Iran marks 1979 anniversary under deepening legitimacy strain

The Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations released the list in a public statement, calling it both a record of loss and a demand for accountability.

The council emphasized that documenting the names is not only a way to honor the victims but also to assert fundamental rights – life, education, and a future – that it says were systematically taken from these children.

The group said that the publication is a direct response to efforts to obscure the circumstances surrounding the deaths.

Little is known about the students’ lives, as many families have been pressured into silence, with some avoiding mentioning the cause of death in funeral notices for fear of retaliation.

Activists report that threats have included warnings regarding the safety of surviving children.

The teachers’ council addressed these pressures directly, writing: “They banned the names, forced burials in silence and denied the truth. Erasure, denial and distortion were a continuation of the same policy that had already taken their lives.”

Mohammad Habibi, spokesperson for the council, stressed the scale of the loss in a post on X: “We are no longer talking about ‘desks’ and ‘classrooms’; by reaching the number 200, they have effectively massacred an entire school.”

On social media, users have circulated photos and accounts of the teenagers under hashtags such as “empty desks,” sharing stories that are largely absent from official media coverage.

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Fifteen-year-old Ghazal Janghorban, an only child and a computer studies student, was killed in Isfahan on January 9 while protesting with her parents.

She was struck by three bullets – one to the chest, one to the abdomen, and one to the leg – and died in the same hospital where she was born. Her mother has shared videos of her singing and images of her empty room on Instagram, paying tribute to her daughter and writing that her cat still waits for her return.

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Sina Ashkbousi, also an only child, was shot dead in eastern Tehran on January 8.

Just days earlier, friends had celebrated his seventeenth birthday at a café with a Harry Potter theme, reflecting his love for the series.

His father later wrote online that he was proud of a son who had grown up quickly and whose life had ended too soon.

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Amir-Mohammad Safari, 15, was killed in Tehran on January 8 by two live rounds to the heart.

His family searched for six days before identifying his body in a hospital. Like several others on the list, he balanced school with work, taking on manual labor and street vending to help support his family.

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Also among those named is 14-year-old Sam Sohbatzadeh, who had worked since age 10 to help support his household.

He left school in the fall to work full time and was killed by a direct gunshot wound to the head on January 8 in southern Tehran.

According to the Kurdpa news agency, his family secretly transported his body overnight to their hometown, where he was buried two days later in a village cemetery in Ardabil province.

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Some families continue to grieve quietly. Fifteen-year-old Abolfazl Norouzi, killed by gunfire in Mashhad, had left school to work in a mechanic’s shop and support his family.

Relatives say security authorities pressured the family to label him a member of the IRGC’s Basij volunteer paramilitary forces, a request they refused. They also report being denied permission to hold a formal mosque ceremony and say mourning banners were removed from their home.

Abolfazl had planned to resume his studies in evening classes and dreamed of buying a motorcycle with his earnings. Friends and relatives describe him as kind, responsible, and eager to help, a teenager whose plans for the future were cut short.

The transfers involved at least six Iranian diplomats who carried suitcases filled with US dollars on commercial flights to Lebanon, according to the information.

The cash deliveries formed part of efforts to help Hezbollah rebuild its finances and operational capacity after sustaining significant blows to its leadership, weapons stockpiles and funding networks.

Those involved include Mohammad Ebrahim Taherianfard, a former ambassador to Turkey and senior Foreign Ministry official; Mohammad Reza Shirkhodaei, a veteran diplomat and former consul general in Pakistan; his brother Hamidreza Shirkhodaei; Reza Nedaei; Abbas Asgari; and Amir-Hamzeh Shiranirad, a former Iranian embassy employee in Canada.

Taherianfard traveled to Beirut in January alongside Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. He carried a suitcase filled with dollars, relying on diplomatic immunity to avoid airport inspection.

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Similar methods were used on other trips, with diplomats transporting cash directly through Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport.

Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, also traveled to Beirut in October and carried hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, according to the information.

