Tehran Signals Escalating Repression Despite US Warning Lines
- Mickey Segall
- Jan 11
- 7 min read
Summary
January 11 , 21:15
Over the past 24 hours, IRGC-affiliated Tasnim has served as a central amplifier for a coordinated state narrative that places the latest unrest inside a broader confrontation with Israel and the United States. The line is consistent across senior nodes of the system, including the presidency, judiciary, police command, Majlis, and SNSC: economic grievances may be real, but hostile actors allegedly hijacked them into “riots” and “terrorism” through foreign backed networks, armed cells, and an “anti Iran media” ecosystem driving cognitive warfare and “koshteh sazi” (engineered fatalities).
Tasnim’s role in this construct is to unify external attribution, narrow legitimacy internally by separating “acceptable protest” from “terror,” and normalize accelerated repression as national defense, while field-style reporting is used to project restored control and undercut opposition claims of momentum. In parallel, Tehran is clearly reading Trump’s public posture as both a deterrent and a potential pretext.
Reporting indicates Trump is weighing options that include military strikes and non-kinetic measures, and Iranian officials are answering with explicit deterrent warnings that any US action would trigger retaliation against US regional assets and Israel. This dynamic raises the risk of miscalculation as Tehran tries to manage two clocks at once: the internal clock of regime stability and the external clock of possible American escalation signals, including discussions of strike options.
Bottom line: the survival imperative is likely to push the regime toward harsher suppression, even in the shadow of American threats, because leaders will view the loss of street control as the greater existential danger. The more credible the intervention rhetoric appears, the more Tehran will try to reduce the visibility and narrative cost of repression rather than avoid repression itself.
Expect a shift toward measures that lower the risk of a single catalytic “mass shooting” moment while still crushing mobilization: expanded arrests and fast-track adjudication, information blackouts, attribution of violence to “armed terrorists,” and messaging about “koshteh sazi” to preempt blame.
In other words, the regime will likely intensify coercion, with a stronger emphasis on deniability, fragmentation, and narrative control, precisely to blunt a US-Israel justification case while preventing unrest from escalating into a regime-threatening legitimacy crisis.
Over the past 24 hours, IRGC-affiliated Tasnim’s coverage of the protests, which have now entered their second week (day 14 as of January 11, 2026), presents a tightly synchronized regime narrative that reframes the unrest as a foreign orchestrated escalation from economic protest into “riots” and “terrorism,” while simultaneously projecting control, rallying loyalist public action, and signaling intensified repression through police and judiciary measures. This messaging cadence is visible across the system's senior nodes (presidency, judiciary, police command, Majlis, SNSC) and is reinforced by “field reporting” designed to downplay street momentum and contest opposition media claims.
Tasnim foregrounds a cross-institutional lineup. Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei threatens “no leniency” and announces the establishment of special judicial branches nationwide to expedite case handling.
President Masoud Pezeshkian frames the events as an enemy attempt to intensify unrest and urges families to keep youth away, while claiming the state hears “protesters” and pursues economic justice. Ali Larijani, presented as Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, calls for decisive judicial action and repeats the protest versus riot distinction. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, as Majlis Speaker, advances a “four fronts” war framework (economic, cognitive psychological, military, terrorist). Law enforcement is represented by Commander in Chief Ahmad Reza Radan and a police spokesperson who link the unrest to external support and emphasize “koshteh-sāzi” (manufacturing deaths, “rioters/terrorists” deliberately create fatalities or engineer situations that lead to fatalities). Tasnim also elevates parliamentary security officials such as Ebrahim Azizi (Chair of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission), who categorizes “rioters” into tiers and explicitly alleges US and Israeli support for deliberately creating fatalities.
A central throughline is a deliberate legitimacy split: “legitimate” economic protest is acknowledged as understandable and potentially lawful, while violent street activity is reframed as an infiltrated and organized terror track. Pezeshkian and Larijani explicitly insist the two must be separated, with the state claiming it “hears protesters” but will not tolerate “rioters.”
Azizi reinforces this by describing early demonstrations as peaceful bazaar-driven protests, then claiming external services and opposition groups exploited them, culminating in “terror” tactics. A parallel editorial layer argues the situation is “not protest and not even riots, but organized terrorism,” pushing the same split into the media ecosystem.
Tasnim’s attribution model is consistent: the unrest is positioned as the continuation or “phase two” of the “12-day war,” with Israel and the US framed as strategic drivers using covert action, information operations, and armed proxies.
