Iranian regime launches execution spree over growing fears of another uprising: ‘Existential threat’
Iran has unleashed several new executions — with many more expected to come — over fears of another citizen-led uprising as the embattled regime fights for survival in its war against the US and Israel.
At least four members from the anti-regime organization, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, were executed in the last 48 hours, according to The National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Mohammad Mohaddessin, NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee chair, said the four executions were a message from the theocratic, and highly repressive, regime in an effort to “intimidate” and “exert control,” the Daily Mail reported.
“The execution of four PMOI members, amid an external war is a clear admission by the regime that it views the Iranian people and the organized Resistance as its principal enemy and an existential threat,” Mohaddessin said in a briefing Wednesday.
“Why were they executed now? Because the regime leadership is extremely concerned about the domestic situation and the possibility of another uprising,” he added.
Some of the 2,000 members of the PMOI’s Resistance Unit who were detained as part of a January uprising are also expected to be executed this week, the NCRI confirmed.
“Beyond the four already executed, the death sentences of 15 others have been confirmed by the Supreme Court and await implementation,” the NCRi chair stressed.
“Many other political prisoners are likely to receive death sentences as well.”
The warning of the imminent massacre of activists follows the slaughter of tens of thousands anti-regime protesters who took to the streets of Tehran in January over the country’s faltering economy — a movement that quickly swelled into calls for regime change.
A deadly crackdown on demonstrators ensued at the hands of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei before he was wiped out — along with dozens of his top military commanders — in a devastating Israeli airstrike on Feb. 28, which launched the Iran war.
The NCRI — a democratic coalition aiming to overthrow the clerical regime which has held power since the 1979 Iranian Revolution — warned the executions could bring a broader suppression across the nation, drawing comparisons to the 1988 Iranian massacre, where 30,000 political prisoners were killed.
“This war will eventually come to an end. After the war, society will become far more explosive, leading to even stronger uprising and the regime will appear significantly more vulnerable,” Mohaddessin said.
“The combination of people uprising and organized resistance movement is the only way to overthrow the regime. By these executions [the] regime is trying to create an atmosphere of fear to prevent the youth to join PMOI and prevent its own overthrow.”
Mohaddessin urgently called upon foreign leaders and the United Nations to take immediate action to stop any further executions, stressing that international communities “must uphold its obligation.”
“The UN, US and all defenders of human rights must condemn the executions of PMOI members,” he said.
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