After Israeli strikes disrupted weapons and cash-smuggling routes used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Syria, Beirut airport emerged as a primary channel for direct cash deliveries.

Hezbollah’s longstanding influence over security structures at the airport has in the past facilitated such transfers, though Lebanese authorities have recently increased control.

The cash shipments come as Hezbollah faces acute financial strain. The group has struggled to pay fighters and to finance reconstruction in parts of southern Lebanon heavily damaged in fighting. Rebuilding costs have been estimated in the billions of dollars.

In January 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel had accused Iran of funneling tens of millions of dollars in cash to Hezbollah through Beirut airport, with Iranian diplomats and other couriers allegedly carrying suitcases stuffed with US dollars to help the group recover after major losses.

Israel filed complaints with the US-led cease-fire oversight committee, while Iran, Turkey and Hezbollah denied wrongdoing. The report said tighter scrutiny at Beirut airport and the disruption of routes through Syria had made such cash shipments a more prominent channel for funding.

On Tuesday, the US Treasury announced new sanctions targeting what it described as key mechanisms Hezbollah uses to sustain its finances, including coordination with Iran and exploitation of Lebanon’s informal cash economy.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Lebanese gold exchange company Jood SARL, which operates under the supervision of US-designated Al-Qard Al-Hassan, a Hezbollah-linked financial institution. Treasury said Jood converts Hezbollah’s gold reserves into usable funds and helps the group mitigate liquidity pressures.

OFAC also sanctioned an international procurement and commodities shipping network involving Hezbollah financiers operating from multiple jurisdictions, including Iran.

“Hezbollah is a threat to peace and stability in the Middle East,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement, adding that the United States would continue working to cut the group off from the global financial system.

Iran has long considered Hezbollah a central pillar of its regional alliance network and has provided the group with financial, military and logistical support for decades.

The detentions, which have targeted senior members of the Reform Front of Iran and figures associated with President Masoud Pezeshkian, come as the Islamic Republic remains shaken by the deadliest crackdown in its history.

The protests, which gained momentum after a call by exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi, were crushed by the Islamic Republic’s live fire, leading to the massacre of at least 36,500 people.

The arrests also come at a time when Tehran’s theocracy is deeply uncertain about the trajectory of diplomacy with Washington.

Officials have framed the arrests as a response to “coordination with enemy propaganda” and efforts to undermine national cohesion—language that signals heightened sensitivity to any challenge to the state’s narrative at a time of external pressure.

With talks with the United States back on track, Iran’s leadership appears intent on closing ranks at home, moving to eliminate deviations from the official line, particularly among figures who until recently were tolerated as part of a tightly managed political spectrum.

Public statements by judicial and security bodies have offered little ambiguity. Those detained have been accused of promoting “surrenderism” toward the United States and acting in the interests of Israel.

The hardline daily Kayhan, whose editor is appointed by the supreme leader, described those arrested as extremists who had aligned themselves with “overthrowists,” effectively placing even moderate critics beyond the pale.

The detainees

Those detained include senior figures from the Reform Front and its largest constituent party, the Union of Islamic Iran People Party. Among them are Azar Mansouri, head of the Reform Front; Javad Emam, its spokesman; former diplomat Mohsen Aminzadeh; and the veteran politician Ebrahim , the leader of radical students who stormed the US embassy in 1980.

One case appears to reflect a clearer red line.

An audio recording that circulated online captured remarks by Ali Shakouri-Rad, a senior party figure, who rejected the official account of the recent protests and accused security forces of manufacturing violence.

“Security institutions in Iran, in every protest, have injected violence to use it as a pretext for repression,” he said. “It has been like this from the beginning, and it has gotten worse day by day.”

Yet for much of Iranian society—still grieving the mass killing of protesters in January—this confrontation within the political elite has the feel of an argument unfolding in a parallel universe.

