Anarchist Front : While bombs fall on Iran from outside, the Islamic Republic is waging a second war against its own people, from within.
The commander of the Islamic Republic's police forces has announced the arrest of 500 people, labeling them "spies" for allegedly sending information to foreign media. The Revolutionary Guards in Lorestan have arrested three more people for "disturbing public opinion, spreading rumors, and sending images to enemy media." In the sixteen days since the US and Israeli strikes began, arrests have been reported almost every single day.
The word "spy" requires no proof. It silences through fear. It has always been the regime's preferred weapon against anyone who documents, who speaks, who refuses to be silent.
What concerns us most deeply is not what we know, but what we cannot know.
The internet blackout has now lasted over 384 hours — seventeen days — and is getting worse. Over the last day a decline has been tracked in reserved telecoms network infrastructure, further reducing VPN availability and sending some whitelisted users and essential services offline. This is not only a communications failure. It is a deliberate wall of darkness behind which the regime is moving freely, arresting, detaining, disappearing. Young people who shared images of the bombings. Activists who documented civilian casualties. Journalists who refused the regime's narrative. Ordinary citizens whose only crime was telling the truth about what they saw.
We do not know how many have been arrested in the darkness. We do not know the condition of those already in detention before the war began. We do not know what is happening right now in the cells, in the interrogation rooms, in the military bases where protest detainees have been transferred.
That not-knowing is the point. The blackout exists precisely so that the world cannot see and we cannot speak.
We are gravely worried about the health and safety of every social and political activist inside Iran right now. We are worried about every young person who picked up a phone to document this war. We are also concerned for our anarchist comrades who are under both imperialist bombs and repression and imprisonment.
To our comrades inside Iran: you are not forgotten. To the world outside: the silence you are hearing from Iran is not peace. It is a cover for repression. Break it wherever you can.
No to imperialist war and state terrorism!
No to the criminal Islamic Republic ruling Iran!
No Mullah! No Shah!
Jin — Jiyan — Azadî!
- Anarchist Front -
