‘Internet Shutdowns Are a Survival Tool’: Scholar Says Tehran Pairs Hangings With Blackouts
Experts describe a two-track strategy—street repression and online control—while Iran projects power through missile signaling and diplomacy in Qatar
[Doha] Iran pressed its case for regional cooperation at a major policy conference in Doha even as rights groups accused Tehran of intensifying repression at home.
Speaking at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies’ annual strategic conference on Iran, Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh called for Gulf states to set aside rivalries and pursue what he described as a “strong region.”
“We have lived together for millennia, and we will continue to do so,” Khatibzadeh said. “Exceptional circumstances demand exceptional measures.”
He warned against what he called Israel’s “hegemonic mega-project” in the Middle East, urging Arab states to push back collectively. “We can either succumb to a hegemonic imposition that erodes our sovereignty and dignity, or rise together in a symphony of cooperation that amplifies our power,” he said.
The remarks came days after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived in Doha for an emergency Arab-Islamic summit, a sign that Tehran is using Qatar’s capital to project influence in the Gulf. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also met counterparts from Oman, Kuwait, and Iraq in Doha, pressing for Muslim nations to sever ties with Israel following an Israeli strike that killed Hamas leaders in the city last week.
While Iranian officials sought to reframe the conflict around Israeli aggression, opposition figures said Tehran’s domestic response revealed weakness, not strength.
The crackdown began immediately after Israel and the United States launched waves of strikes on Iran in June, a 12-day conflict that left more than 1,000 people dead. Police claimed 21,000 arrests during that period, including hundreds accused of spying for Israel. Rights groups say the subsequent surge in executions—many carried out in secret—echoes the run-up to the 1988 prison massacres.
On June 23, Tehran escalated by firing missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest US military installation in the region. Qatari defense systems intercepted most of the salvo, and no casualties were reported, but satellite imagery showed damage to a US radome used for secure communications.
US officials later confirmed that Iran had given advance warning to both Washington and Doha, allowing precautions to be taken. Even so, the strike was a dramatic signal: Iran was willing to hit a base on Gulf soil that hosts thousands of American personnel.
For Iranian officials, it was proof of reach. For Gulf neighbors, it was a reminder of vulnerability.
Last week, Tehran hanged Mehran Bahramian, accused of involvement in the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests. Rights groups said his trial was secret and unfair. The execution came days after the Revolutionary Guards boasted of arresting eight alleged Mossad operatives, part of the same dragnet that began in June.
It doesn’t show strength. It shows a regime that’s cracking.
“It doesn’t show strength,” said Majid Sadeghpour, political director of the Organization of Iranian American Communities. “It shows a regime that’s cracking.”
From the start of the June conflict, authorities blanketed the streets with security forces—“north of 50,000” in Tehran alone, Sadeghpour told The Media Line. Checkpoints sprouted across the country. Phones were searched at random. Neighbors whispered about who had been taken.
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By August, the gallows were busy. Seven men were executed for alleged ties to Israel. Two belonged to the opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq, accused of building improvised mortars. Courts leaned on elastic charges—“waging war against God” and “corruption on earth”—to justify the hangings.
Amnesty International recorded more than 800 executions already in 2025, warning that “thousands more may be at risk.” Rights lawyer Saeid Dehghan called the new laws “writing vague repression into the criminal code.”
Women bore a specific cost. Transferred after an Israeli strike on Tehran’s Evin Prison, activist and scholar Sayeh Seydal described Qarchak Prison as “literally a slow death,” with sewage floods, infestations, and no medical care. Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi warned that war and repression were dismantling “the fragile civic space on which women’s activism depends.”
The sweep did not stop at dissidents. Afghans—long marginalized in Iran—became convenient targets. Residency slips lapsed, jobs vanished, and buses rolled east packed with families accused not of crimes but of being unwanted.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) tracked daily returns of up to 50,000 people. By September, nearly 2 million Afghans had been forced back, many into danger zones around Herat. “The pace and volume of returns is shocking,” said UNHCR’s Arafat Jamal. One Afghan in Tehran put it more bluntly: “The real war is not between Iran and Israel, it’s between Iran and the Afghan refugees.”
