Iran’s mullah regime is desperately trying to shore up its crumbling authority, as officials fear a new revolution in the Islamic Republic. The Iranian theocracy has been shaken to its core by Israel’s aerial onslaught on the country.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s military has been pounding Iranian nuclear and military sites in unrelenting attacks, and has killed a number of top army commanders, weakening the regime’s grip on power. The Israeli prime minister has urged Iranians to seize the moment and free themselves from the shackles of religious autocracy. He was joined in calls for a new revolution by the eldest son of Iran’s former Shah, Reza Pahlavi.
In an emotional video appeal posted to social media, he urged Iranians not to fear change and to reclaim their country from the religious zealots.
Iran’s clerics are taking the threat to their power very seriously and are reportedly becoming ever more paranoid.
The regime is losing control over the information space due to a near-total internet blackout.
This is preventing the government from getting its narrative about the war out to Iran’s public.
At the same time, the regime has started to arrest people on suspicion of being Israeli spies and agents.
Analysts at the US think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote in their latest bulletin on the war: “The regime has also arrested several individuals whom it claims are ‘Mossad spies’ since the start of the Israeli air campaign on June 12.
“This further illustrates the regime’s growing paranoia about infiltration and heightened concern about internal security threats.”
To facilitate the latest round of political repression, Iran’s parliament has hurriedly passed new legislation allowing authorities to impose harsher penalties on anyone suspected of cooperating with “hostile” foreign governments.
The bill defines “cooperation” broadly, including actions such as sending videos or images to foreign media networks that might “weaken public morale or create division.”
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump remained cryptic over whether he plans to join Israel’s war on Iran.
Asked whether he was planning to attack the Islamic Republic, he told reporters on Wednesday: “I may do it, I may not do it, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
