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On Sunday night, November 16, 2025, a chemistry master’s student at Shiraz University was found dead in her dorm room. Student networks say she took her own life; the university said the “exact cause” is unknown and only the coroner can decide. The same day in the Kurdish city of Marivan, a long-serving municipal employee reportedly set himself on fire inside city hall after pressure and threats from the regime’s Herassat security office. Co-workers used a fire extinguisher to save him; security forces immediately cordoned off the area and tried to block any reporting.
These two cases sit on top of a list many Iranians already know: Ahmad Baledi, the Ahvaz street vendor who burned himself after his father’s only means of income was destroyed; Shahou Safari in Sanandaj, who self-immolated outside a courthouse; and Kourosh Kheiri in Lorestan, pushed over the edge by debts, court files and unemployment. Together, they map a society that feels locked in – and a state afraid such acts can become political symbols and rallying cries.
In Marivan, officials did not move to investigate municipal abuse; they sealed the scene and silenced witnesses. In Shiraz, the university treated the student’s death as a technical file, detached from youth unemployment, campus purges and the memory of classmates killed or jailed in the 2019 fuel protests and the Mahsa Amini uprising. The spread of suicides and self-immolation attempts among students, workers, municipal staff and informal vendors is now read by many as extreme protest against a blocked future. For the regime, they are sparks that, if filmed and shared, can help turn local anger into something closer to 2019 or 2022.
Legislating Panic: The “Counter-Infiltration” Bill
This fear is being written into law. Intelligence minister Esmaeil Khatib said on November 16 a 19-article “plan to counter the infiltration of foreign intelligence services and hostile governments” is in its final drafting stage in parliament, a “backbone” for Iran’s intelligence system in a “hybrid war for overthrow.” The draft goes far beyond classic espionage: it criminalises interviews with so-called “hostile media,” lets a security council decide which outlets count as “enemy,” and requires every interview with other foreign media to be logged in an online portal run by the Intelligence Ministry. Sending photos or videos to journalists or activists outside Iran is treated as a crime, punishable by prison.
Universities and the arts are pulled into the same net. Scholarships and research collaborations with foreign universities will only be allowed if the institution appears on an annual whitelist; working with anyone off-list can mean a prison sentence. Artists and filmmakers who receive foreign funding or training and produce works that “show a dark image of Iran” risk lifelong bans from cultural work and the seizure of their backers’ funds. Even contact with embassies or international organizations is to be put under written-permit rules.
The package is sold as a response to “enemy penetration,” especially after the 12-day war with Israel, when targeted strikes and assassinations exposed gaps in the regime’s security system. Senior insiders have spoken of “weaknesses” and even a “supreme infiltrator” inside the state. Instead of reforming those structures, the regime is trying to seal off society itself – criminalizing the channels through which workers, students and citizens documented previous crackdowns.
Eje’i’s Numbers: Managing 90,000 Cases
On November 13, Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Eje’i announced that in 1401 the judiciary opened about 88–90,000 protest-related cases and admits that jailing all of them would have huge consequences for families, courts and the regime’s image. His answer is to make repression “manageable”: many defendants, he argues, were “under the influence of the atmosphere,” and if they show regret and promise not to repeat their actions, prosecutors can keep them out of prison and later seek pardons.
At the same time, he ordered the prosecutor-general and provincial prosecutors to map “organized currents” behind “social anomalies,” especially those with any foreign link, and to coordinate with the Intelligence Ministry, the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence arm, the police, seminaries and schools. In Qom, he warned officials not to turn “small internal issues” into “pretexts for the enemy” and insists that “enemies” are using “hybrid war” and “soft war” to weaken “unity, revolutionary spirit and respect for values.”
The regime is saying openly that isolated acts of dissent can be contained or ignored, but anything that looks coordinated will be treated as a security crime precisely because it can cross borders, reach exiled media and human-rights networks, and turn local injustice into an international case. Whether people are jailed or later “forgiven,” they are pulled into a system whose real purpose is to terrify the public away from any structured, collective challenge.
Infiltration As a Name for Fear of Society
From Ahvaz and Sanandaj to Shiraz, people are signaling that they don’t trust the future the clerical state offers. By calling every channel of communication “infiltration,” criminalizing contact with the outside world and turning 90,000 protest files into a managed pool of suspects, the regime is not solving the crises that produced those suicides and uprisings. It is governing for the next one.