Experts warn against northern style repression in Iran after the conflict of Israel

In the wake of the 12 -day war between Israel and Iran, the regime seems to turn inward – an increase in repression with frightening speed.

According to Kasra Aarabi, director of IRGC research in United against nuclear Iran, the Islamic Republic accelerates towards what it said is a “model of north -style isolation and control”.

“We are witnessing a kind of domestic isolation which will have major consequences for the Iranian people,” Aarabi told Fox News Digital. “The regime has always been totalitarian, but the level of suppression is now unprecedented. It is different from everything we have seen before.”

The North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, oversees artillery shooting exercises in North Korea on Thursday, March 7, 2024. (Korean Central News Agency / Korea News Service via AP, file)

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A source inside Iran confirmed to Fox News Digital that “repression has become terrifying”.

Aarabi, who maintains direct contact lines in Iran, described a country besieged by its own leaders. In Tehran, he described how citizens are arrested at random, their phones confiscated and searched. “If you have content considered to be pro-Israeli or by making fun of the regime, you disappear,” he said. “People are now leaving their phones at home or deleting everything before going out.”

This new wave of paranoia and fear, he explained, reflects the tactics observed in North Korea-where citizens disappear without explanation and the information is closely controlled. During the recent conflict, Iran’s leaders imposed an used breakdown on the Internet to isolate the population, block Israeli evacuation alerts and push the propaganda that supervised Israel as targeting civilians without discernment.

“It was a perverse goal,” said Aarabi, adding: “They deliberately reduced communications to instill fear and manipulate the public’s perception. For four days, not a single message.

The supreme chief, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the salvation of the army, the Air Force and the air defense at the start of their meeting in Tehran, Iran, on February 8, 2018. (Office of the Official website of the supreme Iranian chief via AP)

The goal of the regime, he said, was twofold: to ward off people from the street and erode the surprising link that had been formed between the Iranians and the Israelis. “At the start of the war, many Iranians praised strikes,” noted Aarabi. “They knew that Israel was targeting the IRGC – the very forces responsible for the suppression and death of their own people. But once the Internet has been cut and fear has set up, some began to wonder what was going on.”

Dr. Afshon Ostovar, an Iranian scholar and author of “Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards”, said domestic repression remains the most reliable survival strategy of the regime.

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“Suppressing people at home is easy. It is something they can do. It is therefore not improbable that Iran can become more island, more autocratic, more repressive – and more similar to, let’s say, a North Korea – than what it is today. It is perhaps the way they see to preserve the regime: by really tightening the screws on the Iranian people, to ensure that the Iranian population In force, to ensure that the Iranian population does not try to withdraw and head for the regime, to ensure that the Iranian population does not try to withdraw and get rid of regimes, to ensure “digital

CCTV cameras are seen in a street in Tehran, Iran, April 9, 2023. (Majid Asgaripour / Wana (Press Asia of Western Asia) via Reuters)

Within the power structure of the regime, the fallout of the war are just as serious. Aarabi said that the body of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) faced an internal confidence crisis and an imminent purge. “These operations could not have taken place without infiltration at the highest level,” he said. “There is now a huge pressure to clean the house.”

The next generation of IRGC officers – those who joined after 2000 – are younger, more radical and deeply indoctrinated. More than half of their training is now ideological. Aarabi said these new factions started shooting senior commanders, the accusation of being too soft on Israel or even collaborating with Mossad.

“In a touch of irony, Khamenei has created these extreme ideological ranks to consolidate power – and now they are more radical than him,” said Aarabi. “He finds it difficult to control them.”

A police motorcycle burns during a demonstration against the death of Mahsa Amini, a deceased woman after being arrested by the “morality police” of the Islamic Republic, in Tehran, Iran, on September 19, 2022. (Wana (press agency in Western Asia) via Reuters)

A purge is likely, as well as the rise of younger and less experienced commanders with a much higher risk tolerance – a change that could make the IRGC more volatile both at the national and international level. With Iran’s conventional military doctrine in ruins, terrorism can become its main lever of influence.

“The three pillars of the regime – militias, ballistic missiles and its nuclear program – have all been beheaded or seriously degraded,” said Aarabi. “This leaves only asymmetrical war: terrorism with flexible target with plausible denial.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, on the left, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (AFP via Getty Images)

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Despite the brutal turn of the diet inward, Aarabi insists that it is a sign of weakness, no strength. “If the Islamic Republic was confident, he would not need to crush his people in this way,” he said. “It acts out of fear. But until the diet’s suppressive device is dismantled, the streets will remain silent – and that the regime change remains unlikely.”