The Iranian regime’s current president Ebrahim Raisi was handpicked by supreme leader Ali Khamenei to help curb the regime’s main problem, the increasing protests of the people, which reached a turning point in 2019 and threatened the regime’s existence.

The regime has since intensified its repression, especially against women, and the figures of daily executions have become a sign of the regime’s fear of being overthrown. This is what Khamenei has promised to the regime’s desperate officials after he compared the regime’s ‘God of the 80s’ with the regime’s God at the present time.

On September 1, in an article entitled ‘From president’s speeches to the events on the street’, the state-run Hamdeli daily warned that, “what is happening now on the streets differs fully from the reality.”

On August 2, AFP wrote, “Activists argue Iran is in the throes of an intensified crackdown affecting all sectors of society from trade union activists to campaigners against the enforced wearing of the headscarf for women, to religious minorities.”

In a report published by the Fars News Agency, during the latest wave of the repression of Iranian women, the regime authorities have arrested more than 300 people who were accused of campaigning against the mandatory hijab rules. Ali Khanmohammadi, the spokesman for the regime’s organization for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice, stated that “they were all arrested”, confirming the regime’s expanding repression.

According to official and non-official estimations, these suggest that the regime has executed more than 600 people since Raisi took office in August 2021. In his latest report, Javaid Rehman, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Situation in Iran, wrote, “The Special Rapporteur remains concerned at the high number of death penalty sentences in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the alarming increase in the number of executions observed since 2021. Between 1 January and 30 June 2022, at least 251 people were executed, including at least six women. Why, because street protests continue to be a threat to the regime’s stability.”

Amnesty International has said that Iran is on an ‘execution spree’, with hangings now proceeding at a ‘horrifying pace’. In its annual report, Amnesty added, “The death penalty was imposed after unfair trials, including for offenses not meeting the threshold of the “most serious crimes” such as drug-trafficking and financial corruption, and for acts not internationally recognized as crimes. Death sentences were used as a weapon of repression against protesters, dissidents, and ethnic minorities.”

Recently, Iranian people have reacted to the regime’s increasing inhumanity on social media, especially Twitter, with the hashtag “StopExecutionsInIran”.

This is how the regime has decided to respond to the people’s increasing demands. In their August 31 publication, the state-run Setaraeh-e Sobh daily warned Raisi and his cabinet about their performance and wrote, “People are not satisfied with the government’s one-year performance, especially in economic matters. The record of the government has not been successful, and this issue has caused people to protest on virtual networks and on media.”

On August 3, Amnesty International wrote about the regime’s repression and the people’s demands, which brought them on the streets. They stated, “Rightful outrage among people in Iran about state corruption, inflation, unemployment, low or unpaid wages, food insecurity, as well as political repression is likely to lead to more protests, and Iran’s security forces will continue to feel emboldened to kill and injure protesters if they are not held accountable.”

Referring to the failure of Raisi’s plans and the conditions that lead to the spread of the people’s revolt, the state-run Arman newspaper wrote, on September 3, “If things do not work properly in society, naturally the people of that society will become worried. Poverty will not be eradicated by increasing the prices of goods that people need. Poverty will disappear when people have an income commensurate with the inflation in society.”

Khamenei’s problem is that in just over a year since Raisi took the office, despite a significant increase in repression and executions, not only have the people’s protests not subsided, but nationwide protests have since increased.