{"id":347039,"date":"2026-07-31T15:40:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=347039"},"modified":"2026-07-31T15:40:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:40:29","slug":"the-two-habits-irans-regime-cannot-quit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/human-rights\/the-two-habits-irans-regime-cannot-quit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Two Habits Iran’s Regime Cannot Quit"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chabahar,
Chabahar, Iran \u2013 July 16, 2026: AI-generated reconstruction based on real-life footage of the maritime control tower at Shahid Kalantari Port collapsing after a U.S. airstrike<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three-minute read<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a peculiar kind of ruler who, upon discovering that a wound is fatal, digs deeper into it. Watch the clerical regime in Iran through the summer of 2026 and you are watching precisely that. It has two catastrophic weaknesses \u2014 the gallows it turns on its own society, and the war machine it turns<\/a> on everyone else \u2014 and its response to becoming weaker has been to double down on both. Not out of confidence. Out of the certainty that the alternative is faster.<\/p>\n

The numbers are not ambiguous. Human rights organizations counted more than 420 executions in the first seven months of the year; Amnesty logged over 2,150 last year. A local group documented 109 hangings in June alone, a ten percent rise on the same month a year earlier. Alongside the rope came the theatre: hundreds of coerced confessions filmed and broadcast, faces blurred<\/a>, because the blur is<\/em> the message. Cover yourself if you like. We will still find you.<\/p>\n

Why can’t it stop? Because this regime is the monarchy’s most attentive student. It watched the Shah, squeezed by the Carter administration’s human-rights rhetoric, loosen the screws in 1977 \u2014 prison conditions changed almost overnight; inmates called it the dawn \u2014 and it watched what happened next. Fear evaporated. Rage rushed into the vacuum. The Peacock Throne, armed to the teeth and blessed by Washington, lasted twenty-seven months. The clerics have concluded, correctly, that a regime with far less legitimacy and no social base at all would not last twenty-seven days.<\/p>\n

\n

Despite decades of repression, #propaganda<\/a> and mass killings, a new generation continues to defy the clerical authorities by joining the Resistance.
By @khansari_m<\/a>https:\/\/t.co\/ARvZxjuJMg<\/a><\/p>\n

— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 28, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n