Iran Today

The Same Playbook Since 1988

by Iran Prism 12 min read

The Commissioner

In the summer of 1988, a twenty-seven-year-old deputy prosecutor named Ebrahim Raisi sat on a committee in Tehran’s Evin Prison. The committee’s job was simple: ask political prisoners a series of questions. If the answers were wrong, send them down the corridor to be hanged.1

The prisoners called these committees “Death Commissions.” Khomeini’s fatwa had ordered the execution of anyone who remained loyal to opposition groups. The commissions visited prisons across at least 32 cities. The questioning was brief. The executions were not recorded. The bodies were buried at night in mass graves at Khavaran cemetery and Behesht Zahra.2

Families who came looking for answers received a bag of belongings and an instruction: “Here is your son’s bag; we have executed him. Now take his stuff and get out. You are not allowed to talk about this anywhere or attempt to locate his grave.”3

Some families were charged a bullet fee.

Raisi went on to become president of the Islamic Republic in 2021. He held the office until his death in a helicopter crash in 2024. The system he helped build in 1988 was still operating, at greater scale and with greater sophistication, when he died.

The Template (1988)

The 1988 prison massacres established the five elements that would reappear in every subsequent crackdown.

Kill at scale. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch estimate 2,800 to 5,000 prisoners were executed. Opposition groups claim up to 30,000. The exact number remains unknown because the regime never acknowledged the killings occurred.4

Withhold bodies. Mass graves at Khavaran and Section 41 of Behesht Zahra. No death certificates. No notifications. Families discovered what had happened only when they came to visit and found empty cells.

Coerce families. Bullet fees charged. Silence demanded. Mourning criminalized.

Control the narrative. Total denial — not a modified story, but the absence of any story. For thirty-seven years, the government has never officially acknowledged the massacres.5

Destroy evidence. In 2009, authorities bulldozed Khavaran cemetery and planted trees over the graves. In August 2025, heavy machinery demolished Section 41 of Behesht Zahra under Ministry of Intelligence supervision — destroying burial sites from the 1980s, decades after the original killings.6

The template was crude. There was no internet to black out, no social media to manipulate, no forced confession production line. The regime simply killed, buried, denied, and threatened. But the five elements — kill, withhold, coerce, narrate, destroy — were all present. Everything that followed was refinement.

The Blackout Innovation (2019)

On November 15, 2019, fuel prices tripled overnight. Protests erupted across Iran. Within hours, Khamenei issued his order: “The Islamic Republic is in danger. Do whatever it takes to end it.”7

The crackdown killed approximately 1,500 people in five days. But the 2019 operation added two capabilities the template lacked.

The internet blackout. Within twenty-four hours of Khamenei’s order, a near-total shutdown cut 92 million citizens off from the outside world. This was the first time the regime demonstrated it could operate a nationwide information blackout — creating a window in which it could kill at scale without real-time documentation reaching international audiences.8

Pre-scripted blame attribution. A document from the Supreme National Security Council, later obtained by the hacking group Edalat-e Ali and provided to VOA Persian, directed state media and the judiciary to “prohibit any information regarding the number of fatalities” and to pursue legal actions against “rioters” accused of killing protesters. The document proved that the “foreign agents killed protesters” narrative was manufactured as an institutional directive — not a conclusion drawn from evidence after the fact.9

The regime’s official death toll was approximately 230. Reuters, citing three interior ministry officials, reported approximately 1,500. Iran’s own civil registration data later showed a 5,000 excess death surge during the protest month — a figure that suggests even the Reuters number may be conservative.10

Former SNSC Secretary Ali Shamkhani, when told that “security forces are killing the people in the street,” replied: “We followed orders.” Former MP Mahmoud Sadeghi publicly confirmed the statement.11

The Denial Reflex (2020)

On January 8, 2020, IRGC missiles destroyed Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 shortly after takeoff from Tehran, killing all 176 aboard.

The regime denied responsibility for three days.

