America thinks it has toppled Iran’s regime. In fact it’s more murderous than ever

As the US “war secretary” Pete Hegseth issued his triumphalist declaration of mission accomplished in America’s 40-day war on Iran, he issued a generous invitation to the people whose homes and livelihoods had been bombed to bits.

“I would like to see the Iranian people take advantage of this opportunity,” he said in his first media appearance after the declaration of a two-week ceasefire in the Gulf.

Yet despite the secretary’s attempt to bend reality to the contrary, the malevolent regime has not been replaced – merely a few names at the top rubbed out by targeted assassination. It also seems that the regime is more determined and ruthless in its battle for survival than ever.

For the past three weeks, it has carried out a further round of summary arrests, trials and executions. The Basij militia police – the large, plain-clothes and brutal militia group deeply embedded in Iranian society to crush dissent – has now been reinforced by Shiite militias from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, with most designated as terrorist groups by the UN and Western capitals.

“It’s really bad – the regime is still bent on fighting its own people,” one UK government adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, told me.

A large convoy of trucks and pickups from the People’s Mobilisation Front (PMF) was filmed crossing from Iraq at the end of March. PMF units such as Kataib Hezbollah set up camp in the key cities of Khorramshahr and Abadan on the Gulf. They took over the bases of the Basij and the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a resident of Abadan told the Voices of Iran dissidents’ website. “So we expect another massacre of the people.”

“These forces have come to kill people,” said another resident of Abadan. “We have not forgotten the January killings, when the government used them to kill people.”

“Why should the Islamic Republic pay for Hashd al-Shaabi (PMF) terrorists and even house and feed their families for free?” said another interviewee.

Despite the tough talk, the IRGC appears to have panicked in calling in the militias of the wider Shia Hezbollah network. From Iraq, most are Arabs; and from the east, Afghan and Pakistani Pashtuns. Almost none of them speak Persian, the main language of Iran. They are to beef up the Basij forces of about 100,000 (though the regime says they are around 250,000). Founded in 1979 by the first supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, they are something of a rag-tag army and are feared and despised in equal measure at local level.

In Iraq, the PMF originally helped the Baghdad government fight the rising Sunni militant threat, especially after the militant leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the Islamic State in Mosul in June 2014. Ties with the predominantly Shia regime in Baghdad have loosened, and when America and Israel went to war six weeks ago, the group declared support for Iran. On 11 March, the Hezbollah Kataib command boasted that it had attacked 291 joint US-Iraq bases in Iraq since the war began. On 12 March, the US carried out 32 air strikes on PMF bases in Iraq.

From the east, Afghan and Pakistani militias have entered and taken over from the Basij at key strongpoints. Fighters from the Zainabiyoun Brigade of Pakistan and the Afghan Fatemiyoun Division have taken roadblocks, which they found manned by 12-year-olds recruited into the Basij. “This is the regime’s last card,” a Tehran resident commented on the presence of child soldiers in the Basij. “It shows that it has entered a survival phase – and has no cards left at all.”

However, undeterred by the war and external events, the regime has resumed executing protesters. In three weeks, it has carried out 14 hangings. Charges range from setting fire to a Basij police station to moharebeh or “rebellion against God.” Among the victims are Kourosh Keyvani, who held joint Iranian-Swedish citizenship, and the teenage national wrestling champion Saleh Mohammadi.

The regime does not reveal the whereabouts of the executions, or the full number that have taken place or are imminent. The country’s ministry of justice has just confirmed that at least 9,000 indictments are currently being processed. As Amnesty International comments drily: “Iran is the second most prolific executioner after China.”

Despite the new crackdown aided by mercenary allies from the Hezbollah network, and possibly because of it, many Iranians and observers believe these dark days herald the last days of the Islamic Republic regime. It could come in five months or five years, according to Professor Ali Ansari of St Andrews University. In his view, the fight by the IRGC and the Basij against their own people is time-limited: it cannot go on forever.

The one card the regime has to play is keeping a grip on the Hormuz Strait by its own forces, and, secondarily, the Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea by its Houthi proxies. It’s a tough order – particularly for the forces of the IRGC and their levies of the Basij, who face enduring opposition at home as much as abroad.

One certainty about Pete Hegseth’s latest boast on Iran is that it gives the term populism a whole new twist. In the case of Iranians, it has meant the opposite of power to the people. Their plight is as bad as ever after 40 days of bombing and boasting from Trump and Netanyahu. According to the latest Maga polls, the war hasn’t made the people at home too happy, either.