The consequences were catastrophic. In August, a bus fire outside Herat killed scores of deportees, many so badly burned they could not be identified. Rights groups said the sequence was stark: strikes, scapegoating, deportations, and catastrophe on Afghanistan’s roads.
Iran’s repression was not only physical, it was wired.
Internet shutdowns are now a standard survival tool
“Internet shutdowns are now a standard survival tool,” said Ramesh Sepehrrad, a scholar of Iranian politics. She told The Media Line that Tehran cut connectivity nationwide during the 12-day war to block organizing, hide abuses, and deny the world visibility. “We call on the international community to treat shutdowns as a sanctions trigger,” she said.
Sepehrrad said the regime pairs executions with digital blackouts to deepen fear. “They are two prongs of one strategy: terrorize offline, silence online.”
Iran’s cyber operators, often working through the Revolutionary Guard and the office of the supreme leader, run covert networks of fake media sites, sockpuppet personas, and phishing campaigns. Increasingly, these operations are polished with AI.
Meta removed an Iran-origin influence network in early 2025. Microsoft tracked Tehran stepping into the 2024 US election space. OpenAI blocked an Iranian campaign using generative tools. “Even when quickly exposed, they still seed confusion, harass dissidents, and launder regime narratives,” Sepehrrad said.
She cited APT42, also known as “Charming Kitten,” which regularly impersonates journalists and conferences to phish activists. “This regime is masterful in social engineering, and they’ve updated their playbook with AI-polished content.”
The risks go far beyond Iran’s borders. Western officials have warned that Iranian hackers probed US municipal systems, water plants, and even election infrastructure. In 2022, Tehran knocked Albania offline ahead of an opposition summit, a move Sepehrrad called “a warning shot that harboring dissidents carries a cyber cost.”
Analysts say the repression reflects Tehran’s vulnerability after the June war exposed the limits of its defenses.
The 12-Day War has spawned not a new regional order but an expanding landscape of disorder
“The 12-Day War has spawned not a new regional order but an expanding landscape of disorder,” said Daniel Brumberg, an analyst with the Arab Center in Washington, which is affiliated with a think tank in Doha. “At the core of the debate is not only the future of Iran’s nuclear power program, but also the ruling elite’s central concern: regime survival.”
Brumberg said Iran’s leaders are torn between absolutists in the Revolutionary Guard who seek total power and pragmatic conservatives who want to preserve the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy. President Masoud Pezeshkian, he noted, “walks a fine line, saying those who oppose us are not necessarily our enemies.” Hard-liners pounced, accusing him of planning normalization with Israel.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, now 86, called for “unity of all Iranians, regardless of political or religious affiliation,” echoing Pezeshkian’s language. But Brumberg warned this was less reconciliation than survival instinct. “The real puzzle is not whether the regime will survive, but how,” he said.
In Washington, support for Iran’s democratic opposition is mounting. House Resolution 166, introduced by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), urges recognition of Iranians’ right to a representative republic. “This regime has murdered thousands of its own citizens,” McClintock said. “The Iranian people are crying out for freedom, and America must stand with them.”
Sadeghpour argued that US policy must go beyond sanctions. “Anytime it’s weak, the regime exacts its cost from the population,” he said. “The answer is political space for the resistance, not bombs or appeasement.”
Sepehrrad agreed, adding that cyber repression should carry penalties just like executions. “Only by denying the regime the street, the story, and the impunity it counts on can we weaken its survival strategy,” she said.
From Evin Prison to Herat’s burning buses, the through line is unmistakable: when foreign pressure rises, Tehran punishes its own people and scapegoats the vulnerable.
For now, Iran’s rulers still have tools—gallows, blackouts, deportations, disinformation. But each new crackdown reveals less a fortress than a system holding power through fear, not strength.
The regime believes terror is the only glue left
“The regime believes terror is the only glue left,” Sepehrrad told The Media Line. “But fear is not the same thing as legitimacy.”
