Iran intensifies crackdown on citizens in wake of ceasefire – please pray

Following the Israel/Iran ceasefire, the Iranian government has intensified its long-standing use of fear and repression by executing prisoners, silencing dissent, and suffocating civil society under the banner of ‘national security’.

In the wake of Israel’s 12-day air-war (13-24 June), the authorities have turned from outward confrontation to an inward crackdown, with more than 700 arrests in 12 days, 10 rapid-fire executions for ‘espionage’, and street checkpoints that target Kurdish cities first and spread countrywide.  

These cases – rushed and deeply flawed – follow a well-known pattern. Detainees are denied basic legal rights: no fair trial, no access to independent lawyers and often convicted based solely on confessions extracted under torture.  

Additionally, a near-total internet blackout on 18 June cut Iranians off from news and family members living outside the country. 

New bill is ‘blank cheque for capital punishment’ 

A nine-article bill was also rushed through and passed by the Majles (Iranian government) on 29 June which re-labels almost any contact with Israel or other ‘hostile states’ as efsad-fel-arz (‘corruption on earth’) and makes death the default sentence. 

Legal experts warn that the bill hands judges a ‘blank cheque for capital punishment’, accelerating the fast-track trials already under way in the Revolutionary Courts.  

Moreover, human rights advocates warn that, in times of national crisis, Iran’s authorities habitually use executions and mass arrests as instruments to control the public and crush any sign of opposition. They believe that the war has become a pretext to carry out swift death sentences and suppress freedom of speech, with little regard for justice.  

Prisoners languishing in dire conditions 

Even inside Iran’s prisons, despair is growing. Following a missile strike that hit Evin Prison during the Israeli offensive, reports from inside describe lurid conditions. Political prisoners were suddenly transferred overnight to larger, harsher prisons like the notorious Greater Tehran Penitentiary, and families of prisoners have reported dire conditions: pest-infested cells, contaminated drinking water, poor ventilation and inmates completely cut-off from outside communication.  

Among those imprisoned are individuals whose ‘crimes’ include peaceful activism, legal defence work or posting symbolic messages of protest on social media. One man was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for simply commenting with a single punctuation mark under a government leader’s post. 

“Love is the loudest voice” 

All these accounts paint a grim portrait of a government increasingly hostile to its own people – executing and imprisoning citizens not only in the name of religious laws, but as a tactic to maintain control. For Iranian Christians and other minorities, this already-hostile environment has become even more dangerous.  

An Iranian Christian brother shares: “We have come to know the Lord more intimately through seasons of pain and trial. In the end, love is the loudest voice, and the most powerful witness. Pray that in this time – when so many Iranians are weary of religion, politics and empty promises – the Lord would reveal Himself as the true source of love, hope, and salvation.”