Officials and militants say Iranian authorities are spinning with Israel’s ceasefire to strengthen security crackdowns within the country and through mass arrests, executions and military deployments, especially in the static Kurdish region in the Kurdish region.
Sources told CBC and Reuters that following the Israeli air strikes that began on June 13 from June 13, Iranian security forces began a widespread arrest campaign, accompanied by intensification in checkpoint-based streets.
A man in Tehran responded to CBC news records via WhatsApp but did not provide his name, saying on Wednesday that security officials stopped people at pop-up checkpoints around the city and asked them to show their phones and turn on their messaging app.
“If the state considers the content sensitive, it will only require a tweet or a social network post to be arrested,” he said.
Another told the CBC that he felt “deep fear” that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his regime may have secured their survival and will shift their anger inwardly as they did in the 1980s and suppress it in the executions of their own people and the masses.
Some in Israel and exiled opposition groups hope that military movements targeting the Revolutionary Guards and internal security forces and nuclear sites will trigger a massive uprising and overthrow the Islamic Republic.
But Alam Saleh, speaking with Tehran's CBC on Wednesday, said he knew many Iranians were critical of the regime and changed their tone in recent days, now facing what they saw as a war that was unremarkable and unreasonable, rallying around the flag.
“The key point is, what is Israel and the United States achieving what has been achieved in bombing Iran?” Saleh said.
“The only thing they could have achieved is that Iran never, and never trust these two countries again.”
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There are no signs of any major protests against the authorities.
But an Iranian security official and two other senior officials briefed on internal security issues, saying authorities were focused on threats of possible internal turmoil, especially in the Kurdish region.
The senior security official said the Revolutionary Guards and Basij paramilitary forces were warned and internal security has now become the main focus.
The official said authorities were concerned about Israeli agents, racial separatists and Iran's people's organization, an exiled opposition group that had previously carried out attacks within Iran.
The country's radicals are lying at a low position.
“We are very cautious now because the regime may use this situation as an excuse,” Tehran's rights activist was sentenced to jail in a mass protest in 2022.
The activist said he knew dozens of people called by authorities and arrested or warned of any expression of objection.
Kurdish group says they are targeting
Iran's rights group Hena said on Monday that it has recorded 705 arrests on political or security charges since the war began.
Many arrested persons have been accused of Israeli espionage, Hener said.
Iranian state media reported that three were executed in Urmia near the Turkish border on Tuesday, and Iranian-Kurdian rights group Hengo said they were all Kurdish.
Iran's diplomatic and indoor departments did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
As Israel and Iran cleaned up in air strikes ahead of the crumbling ceasefire, many expressed doubts about whether the fragile peace would last.
An official briefed that the troops had been deployed to the Pakistan, Iraq and Azerbaijan borders to prevent the so-called terrorist infiltration by officials.
Another official introduced the security, admitting that hundreds of people have been arrested.
Iran is mostly Sunni Muslim Kurds and Barak minorities have been the source of opposition to the Islamic Republic, a rule against rule in Tehran’s Persian Shiite government.
Three major Iranian Kurdish separatist factions, based in Iraqi Kurdistan, say some of their radicals and combatants have been arrested and described the extensive military and security movements of the Iranian authorities.
Ribaz Khalili, a Democrat from Iran's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDPI) Democrat, said the Revolutionary Guard forces were deployed in schools in Iran's Kurdish province three days after the Israeli strike started and caused by the House of Representatives.
The Guard also took protective measures, evacuating an industrial area near the barracks and closing the main roads to bring reinforcements to kermanshah and Sanandaj in two major cities in the Kurdish region.
A cadre from the Kurdistan Liberal Living Party (PJAK) who gave her Nom de Guerre Fatma Ahmed said the party has calculated more than 500 opposition members who have been detained in Kurdish province since the start of the air strikes.
Officials from Ahmed and Komala Party of Kurdish Party spoke on condition of anonymity, both describing checkpoints established in the Kurdish region and through physical searches of people and cell phone and document checks.