Officials called the evidence “a great lie” and “psychological warfare.” State media attributed the crash to mechanical failure. Bulldozers cleared the crash site within hours. A retired Toronto homicide detective later found that passengers’ electronic devices showed deliberate tampering — “screws were removed and covers pried open,” memory components extracted.12

The admission came only when video verified by the New York Times and Bellingcat — showing the moment of missile impact — made continued denial impossible. Even then, a prosecutor’s representative told families: “We did it, and it was the right thing to do.”13

PS752 added a specific lesson to the playbook: the denial reflex is automatic — deploy it first, assess later. Bulldoze the evidence immediately. Maintain the lie until irrefutable proof forces a retreat. Then reframe the admission as justified.

Canada, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and Sweden referred the case to the International Court of Justice in July 2023.14

The Production Line (2022)

The September 2022 death of Mahsa Jina Amini in morality police custody triggered the largest protest movement since 1979. The Woman Life Freedom uprising lasted months. At least 551 protesters were killed.15

The 2022 crackdown systematized what had been applied case by case.

Body ransoming scaled to at least seventeen cities. Families across the country received the same offer — pay or declare. The consistency across geographically distant cities indicated centralized policy, not local improvisation.16

Forced confessions industrialized. IRIB broadcast confessions at an accelerating rate, each following the same production format: the detainee, the camera, the scripted admission of foreign funding, the cut.

The grave destruction expanded. Graves of killed protesters were destroyed in at least seventeen cities — a direct descendant of the 2009 Khavaran bulldozing, applied at nationwide scale.17

On September 21, 2022, Amnesty International obtained a leaked order from the General Headquarters of the Armed Forces directing commanders in all provinces to “severely confront troublemakers and anti-revolutionaries.” That evening, 34 of 52 documented deaths occurred — a direct causal link between the written order and the killing.18

The case of sixteen-year-old Nika Shakarami illustrates the full pipeline in miniature. She disappeared during Tehran protests. Her death certificate stated “repeated blunt force trauma to the head.” The regime produced contradictory cover narratives — suicide, a fall, an accident. Her uncle was forced to appear on state television making false statements. Social media users noticed a shadow on the wall showing someone whispering instructions to him during the broadcast. In 2024, a BBC Eye investigation obtained a leaked IRGC document: Shakarami had been beaten to death by three officers in a van and dumped under a highway overpass on IRGC headquarters’ orders.19

Kill. Fabricate the cause. Coerce the family. Broadcast the lie. Suppress the truth.

Full Integration (2026)

By January 2026, the regime had assembled every capability developed across the previous four cycles — and added new ones.

Foreign proxy militias. Approximately 8,000 foreign fighters — roughly 5,000 Iraqi militia, 2,000 Afghan Fatemiyoun, and smaller Pakistani and Lebanese contingents — deployed against Iranian civilians, solving the problem every authoritarian faces: what happens when your own soldiers hesitate to fire on their own people.20

Military-grade electronic warfare. Starlink jamming using Russian and Chinese hardware achieved 80% packet loss in Tehran. GPS spoofing. Door-to-door confiscation of satellite dishes and Starlink terminals. Criminalization of Starlink possession — penalties ranging from six months’ imprisonment to execution.21

Coordinated hospital raids. AP documented security forces swarming hospitals across multiple cities simultaneously on January 8 — monitoring care, blocking resuscitation, seizing wounded, removing bodies. A regime official publicly confirmed the coup de grâce. The coordination across geographically distant cities on the same day indicates centralized pre-authorization, not spontaneous local decisions.22

Forced confession acceleration. Ninety-seven confessions broadcast in the first two weeks — compared to roughly 350 total from 2010 to 2020. The production line had achieved an order-of-magnitude increase in throughput.23

AI-generated counter-narrative. Khamenei’s representative in Razavi Khorasan, Ayatollah Alamolhoda, claimed that all protest footage was fabricated using artificial intelligence. The regime simultaneously produced AI-generated images of pro-regime rallies — a contradiction that Carnegie Endowment described as taking AI disinformation to “an industrial level.”24

Coordinated international amplification. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue documented trilateral information operations during December 28 through January 17: approximately 800 English-language posts from Iranian-linked accounts, 200 from Russian-linked accounts, and 300 from Chinese-linked accounts.25

The Pattern Across Borders

The refinement pattern is not unique to Iran. Every authoritarian regime that kills at scale develops similar capabilities — and some have provided direct technical assistance.