The outlet repeatedly uses labels such as “armed terrorists,” “Mossad agents,” and “America and Israel-backed mercenaries,” and treats external backing as an established fact. A key operational prop is claimed to be arrests of Mossad-linked actors. Tasnim reports that IRGC Intelligence in North Khorasan arrested “two Mossad-linked spies,” alleging they were main network nodes in organizing unrest and that weapons and espionage equipment were seized. FM Araghchi's tweet, as amplified on Tasnim’s channel, supports the same attribution by trying to mirror US domestic messaging about “domestic terrorism,” then arguing Iran is facing “real terrorists” tied to Mossad, with claimed “evidence.”
Tasnim explicitly frames the contest as a “cognitive and psychological war” and discusses hostile media ecosystems and social media manipulation, including claims of coordinated cyber activity and fake accounts driving Persian language narratives.
This is paired with tactical “normalization” reporting designed to reduce perceived momentum. In a “field observation” story, Tasnim claims Pasdaran Street was calm by 22:00, and Heravi Square looked normal at 22:30, contradicting “anti-Iran media” portrayals, while acknowledging only minor traces such as smoke from a trash bin and limited earlier activity.
Tasnim’s emotional anchor is a violence saturation narrative: repeated references to “ISIS-like” crimes, armed attacks on police and civilians, and a deliberate effort by adversaries to create deaths for propaganda impact (“koshteh”).
The police line claims published images show indiscriminate shooting at people and security forces to generate fear and casualties, and uses that as “proof” of foreign sponsorship and training. Radan’s statement adds that “cold weapons” were the lethal instrument for most fatalities and repeats the “koshteh” claim as the adversary’s objective. Tasnim also pushes emblematic victim stories and symbolic targets: the East Tehran Tax Affairs Administration building is described as fully destroyed, security personnel deaths are framed as martyrdom, and funeral coverage is prominent, including the case of Melina Asadi (a 3 to 3.5-year-old child) presented as killed by armed groups, alongside police “martyrs” in Kermanshah.
Tasnim’s enforcement narrative is built around inevitability and speed. Ejei’s line removes any expectation of leniency and announces the establishment of special judicial branches across the country to accelerate case processing.
Radan claims “important arrests” of main unrest elements, promise of punishment after legal steps, and warns the public that proximity to rioters makes them “prey” to violent objectives. The police spokesperson highlights the increase in public calls to “110” as evidence of citizen cooperation, signaling a reporting mobilization and an attempt to convert social vigilance into actionable intelligence for the security apparatus.
Tasnim amplifies a pro-regime mobilization track: an official call by the Islamic Propaganda Coordination Council for a large rally in Tehran’s Enghelab Square at 14:00 (framed as condemning “America and Israel mercenaries”), plus local condemnations and supportive rallies such as in Zanjan, where speakers reportedly demanded harsh punishment for rioters.
This complements the funeral imagery and “velayat-aligned” crowd descriptions, aimed at showing social base resilience and isolating protesters as a minority or a foreign-manipulated faction.
Tasnim concedes that economic grievances such as currency instability and market pressure helped spark the protests, but frames these issues as openings that hostile actors exploit to escalate unrest. Pezeshkian ties the situation to the government’s reform agenda and presents the response as subsidy reform, market stabilization, support for production, higher purchasing power, and tighter oversight of supply chains. In this framing, economic messaging is paired with coercion: it preserves a narrow space for “legitimate” dissent while recasting street mobilization as terrorism.
The repetition of identical motifs across senior officials and multiple content types indicates an organized messaging campaign rather than ad hoc reporting. The operational objectives appear to be: delegitimize unrest by relabeling it as foreign-backed terrorism, justify rapid and harsh judicial security action, split potential supporters by distinguishing “legitimate protesters” from “rioters,” mobilize loyalist public presence through rallies and funerals, and contest opposition narratives by projecting calm and control on the streets.
Majlis Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf frames the current unrest and external pressure as a single, simultaneous conflict across four arenas: economic warfare, cognitive and psychological warfare, military confrontation, and a terrorist front. In his speech to parliament, he argues that the economic and cognitive components have been underway for years, while the military dimension began after what he calls the June 23, 2025 “aggression” by Israel and a US military attack, presenting today’s street instability as an extension of that wider hybrid campaign rather than a purely domestic protest dynamic.
In a separate deterrent warning reported by Tasnim in English, Ghalibaf says that any US “adventurism” against Iran would make all US centers and forces across the region “legitimate targets,” while stressing that the Iranian system claims it does not equate ordinary protesters with foreign mercenaries. This complements the four-front framing by pairing a domestic narrative of coordinated hybrid war with an external escalation warning intended to deter US military action.
Within the last day, the clearest officially attributable signal is Parliament Speaker Qalibaf’s warning that any US attack would trigger Iranian retaliation against Israel and US bases in the region, described as “legitimate targets". Tasnim’s own analytical coverage ties the unrest directly to preparation for a future US-Israeli strike, portraying it as a staged escalation designed to fracture national cohesion as a prerequisite for broader military action.
Comments