Iran: The Endless Brutality of a Tyrannical State
Murad Makhmudov, Noriko Watanabe, and Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
Iran’s ailing economy had already ignited mass unrest across cities and neglected rural provinces long before America and Israel bombed the country. Ordinary people, crushed by soaring prices, a collapsing currency and vanishing living standards, increasingly confronted a regime that relies on fear and repression to preserve its grip on power. These protests were therefore not born solely of ideology, but of exhaustion, hunger, humiliation and despair. As expected, the response was devastating: the tyrannical state killed thousands to defend its monopoly on power and silence demands for accountability.
Recent international attention has centred on the confrontation between America and Iran, with Israel initially taking centre stage before its military role shifted alongside Washington’s strategic decisions. Yet one grim continuity remains inside Iran, whether the conflict enters another phase of militarisation or a deceptive period of relative calm: political executions, imprisonment and the systematic persecution of anyone deemed a threat to the central state.
Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on August 5: “I am alarmed by the rise in executions and death sentences issued in Iran since March and that capital punishment continues to be used to instill fear among the population and suppress dissent.”
He continued: “Several executions have reportedly been carried out in public. Some have reportedly been carried out only weeks after arrest… Twelve defendants were reportedly sentenced to death following a single three-hour closed-door hearing.”
UN News reported on August 5: “Since 19 March 2026, at least 56 people have been executed on national security-related charges, including 27 individuals in cases linked to protests at the start of the year, the UN rights chief said, adding that over 100 others are at risk of execution on similar charges.”
Iran International reported that at least 70 people were executed in political and security-related cases between January 7 and October 5. This figure represents documented cases rather than the full scale of executions, with human rights organisations and activists warning that the actual number may be considerably higher because of restricted reporting and cases that remain unverified. Other executions, including those unrelated to political charges, add to the wider death toll.
Sadly, protests in Iran — and the bloodshed that so often follows — have become tragically familiar. The Islamic Republic repeatedly answers public demands with bullets, batons, mass arrests and executions, treating dissent as a threat to be extinguished rather than a legitimate expression of public anguish.
President Masoud Pezeshkian is labelled a “reformist” by the narrow standards of the Islamic Republic. In reality, his authority to reverse the structural decay hollowing out Iran’s economy and political system is severely constrained by the entrenched institutions of power. The collapse of the rial — which reportedly hovered around 1.4 million rials to one US dollar in early 2026 — reflects a much deeper crisis. Iran’s economic devastation is not an accident of fate, but the cumulative consequence of authoritarian rule, endemic corruption, ideological adventurism abroad, sanctions, suffocated freedoms and the systematic prioritisation of regime survival over the welfare of its people.
Before the confrontation involving Israel and subsequently America escalated, Iranians were already taking to the streets, driven by hunger, inflation and the despair of watching their living standards collapse. As in previous uprisings, the regime answered their anguish with bullets, batons, arrests and executions. The early months of 2026 brought further deaths among ordinary people, including protesters whose demands for dignity and economic survival were met with extraordinary brutality. The tragedy is that a government entrusted with protecting its population instead turned its coercive machinery against those it was supposed to serve.
Even amid the present confrontation involving America, tyranny remains the defining reality inside Iran. Executions continue, dissent is crushed and fear remains institutionalised. Yet the international response appears hollow and deeply selective. The European Union and several Gulf powers have projected caution that risks becoming paralysis, while the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation appear largely indifferent to the regime’s domestic brutality when weighed against their strategic interests.
In Iran, therefore, the struggle between power and people continues, and it is overwhelmingly ordinary Iranians who pay the price. The latest conflict has once again exposed the moral contradictions and geopolitical cynicism of international politics. Governments across East and West readily invoke human rights when doing so serves their strategic interests, yet their voices often become considerably quieter when the Islamic Republic executes, imprisons and brutalises its own citizens to preserve an entrenched system of fear and domination. For the victims, geopolitical calculations offer no protection, and diplomatic silence brings no justice.
Pity the brave people of Iran — men and women who seek nothing extraordinary beyond freedom, dignity, economic survival and the simple hope of a better tomorrow. They face a regime that fears its own population, a future repeatedly darkened by repression, and an international community too often preoccupied with its own interests to stand firmly beside them. Their suffering must not become another forgotten chapter in the calculations of powerful governments.
The people of Iran deserve more than expressions of concern after another massacre, another execution or another shattered uprising. They deserve the freedom to live without fear, and the dignity of a future that belongs to them rather than to their oppressors.
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