Today marks the second anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who was mortally wounded in police custody after her detention by Iranian police for allegedly violating the regime’s dress code. Her murder sparked the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement and more than a year of protests that shook regime legitimacy to its core. The regime appears not to have learned its lesson. On August 27, 2024, Mohammad Mir Mousavi died due to torture in police custody in Lahijan, near the Caspian coast.
The culture of policing in modern Iran relies heavily on military units and repression. The Law Enforcement Forces primarily serve the interests of a clerical autocracy. Violations of property and human rights are often arbitrary. Under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, police violence and torture have intensified.
To create a police force willing to employ sustained violence, the Islamic Republic exploits the socio-economic background of security officers and subjects police to ideological indoctrination. Lower-income Iranians receive cash incentives to join the Law Enforcement Forces and participate in pro-regime activities.
While the Law Enforcement Forces operate under the supreme leader’s authority, in practice he delegates responsibility to the minister of Interior, except for significant personnel moves or major policies. Throughout his tenure, Khamenei has appointed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals to head the police and paramilitary Basijis throughout the ranks to ensure their commitment to repress the citizenry on command. Currently, 70 percent of police officers come from the Basij. In January 2023, Khamenei appointed Ahmad Reza Radan, a 42-year veteran of the Revolutionary Guards, to head the Law Enforcement Forces. Previously, as deputy commander, he supervised beatings, torture, and carried out hundreds of arbitrary arrests to suppress the 2009 Green Movement, leading the United States to sanction him.
Within the national police organization, the Ideological Political Organization (sazman-e aghidati va siyasi) coordinates police indoctrination to create the understanding that policing, including violence, contributes directly to the survival of the Iranian regime. It describes clerical power as both the continuation of leadership of the Hidden Imam and a bulwark against Western cultural and military imperialism. Imbuing a cult of personality around Khamenei takes a central role as the Ideological Political Organization teaches officers to follow the leader’s orders without question. Many officers are already primed to accept such diktats due to ideological indoctrination that begins in kindergarten. Khamenei does not trust, but he does verify. The Ideological Political Organization constantly screens officers, and a massive counterintelligence organization surveils police and expels any doubters.
Police carry out violence with the understanding that they are immune to any accountability; they believe they will face neither internal discipline nor public scrutiny. The rule of law, the essential characteristic of democracy and good governance, is absent. Human rights abuses are not unintentional, but rather occur by design. The regime quashes any victim’s appeal to the media with censorship and internet cuts.
Western diplomats may hope that “reformist” President Masoud Pezeshkian can reverse Iran’s legacy of police violence. This is naïve. He has little control over the security forces, nor does he appear to have any desire to reform the system that shaped him. Rather, it seems that human rights abuses inside Iran now accelerate as the regime realizes they no longer can win the hearts and minds of the population on their own merits.