The protests, which began over economic hardship and rapidly escalated into nationwide calls for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, were met with overwhelming force. Tens of thousands were killed in a matter of days, according to internal assessments reviewed by Iran International.

In the aftermath, Pezeshkian and the moderate camp from which he emerged broadly aligned themselves with the state’s narrative, avoiding public confrontation with the security establishment.

That alignment proved decisive. For many Iranians, Pezeshkian’s election in 2024 represented a final, tentative wager on incremental change from within the system. His conduct during and after the crackdown extinguished that hope.

Against that backdrop, the latest arrests appear less a dramatic rupture than a belated narrowing of a political space that had already collapsed in the public mind.

The exception lies with a small group of activists who crossed a line the system still treats as inviolable. Several of those detained were linked to a January 2 statement signed by 17 political and civil figures declaring the Islamic Republic illegitimate and calling for a peaceful transition of power.

Unlike most reformist figures, the signatories explicitly rejected the framework of the existing order, underscoring where the authorities continue to draw their true red lines.

Figures associated with the 2009 Green Movement have also been swept up, including advisers and relatives of its leaders, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Mousavi, under house arrest for more than a decade, recently described the killing of protesters as a “black page in Iran’s history” and called on leaders to step aside.

As negotiations with the United States resume amid warnings of war, the leadership is signaling that internal discipline will take precedence over political pluralism — even of the carefully managed kind once associated with reformism.

For most Iranians outside the corridors of power, however, the arrests change little. Few still see themselves reflected in the state’s internal disputes.

In an op-ed published this week in one of Iran’s leading economic newspapers, Donya-ye Eghtesad, the economist Massoud Nili described the country’s current predicament as a failure of governance that left mounting problems and public grievances unaddressed.

“The current situation marks one of the saddest and most critical junctures in Iran’s history,” Nili wrote, “a moment in which thousands of Iranians — mainly young people — lost their lives in less than 48 hours.”

He argued that “a combination of poverty, unemployment, inequality, inflation, psychological insecurity under the looming shadow of war, and cultural conflict placed young Iranians at the center of the crisis.”

The unrest began in Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar in late 2025, initially driven by slogans reflecting economic hardship. Over the following week, they broadened into nationwide demonstrations calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

Protests peaked on January 8 and 9, following a call for coordinated actions by exiled prince Reza Pahlavi.

As many as 36,500 people were killed during the crackdown on those two days, according to an internal assessment leaked to and reviewed by Iran International.

Among the clearest warning signs, Nili noted, was the existence of nearly 12 million young Iranians who are neither employed nor enrolled in education.

Iran’s labor market, he wrote, has been effectively stagnant since 2009. While the working-age population increased by 4.4 million, the economy created only about 200,000 jobs, even as roughly 700,000 people lost employment.

Official figures suggest that net job creation has approached zero in recent years.

Other economists have echoed Nili’s assessment in the weeks since the protests and their violent suppression.

Speaking at Tejarat Farda’s economic forum in late January, Mohammad Mehdi Behkish described the protests as the product of “forty years of flawed governance and policymaking,” arguing that rigid political and economic structures had pushed society toward a breaking point.

Another prominent economist, Mousa Ghaninejad, pointed to the scale of the deterioration. In 2011, he said, fewer than 20 percent of Iranians lived below the poverty line. Today, that figure has risen to roughly 40 percent.

Declining oil revenues have further constrained the state’s ability to provide social support, while access to adequate nutrition and medical care has sharply declined.

Official data show inflation has exceeded 40 percent for at least two years, eroding purchasing power even among government employees and military personnel.

High inflation has enriched groups with preferential access to state-linked resources, widening inequality and deepening social resentment.

Nili concluded that a convergence of poverty, unemployment, inequality, psychological insecurity under the shadow of war, and cultural conflict had placed young Iranians at the center of the crisis.

Writing from inside Iran, Nili confined his analysis to economic and social indicators and avoided the political roots of the crisis—the deepening rupture between the state and a society that has come to resent the worldview and governing vision of its rulers.