Assad’s Syria. Denied chemical weapons attacks at Ghouta (2013, approximately 1,400 killed), Khan Shaykhun (2017, 89 killed), and Douma (2018, 43 killed) despite conclusive OPCW findings. A military photographer codenamed “Caesar” smuggled out 53,275 images documenting systematic torture deaths across five intelligence agency branches. Assad told the BBC: “You can forge anything these days. We are living in a fake-news era.” Iran’s Foreign Minister provided diplomatic cover, arguing that because the Syrian army had the upper hand, “it is not logical for them to use chemical weapons.”26

Russia’s Bucha. Three hundred civilian bodies, many with hands bound, shot execution-style. Russia deployed multiple contradictory narratives simultaneously — Ukraine staged it, Washington staged it, the bodies were actors, the bodies were pro-Russian collaborators killed by Ukrainian “Nazis.” Maxar satellite imagery proved bodies had been on Yablonska Street since March 9-11, during Russian occupation. EU monitoring noted the narratives were “often contradictory, with an almost slapdash feel” — the goal was confusion, not coherence.27

Saudi Arabia and Khashoggi. Five distinct narrative phases over twenty-three days: complete denial, “rogue killers,” “fistfight gone wrong” with fifteen men, “rogue operation,” “full responsibility” without accountability. An operative dressed in Khashoggi’s clothes walked around Istanbul to simulate departure. The body was never recovered.28

The shared architecture across all these cases: communication blackouts to prevent real-time documentation. Destruction of physical evidence. State media filling information vacuums with fabricated narratives. Discrediting evidence-gatherers. Diplomatic obstruction of accountability. The specific implementations vary. The five elements are constant.

What the Escalation Means

The progression from 1988 to 2026 tracks the expansion of available technology — and the regime’s willingness to use it.

Capability19882019202020222026
Kill at scaleYesYesN/AYesYes
Withhold bodiesYesYesYesYesYes
Bullet feesYesYes—YesYes
Forced confessionsNoLimited—ScaledIndustrial
Internet blackoutNoYes—PartialTotal + jamming
Pre-scripted blameNoYesYesYesYes
Foreign proxy forcesNoNoNoNoYes
Electronic warfareNoNoNoNoYes
AI counter-narrativeNoNoNoNoYes
Grave destructionLater (2009)——YesYes

Each row represents a capability added or scaled. The trajectory is toward comprehensive control — of the killing, the evidence, the narrative, and the international information environment.

The next time someone describes events inside Iran as “murky” or “hard to verify,” consider that the murkiness is the product — manufactured by the same system that manufactured the killing. The information blackout, the sealed hospitals, the families silenced under threat — these are not unfortunate circumstances. They are capabilities, added deliberately to each iteration.

This is what distinguishes a “fog of war” from a manufacturing operation. Fog dissipates. This system improves with each use. The 2026 crackdown did not stumble into information control and body ransoming. It inherited thirty-eight years of institutional learning.29

This article is part of The Grief Factory. For the five-stage anatomy, see Kill, Withhold, Coerce, Broadcast. For the forensic test applied to Minab, see The Minab Test.

Footnotes

  1. Ebrahim Raisi served on the Tehran Death Commission at Evin Prison during the 1988 massacres at age 27. He later became president (2021-2024). ↩

  2. Death commissions operated across 32+ cities. Khomeini’s fatwa ordered execution of political prisoners loyal to opposition groups. Source: Amnesty International “Blood-Soaked Secrets” (2018). ↩

  3. Quote from regime officials to families documented in multiple survivor testimonies. Source: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch. ↩

  4. Estimated 2,800-5,000 killed (Amnesty/HRW range). Opposition claims up to 30,000. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s own memoirs reference 2,800-3,800 in the first fortnight alone. Geoffrey Robertson QC concluded crimes against humanity after nine-month investigation. ↩

