‘My child has cancer’: Iran’s increasing repression results in hundreds of executions

Amid soaring popular discontent and an increasingly explosive social climate in Iran, the ruling theocratic regime is engaged in a wild killing spree in an effort to impose crisis control through ruthless repression. A staggering 335 prisoners were executed in November alone, and nearly two million people are arrested across the country each year. Even the graves of political prisoners executed in the 1980s have not been spared from destruction.

But such statistics reveal, above all, the fragility of the regime in the face of an organized resistance – one that seeks to establish a secular and free republic.

The government at a crossroads

In such a situation, the regime faces only two choices:

• It can step back from confrontation with the international community, abandon its nuclear ambitions and hope that easing sanctions might alleviate some of the economic pressure – perhaps enough to survive the current crisis. But the regime’s own officials refer to this strategy as “drinking the poison chalice.”

• Or it can continue on its current path. The sharp rise in executions is a clear sign of the regime’s intent to persist with its repressive policies.

The regime’s inability to face reality

The Iranian regime – especially Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – is too weak to drink that “poison chalice.” Khamenei refuses to give up the nuclear program, to halt the expansion of missile capabilities or to end the funding of proxy forces abroad.

Even figures from within the Iranian establishment, including former president Hassan Rouhani, have publicly blamed Khamenei for the country’s dire condition. The regime is fundamentally built on fueling conflict abroad and repressing dissent at home.

Abandoning either pillar would accelerate the regime’s collapse. Any talk of negotiations today is, in reality, a repeat of the 2015 nuclear deal: a strategy to buy time and deceive the global community.

Funding proxies at the people’s expense

A member of Iran’s parliament recently revealed that between 30 and 40 million liters of gasoline are smuggled out of the country daily. It is clear that such large-scale smuggling is not the work of ordinary citizens. There have long been reports of the pro-regime Revolutionary Guards’ involvement in fuel smuggling to neighboring countries.

Hossein Raghfar, an economist close to the ruling regime, states that between 2018 and 2025 around $80 billion in export revenues failed to return to the country. Meanwhile, as Iranians struggle to find basic life-sustaining medications like insulin, the nation’s oil wealth funds weapons shipments to Lebanon and Yemen. A teacher in Borujerd says: “My child has cancer, but our dollars go to the war in Syria, not to his medicine.”

These figures demonstrate the dominance of entities beyond the official Iranian government – including the Supreme Leader’s office and the Revolutionary Guards – diverting national resources to finance proxy forces, missile programs and even repression abroad.

The regime’s priority: Militias, not its people

Mohammad Hassan Akhtari, head of the “Committee to Support the Islamic Revolution in Palestine,” has stated: “No power can disarm Hezbollah, Hamas or other resistance groups. U.S. threats are ineffective.”

These remarks come even as reports reveal that the Islamic Republic continued funding Hamas and Hezbollah even after the 12-day war this past June – a time when more than two-thirds of Iran’s population is living below the poverty line.

The only solution: Relying on popular resistance

The people of Iran – especially women – have endured years of torture, displacement, discrimination and injustice. Yet in the midst of this suffering, a deep yearning for freedom, equality and a brighter future persists. That future is envisioned as a secular republic, with gender equality and a society free from nuclear weapons and rampant capital punishment.

The widespread executions are, in fact, a direct response to this vision – a brutal attempt to silence it.

Today, Iranians place their hopes in a movement built on a vast network of “resistance units” spread throughout the country. These units are affiliated with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), which forms the backbone of Iran’s organized opposition. They are largely composed of Generations Z and Y – young people who long for a modern, just and free society. Thousands of members of this organization have been imprisoned under both the Shah’s monarchy and the current theocratic regime.

A call to the international community

The Iranian Resistance does not seek money or weapons. Its only request is for political and moral support from the international community in the Iranian people’s fight to overthrow a regime that has occupied the country for nearly half a century and robbed peace from the Middle East and the world.

The goal of this resistance is not to seize power, but to transfer it – peacefully and democratically – to its rightful owners: the people of Iran.