He did mention “realities”, however, that if ignored, would steer the country toward “an extremely dangerous future.”

Originally scheduled for February 18, the visit was brought forward by a week following fresh indirect talks in Oman that both sides have indicated could resume in the coming days.

Netanyahu is expected to press President Donald Trump to impose firm constraints on Iran’s ballistic-missile program and its support for armed groups in the region. But the urgency of the meeting appears to reflect more than immediate tactical concerns, pointing to a blunter effort by Israel to shape US policy rather than simply align with it.

Trump has repeatedly signaled his preference for a "deal with Iran." But Netanyahu remains wary that negotiations might focus narrowly on the nuclear file and leave unaddressed what he sees as Tehran broader threat ecosystem.

That gap was evident during the previous round of US–Iran talks in the spring of 2025.

While Trump conveyed optimism about diplomatic openings and outlined prospective nuclear proposals, reporting suggested Netanyahu remained unconvinced, ultimately awaiting the expiration of Washington’s 60-day deadline before launching strikes that became the 12-Day War.

Even after US bombers joined strikes on Iran’s Natanz and Fordow nuclear sites, Washington reportedly urged Israel to scale back operations as Israeli forces moved closer to senior figures following the killing of top Revolutionary Guards commanders.

Israeli and Western officials say Iran has since moved to restore damaged ballistic-missile infrastructure, in some cases prioritising missile sites over nuclear facilities. Iranian officials have also publicly pointed to renewed—even enhanced—missile capabilities, reinforcing Israeli concerns about Tehran’s readiness to deploy them in a future confrontation.

It is against that backdrop that Israel has watched recent diplomatic signals from Tehran and Washington with growing unease.

Iran has reintroduced senior figures into the diplomatic arena, including Ali Larijani, a longtime adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has held consultations alongside the Muscat talks. His reappearance has been read in Israel as a sign that Tehran is seeking to project flexibility while resisting constraints on missiles and regional networks.

Those moves have coincided with messaging from within Trump’s political orbit emphasizing diplomatic opportunity.

Remarks by J.D. Vance, cautioning against escalation and underscoring the potential for a negotiated outcome, have been noted closely in Jerusalem, where officials have long worried that talks could narrow toward the nuclear file alone.

Taken together, these developments appear to have heightened Israeli concern that its core security priorities could be sidelined as diplomatic momentum builds—helping explain Netanyahu’s decision to advance his Washington visit rather than wait.

Netanyahu’s publicly stated red lines, particularly Iran’s arsenal of more than 1,800 ballistic missiles, align not only with Israeli threat assessments but with those of key Arab states.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have borne the costs of Iran’s regional tactics firsthand. Iran-supplied Houthi drones and missiles struck Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq processing facility in 2019 and later targeted infrastructure near Jeddah in 2022.

Israel’s September 2025 strike on Hamas leaders in Doha strained but did not sever quiet channels with Qatar.

Despite public friction, Persian Gulf states involved in the Abraham Accords and Qatar continued to participate in US-led security discussions in which Israeli intelligence on Iran was reportedly shared, underscoring the resilience of regional threat coordination.

At the same time, Iran’s Arab neighbors have actively sought to contain escalation and, in some cases, helped create the conditions for diplomacy.

While they share Israel’s assessment of the missile and proxy threat, they have often favored de-escalation and engagement as a means of managing it—highlighting a divergence not over the nature of the threat, but over how best to reduce it.

Netanyahu’s visit to Washington reflects an effort to push back against that regional pull toward accommodation, pressing for a harder line on Tehran that addresses Israel’s security concerns. He appears to view Iran’s nuclear latency, missile expansion and regional outreach as a single, interlocking challenge.

Israel’s objective, therefore, is not episodic deterrence but the steady erosion of the capabilities that allow Tehran to sustain an existential threat posture—a logic shaping Netanyahu’s diplomacy in Washington as much as Israel’s readiness to act alone.