This Is No Longer a Crackdown. It Is a Shoot-to-Kill Campaign.
What is unfolding in Iran in mid-January 2026 is not a protest response.
It is a military operation against the population.
Verified human rights reporting now confirms at least 2,500 deaths in just over two weeks. Multiple internal leaks from Iran’s own health ministry place the figure closer to 3,000, while off-the-record estimates circulating among activist networks and foreign intelligence services range higher still.
The tactics have shifted decisively:
- Rooftop snipers firing into crowds
- Live ammunition used indiscriminately in residential neighborhoods
- Heavy machine guns deployed in cities like Tehran, Mashhad, and Naziabad
- Protest zones treated as hostile territory
This is not crowd control. It is area denial.
And it is happening under a near-total internet blackout now exceeding 132 hours, specifically designed to sever accounting, not coordination. The regime is not trying to stop protests.
It is trying to prevent bodies from becoming numbers.
The Digital Dark Age And the First Cracks in It
The blackout has coincided precisely with the most lethal phase of the crackdown. Morgues are filling. Hospitals are sealed. Families are warned, coerced, or silenced before death certificates are issued.
This is how modern massacres are hidden.
But the blackout is no longer absolute.
On January 13, SpaceX activated free Starlink satellite service over Iran, allowing limited pockets of communication to bypass state-controlled networks. Leaked footage body bags, gunfire in residential streets, emergency wards overwhelmed has already begun to surface on Telegram and in foreign media.
This does not stop the killing.
It disrupts total erasure.
The regime is now racing against two clocks:
- One to kill fast enough
- Another to prevent proof from escaping orbit
“Hanging Wednesday”: Time-Compressed Terror
The regime has crossed its most dangerous threshold: judicial killing under deadline.
Iran’s judiciary has formally reclassified protesters as “urban terrorist criminals.” This removes any pretense of due process and authorizes immediate executions.
The case of Erfan Soltani is the template.
- Arrested in Karaj
- Denied a lawyer
- Denied a trial
- Sentenced to death in a closed proceeding
- His family granted a single 10-minute final visit
This is not justice. It is administrative murder.
Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei made the intent explicit on state television:
“If we want to do something, we must do it fast.”
Speed is the point. Executions are meant to terrorize before the system collapses under economic and military strain. This is violence compressed into hours because time itself has become the enemy.
The External Shock: “Help Is On Its Way”
For the first time since the uprising began, the international posture has shifted from observation to deterrence signaling.
President Donald Trump’s statements urging protesters to continue, warning Tehran against executions, and declaring that “help is on its way” mark a clear escalation. This is not ambiguity.
It is a conditional ultimatum.
The signal became unmistakable with developments at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
- Personnel and families advised to leave
- Pentagon language: “posture change”
- Military reality: pre-strike clearance
Such evacuations historically occur 24–48 hours before kinetic action, to reduce casualties from retaliation.
Tehran’s response publicly reminding Washington that it has previously struck Al Udeid confirms
the message was received.
This is no longer diplomatic signaling. It is pre-war choreography.
The Economic Zero Point
While the killing accelerates, the economy has crossed into unrecoverable collapse.
The Iranian rial is now trading at 1.47–1.5 million per U.S. dollar, effectively erasing its purchasing power. In practical terms, it has become non-functional currency.
This has direct consequences:
- Security forces paid in money that cannot buy food
- Loyalty becoming unaffordable
- Inflation converting salaries into paper fiction
A regime that cannot pay its enforcers cannot sustain repression indefinitely.
The Gold Flights: Preparing the Exit
The most revealing signal is not in Tehran’s streets, but in its skies.
Intelligence and parliamentary reporting confirm dense rotations of Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft between Tehran and Moscow. The assessment is blunt: weapons in, gold out.
At the center is Setad (EIKO) Ali Khamenei’s personal parastatal empire valued at roughly
$95 billion. Built through decades of property seizures and opaque monopolies, it represents the regime’s real balance sheet.
That wealth is being divided into survivable layers:
-
Physical gold, airlifted to Moscow
-
Liquid offshore funds, parked in Hong Kong, Dubai, and Turkey
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Domestic assets, squeezed for final cash before abandonment
This is not hedging. It is exit preparation.
Leaders do not move gold under fire unless they believe the ground is already lost.
The Terminal Phase
This is the autopsy of a dying state.
- Killing faster than it can count
- Cutting communications instead of restoring order
- Liquidating assets instead of stabilizing currency
- Preparing escape routes instead of reforms
Iran is no longer being governed. It is being managed toward evacuation.
The decisive variable is not public anger. It is the loyalty of the guns. If executions trigger foreign strikes, if regular army units refuse further participation, or if mid-level commanders conclude that leadership is already fleeing, collapse could arrive suddenly.
Final Assessment
The Islamic Republic is no longer fighting for a future.
It is fighting for the exits.
The only question remaining is how many Iranians will be fed into the gallows before the last Il-76 clears the runway for Moscow.
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