Iran’s domestic repression—executions, mass arrests and internet shutdowns—functions as a strategic asset that reduces the political cost of confrontational foreign policy and should be treated as a core security issue, not a separate humanitarian concern.

Recent spikes in death sentences, protest-related arrests and prolonged blackouts during conflict and unrest show how external confrontation provides cover for intensifying internal coercion while still falling short of fair-trial standards under international law.

Any U.S. or Western agreement with Tehran should attach limited, verifiable human-rights benchmarks (halts to certain executions, detainee access, independent monitoring) to benefits, target the repression apparatus with precise sanctions, treat connectivity as security infrastructure, and support accountability mechanisms.

Any agreement with Tehran should treat executions, mass detention and internet shutdowns as security issues—not humanitarian afterthoughts.

Hours after President Donald Trump said the United States and Iran were having “good talks,”Iranian authorities publicly hanged Amirhossein Safari and Abolfazl Sepahi in Isfahan for alleged roles in violence during the January uprising. The judiciary accused them of involvement in the killing of four security personnel, arson and vandalism. But U.N. experts had warned a day earlier that 12 defendants in the Alikhani Square case were sentenced to death in a single closed hearing, without clarity about each person’s responsibility and amid allegations of coerced confessions and denial of counsel. The two executions brought the number put to death in that case to four, leaving eight others under sentence of death.

At the same time, around 1,500 death-row prisoners at Ghezel Hesar Prison have entered the third week of a hunger strike against executions. The protest began after six inmates were transferred to solitary confinement to be hanged. The public executions, the prison strike and the diplomatic talks should not be treated as separate stories. They reveal how Tehran’s machinery of domestic coercion operates alongside—and helps sustain—its confrontation abroad.

One System, Two Fronts

For decades, Western policy has concentrated on Iran’s nuclear program, missiles, proxy forces, sanctions evasion and threats to maritime security. Those concerns are real. But the policy debate has usually placed repression in a separate category: an issue for public condemnation, United Nations resolutions and occasional targeted sanctions, rather than a central variable in national security strategy.

That division misreads how the Islamic Republic governs. Its external posture and internal coercion reinforce each other. Regional conflict enables the authorities to invoke national emergency, brand opponents as agents of foreign enemies and expand the reach of the security services. Repression, in turn, reduces the domestic political cost of maintaining expensive and confrontational policies abroad. A government that can........

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