The Iranian regime is intensifying its war on political prisoners, unleashing a wave of abductions, torture, and executions inside its dungeons. This brutal campaign, carried out under the presidency of Masoud Pezeshkian, is not a demonstration of strength but a calculated strategy born from the regime’s profound fear of a defiant populace and its organized resistance. The escalating terror tactics inside prisons are creating an atmosphere grimly reminiscent of the summer of 1988, signaling to the world that another crime against humanity may be imminent.
A grave warning from within the prison walls
A chilling warning has emerged from the heart of the regime’s prison system. In a recent letter from Ghezel Hesar prison, political prisoner Ali Moezi sounded the alarm, asking the terrifying question on the minds of activists: “Is a crime similar to the summer of ’67 (1988) about to happen?”
Moezi writes that the regime’s actions are driven by its “unlimited fear… of the final battle with the people in the upcoming uprising.“ He details a systematic pattern of repression, including a surge in executions, the abduction and forced disappearance of PMOI-affiliated prisoners like Ali Younesi, Bijan Kazemi, and Arghavan Fallahi, and the sentencing of more than a dozen PMOI supporters to death. He argues that the regime is no longer fighting just the PMOI vanguard but is now facing “the multiplying Resistance Units and the ‘thousand Ashrafs,'” and it fears its foundation will be swept away in the final battle.
The face of repression: the enforced disappearance of Arghavan Fallahi
The case of Arghavan Fallahi, a 24-year-old female political prisoner, provides a harrowing look at the regime’s cruelty. Arrested in Tehran on January 26, 2025, she was held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison’s notorious Ward 241. For six months, she endured relentless interrogations and psychological torture while being denied any contact with her family.
Following this ordeal, authorities transferred her first to Fashafuyeh prison and then to an unknown location, subjecting her to enforced disappearance. Arghavan’s persecution underscores the regime’s generational brutality; her father, Nasrollah Fallahi, was a political prisoner in the 1980s and is currently serving a five-year sentence. The Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran has called for urgent international intervention to ascertain her whereabouts and secure her release.
A broader campaign of state-sanctioned murder
These individual acts of terror are part of a wider, coordinated assault. On July 26, 2025, over 100 armed guards stormed the political prisoners’ ward in Ghezel Hesar prison in a brutal military-style raid. Their mission was clear: murder and intimidation. During the assault, PMOI members Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani were dragged to solitary confinement and executed. In a further act of depravity, the regime is refusing to return their bodies, seeking to prevent public mourning and hide its crimes.
The raid was also used to forcibly exile Saeed Masouri, one of Iran’s longest-serving political prisoners and a symbol of defiance. The regime, terrified of the truth, has since imposed a complete information blackout on the prison. When anxious families gathered at the prison gates on July 27, they were met with a wall of silence. This brutality is a desperate act by a regime terrified of accountability. International silence and inaction will only be interpreted as a green light for more slaughter. The time for the world to act is now, to save lives and support the Iranian people’s quest for freedom.