Update III from the Iranist
January 30, 2026
Salam reader,
Apologies for the silence last week. I was in Davos to speak on an all-Iranian women’s panel about the anti-regime protests and then fell ill afterward…
Since I last wrote, the United States has repositioned military assets in the Middle East, and President Donald Trump is weighing his options on whether to strike Iran—and which targets to prioritize.
On January 28, Trump wrote on Truth Social:
“A massive Armada is heading to Iran. It is moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose. It is a larger fleet, headed by the great Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln, than that sent to Venezuela. Like with Venezuela, it is, ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary. Hopefully Iran will quickly “Come to the Table” and negotiate a fair and equitable deal - NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS - one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence! As I told Iran once before, MAKE A DEAL! They didn’t, and there was “Operation Midnight Hammer,” a major destruction of Iran. The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
Per the New York Times, some of the options the US president is considering include:
“…secretly sending in US commandos to destroy or badly damage parts of the Iranian nuclear program not already damaged in the US bombing last June… Another option would be a series of strikes against military and other leadership targets that would cause such turmoil that it could create the conditions on the ground for Iranian security forces or other forces to remove the 86-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei… Israel is pressing for a third option: It wants the United States to join it in re-striking Iran’s ballistic missile program…”
Reuters has reported similar options.
The European Union took a major step this week by designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization—a move anti-regime protesters inside Iran have been calling for since the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, and one that Europe had long avoided (BBC News). The United Kingdom is now moving to ban the IRGC as well, though the legislative process is expected to take time (The Times).
The blacklisting raises the question of whether European governments will now move to seize regime-linked assets. European governments have targeted Russian oligarchs in the wake of the Ukraine war. The same mechanisms could be applied to aghazadehs (children of regime elites), particularly in light of Bloomberg’s report that detailed a $138 million financial empire linked to Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the supreme leader.
Meanwhile, after three weeks, internet access has begun to return. According to Netblocks, “most ordinary users still face heavy filtering and intermittent service under a whitelist system.”
As connectivity has partially resumed, more information and footage of the massacre have also begun to emerge. What broke me was a 12-minute video of an Iranian father walking through Kahrizak Forensic Medicine Center, passing 100s of corpses as he searches for his slain son, repeating: “My dear Sepehr, where are you, son?” (It’s very graphic)
(This is an artistic rendition by azadehno0ri with audio from Sepehr’s father)
Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA) shared its latest figures with me:
Protesters killed: 6,092 (118 of those are under the age of 18 and 17,091 are under review)
Security forces killed: 214 (According to eyewitnesses and reporting by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), families are being forced to declare their slain loved ones as “martyred” Basij in order to retrieve their bodies.)
Arrested: 47,208
Force confessions: 281 (Those subjected to forced confessions face sham trials and are likely to receive death sentences.)
Given that 17,091 cases remain under review, HRANA’s death toll could ultimately reach as high as 23,183—consistent with remarks by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran Mai Sato, who has warned that the number of those killed may exceed 20,000 (Bloomberg).
Dr. Ali Ansari, director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews, told me:
“You have to go back to Agha Muhammad Khan in the 1790s to witness a similar intensity of violence meted out by the Iranian state against its people.”
(He also publishes an excellent Substack, Iranshahr)
Amid this unprecedented scale of violence, you may have heard a call from anti-regime Iranians inside the country and the diaspora for the application of R2P or “Responsibility to Protect”. R2P is an international principle that obligates the international community to intervene when a government fails to protect its population. Human rights organizations and the UN special rapporteur have characterized the massacre in Iran as amounting to crimes against humanity, one of the four categories of crimes that demand immediate international action and intervention.
Nobel laureate and human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi has publicly called for the application of R2P (DW). More surprising to many analysts, however, was the position taken by director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies at O.P. Jindal Global University Ramin Jahanbegloo—a longtime proponent of nonviolent resistance—who has also called for foreign intervention, reflecting a growing recognition that the Iranian people can’t fight the Islamic Republic on their own anymore (Indian Express).
More soon,
Holly
P.S. Watch my Female Quotient panel in Davos on the anti-regime protests with policy recommendations—and listen to this thoughtful NPR Throughline episode for a deeper dive.
Also, feel free to follow me on X for real-time updates and on LinkedIn, where I’ve been sharing additional interviews and commentary.