscated and searched. ‘If you have content deemed pro-Israel or mocking the regime, you disappear,’ he said. ‘People are now leaving their phones at home or deleting everything before they step outside.’<\/p>\n
This new wave of paranoia and fear, he explained, mirrors tactics seen in North Korea \u2014 where citizens vanish without explanation and information is tightly controlled. During the recent conflict, Iran\u2019s leadership imposed a total internet blackout to isolate the population, blocking Israeli evacuation alerts, and pushed propaganda that framed Israel as targeting civilians indiscriminately.<\/p>\n
‘It was a perverse objective,’ Aarabi said, adding, ‘They deliberately cut communications to instill fear and manipulate public perception. For four days, not a single message went through. Even Israeli evacuation alerts didn\u2019t reach their targets.’<\/p>\n
The regime\u2019s aim, he said, was twofold: to keep people off the streets and erode the surprising bond that had formed between Iranians and Israelis. ‘At the start of the war, many Iranians welcomed the strikes,’ Aarabi noted. ‘They knew Israel was targeting the IRGC \u2014 the very forces responsible for suppressing and killing their own people. But once the internet was cut and fear set in, some began to question what was happening.’<\/p>\n
Dr. Afshon Ostovar, a leading Iran scholar and author of ‘Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards,’ said domestic repression remains the regime\u2019s most reliable strategy for survival. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
‘Repressing the people at home is easy. That\u2019s something they can do. So it\u2019s not unlikely that Iran could become more insular, more autocratic, more repressive \u2014 and more similar to, let\u2019s say, a North Korea \u2014 than what it is today. That might be the only way they see to preserve the regime: by really tightening the screws on the Iranian people, to ensure that the Iranian population doesn\u2019t try to rise up and topple the regime,’ he told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n
Inside the regime\u2019s power structure, the fallout from the war is just as severe. Aarabi said that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is facing an internal crisis of trust and an imminent purge. ‘These operations couldn\u2019t have taken place without infiltration at the highest levels,’ he said. ‘There\u2019s immense pressure now to clean house.’<\/p>\n
The next generation of IRGC officers \u2014 those who joined after 2000 \u2014 are younger, more radical and deeply indoctrinated. Over half of their training is now ideological. Aarabi said that these newer factions have begun turning on senior commanders, accusing them of being too soft on Israel or even collaborating with Mossad.<\/p>\n
‘In a twist of irony, Khamenei created these extreme ideological ranks to consolidate power \u2014 and now they\u2019re more radical than he is,’ Aarabi said. ‘He\u2019s struggling to control them.’<\/p>\n
A purge is likely, along with the rise of younger, less experienced commanders with far higher risk tolerance \u2014 a shift that could make the IRGC more volatile both domestically and internationally. With Iran\u2019s conventional military doctrine in ruins, terrorism may become its primary lever of influence.<\/p>\n
‘The regime’s three pillars \u2014 militias, ballistic missiles, and its nuclear program \u2014 have all been decapitated or severely degraded,’ Aarabi said. ‘That leaves only asymmetric warfare: soft-target terrorism with plausible deniability.’<\/p>\n
Despite the regime\u2019s brutal turn inward, Aarabi insists this is a sign of weakness, not strength. ‘If the Islamic Republic were confident, it wouldn\u2019t need to crush its people this way,’ he said. ‘It\u2019s acting out of fear. But until the regime\u2019s suppressive apparatus is dismantled, the streets will remain silent \u2014 and regime change remains unlikely.’<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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In the wake of the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, the regime appears to be turning inward \u2014 escalating repression with chilling speed. According to Kasra Aarabi, director of IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran, the Islamic Republic is accelerating toward what he said is a ‘North Korea-style model of isolation and control.’…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2099,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}