  5. The Islamic Republic has never officially acknowledged the 1988 prison massacres. Thirty-seven years of unbroken denial. ↩

  6. Khavaran bulldozed in 2009. Section 41 of Behesht Zahra demolished in August 2025 under Ministry of Intelligence supervision. Source: Iran Human Rights documentation. ↩

  7. Khamenei’s order reported by Reuters, December 23, 2019, citing three sources close to the inner circle. ↩

  8. Near-total internet shutdown affecting 92 million citizens. Source: NetBlocks, Cloudflare. ↩

  9. SNSC document obtained by Edalat-e Ali, provided to VOA Persian. Directed suppression of fatality information and pursuit of “rioters.” ↩

  10. Regime claimed ~230 killed. Reuters: ~1,500 (citing three interior ministry officials). Civil registration excess deaths: 5,000 surge during protest month. ↩

  11. Ali Shamkhani: “We followed orders.” Confirmed publicly by former MP Mahmoud Sadeghi. ↩

  12. PS752: 176 killed. Three days of denial. Crash site bulldozed. Device tampering found by retired Toronto homicide detective. ↩

  13. NYT and Bellingcat missile impact video verification. Prosecutor’s representative to families: “We did it, and it was the right thing to do.” ↩

  14. ICJ referral by Canada, Ukraine, UK, and Sweden, July 2023. ↩

  15. Mahsa Jina Amini died September 16, 2022. Woman Life Freedom uprising: 551+ killed. Source: Iran Human Rights. ↩

  16. Body ransoming across 17+ cities documented by Amnesty International and Iran Human Rights. Geographic consistency indicates centralized policy. ↩

  17. Grave destruction in 17+ cities. Source: Amnesty International, Iran Human Rights. ↩

  18. Amnesty International obtained leaked Armed Forces order, September 21, 2022. 34 of 52 deaths occurred that evening. ↩

  19. Nika Shakarami, age 16. Death certificate: blunt force trauma. BBC Eye (2024) leaked IRGC document: beaten to death by three officers in a van, dumped on IRGC HQ orders. Uncle’s forced TV appearance with visible shadow of instructor. ↩

  20. Foreign proxy deployment: ~5,000 Iraqi militia confirmed by CNN January 15, plus ~2,000 Afghan Fatemiyoun and ~500-1,000 Pakistani Zainabiyoun. Total ~8,000. ↩

  21. Starlink jamming: 80% packet loss in Tehran using Russian and Chinese hardware. GPS spoofing. Criminalization of Starlink possession (6 months to execution). Source: NetBlocks, Iran Human Rights. ↩

  22. AP investigation (February 27, 2026): coordinated hospital raids across multiple cities. Javad Tajik (Behesht Zahra cemetery head) confirmed coup de grâce practice. Geographic simultaneity indicates centralized pre-authorization. ↩

  23. 97 forced confessions in first two weeks vs. ~350 total 2010-2020. Source: Aban documentation group, Human Rights Watch. ↩

  24. Alamolhoda AI claim. AI-generated pro-regime rally confirmed by Misbar and DW. Carnegie Endowment: “industrial level” AI disinformation. ↩

  25. ISD documentation: ~800 Iranian, 200+ Russian, 300+ Chinese English-language posts, December 28 through January 17. ↩

  26. Syria: Ghouta (~1,400), Khan Shaykhun (89), Douma (43). OPCW confirmed chemical weapons. Caesar: 53,275 images across 5 intelligence branches. Assad BBC quote. Iran FM diplomatic cover. ↩

  27. Bucha: 300+ bodies, Maxar satellite imagery from March 9-11. EU monitoring: narratives “often contradictory, with an almost slapdash feel.” ↩

  28. Khashoggi: five narrative phases, operative in clothes, body never recovered. ↩

  29. Documentation infrastructure: HRANA “Crimson Winter” (7,007 confirmed named deaths), Iranian Archive (2+ million artifacts), UN FFMI (38,000+ evidence items). ↩