The Iranian regime justifies executions and harsh sentences through legal charges and security laws. But when law exists primarily to protect power rather than rights, fundamental questions emerge about legitimacy, justice, and the right of resistance.
What constitutes a crime?
The question appears straightforward until it is placed within the context of political repression. In Iran, authorities routinely justify the execution or imprisonment of political dissidents, protesters, and resistance activists through legal indictments that cite offenses against national security, public order, or state institutions.
Official statements often point to charges such as attacking government facilities, damaging public property, confronting security forces, or participating in actions deemed hostile to the state. From the perspective of the authorities, such activities constitute criminal conduct deserving punishment under existing law.
Yet a deeper legal and philosophical question remains unanswered: Is an action criminal simply because a government declares it so, or does the legitimacy of the law itself matter?
Law as a Shield for Citizens—or for Power?
Throughout history, governments have frequently invoked legality to justify repression. Authoritarian systems rarely describe themselves as oppressive. Instead, they present their actions as the enforcement of law, the preservation of order, and the defense of security.
This creates a fundamental distinction between two competing understandings of law.
In democratic systems, law is intended to limit power, protect rights, and provide citizens with mechanisms to challenge authority. In authoritarian systems, law often functions differently: it becomes a tool through which power protects itself.
When legal institutions primarily serve the interests of those governing rather than those being governed, the question is no longer whether a particular action violated the law. The more important question becomes whether the law itself retains legitimacy.
The Questions Authoritarian Systems Avoid
When authorities confront public unrest, they typically focus on the actions of protesters rather than the causes that produced them.
Why do repeated waves of protest emerge?
Why do citizens continue to risk imprisonment, injury, or death to voice their grievances?
Why do generations of young people repeatedly challenge the political order despite severe consequences?
Why do social tensions persist despite decades of arrests, executions, and repression?
These questions strike at the heart of political legitimacy. Governments that view law primarily as an instrument of control often avoid addressing them because doing so would require examining the relationship between state power and public consent.
The recurrence of protests is not merely a security issue. It is also evidence of a deeper conflict between society and the governing structure.
The Problem of Unaccountable Authority
One of the central criticisms raised by opponents of Iran’s political system concerns the concentration of authority within the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih.
Critics argue that when political authority is placed beyond meaningful public accountability, the legal system gradually becomes subordinate to political power rather than independent from it.
In such circumstances, institutions responsible for protecting rights—including courts, law enforcement agencies, and regulatory bodies—risk becoming instruments of political preservation.
The result is a legal framework in which citizens face extensive obligations while state authorities face limited accountability.
This imbalance is not merely a political concern. It is a legal one. The legitimacy of law depends not only on its existence but also on its equal application and its ability to restrain those who govern.
What Political Thought Says About Resistance
The tension between law and legitimacy has occupied political philosophers for centuries.
The English philosopher John Locke argued that governments derive their legitimacy from their protection of life, liberty, and property. When governments systematically violate these rights, citizens possess a right to resist.
His argument was not that resistance opposes law. Rather, resistance may become a defense of the very principles that law is supposed to protect.
Similarly, political theorists have long distinguished between legality and justice. History contains numerous examples of actions that were legal under existing regimes yet are now universally condemned. Legality alone has never been sufficient to establish moral or political legitimacy.
The nineteenth-century thinker Henry David Thoreau advanced this argument further in his theory of civil disobedience, maintaining that citizens are not morally obligated to obey laws that perpetuate injustice. His ideas would later influence figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
These traditions do not automatically justify every act of resistance. They do, however, establish an important principle: the existence of a law does not by itself settle the question of justice.
Security, Propaganda, and the Definition of Crime
Authoritarian governments frequently rely on two powerful concepts: security and public order.
Under these frameworks, opponents can be labeled criminals, extremists, agitators, or enemies of the nation. Such labels help transform political conflicts into legal cases.
The danger arises when the state possesses exclusive authority to define both the threat and the punishment while independent institutions capable of reviewing those decisions are absent or ineffective.
In those circumstances, legal charges risk becoming political instruments rather than neutral applications of justice.
The distinction is critical because the legitimacy of criminal law depends upon due process, independent courts, transparency, and equal protection under the law.
Without these safeguards, criminal prosecution can become indistinguishable from political repression.
The Real Conflict: Law Versus Power
The central issue in Iran today is not simply whether protesters or political prisoners violated particular statutes. The deeper conflict concerns the purpose of law itself.
Is law meant to safeguard the rights of citizens, or is it designed primarily to safeguard the state?
If citizens are denied meaningful avenues to challenge authority, seek accountability, participate freely in political life, or obtain justice through independent institutions, the credibility of the legal system inevitably comes into question.
The history of constitutional movements across the world—including Iran’s Constitutional Revolution—demonstrates that demands for freedom have often begun with a demand for limits on power. Constitutionalism emerged from the principle that rulers themselves must be subject to law.
Where that principle disappears, legality risks becoming a language of domination rather than justice.
Conclusion
Political executions and prosecutions cannot be understood solely through the charges listed in court documents. They must also be examined within the broader context of legitimacy, accountability, and the rule of law.
A legal system derives its authority not merely from its ability to punish but from its ability to protect rights, apply justice equally, and hold power accountable.
When law consistently serves power while denying citizens meaningful protection, public resistance becomes more than a political reaction—it becomes part of a longstanding debate about the relationship between justice and authority.
The question facing Iran today is therefore larger than any individual case. It is whether law exists to defend the state from the people, or to defend the people from the abuse of state power.
