The Islamic Republic Imports Its Terror Network To Kill Peaceful Protesters

The main target of the Iran-led Axis of Resistance today is unarmed protesters. The Islamic Republic has reportedly tapped its terrorist proxies to suppress the country’s ongoing protest wave, bringing in over 800 Iraqi fighters and Hezbollah operatives, so far. Nearly all of them are members of Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, or Sayyid al-Shuhada, each one a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), though Iran-backed Badr Organization has also made an appearance. Tehran is relying on these proxies because they are assets it already fields, have proven willing to kill unarmed civilians, and because the leadership fears defections within its own security forces under current conditions.

Iran’s nationwide protests, accompanied by strikes in the small business and energy sectors, have entered their second week with nearly 40 deaths recorded. Having lost its legitimacy due to the country’s ongoing economic collapse, energy outages, and environmental crises, the regime is also weakened militarily following June’s 12-Day War strikes on its ballistic, nuclear, and air defense infrastructure. The Islamic Republic now faces an existential threat from within.

External Shiite Militias Have Suppressed Past Major Protests

Iran’s 2009 protests marked the first instance of the regime relying on its proxies to quell unrest. Some 5,000 Lebanese Hezbollah fighters helped carry out crackdowns that killed more than 70 people. In 2019, after floods devastated parts of Iran, the regime prioritized deploying foreign militias over humanitarian relief to deter dissent. In Khuzestan Province, this included Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) — an official Iraqi security organization comprised largely of Iran-backed militias, including U.S. designated terrorist groups — and the Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade. The regime also deployed hundreds of Iraqi and Lebanese militia members during the 2022 “Women, Life, Freedom” movement.

Authorities seek to conceal this strategy by presenting militias as students studying the “culture of the [Islamic] Revolution” or as “pilgrims” visiting Shiite shrines in Iran. Yet in 2019, the former head of Tehran’s revolutionary court explicitly threatened: “If we do not support the [Islamic] Revolution, the Iraqi Hashd al Shaabi (PMF), Afghan Fatemiyoun, Pakistani Zeynabiyoun, and Yemeni Houthis will come to support it.”

Foreign Terrorists Are Iran’s Tools at Home and Abroad

The same groups now working to suppress average Iranians have a track record of terror in the region. In Syria, Iran deployed nearly its entire Axis of Resistance, including Iraqi proxies, with Afghan and Pakistani brigades — along with Lebanon’s Hezbollah — to support the Bashar al-Assad’s regime during the civil war. Assad and his partners killed more than 300,000 civilians and committed countless atrocities, according to the United Nations.

In Iraq, PMF militias, in collaboration with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp, killed hundreds of peaceful protesters during the 2019 Tishreen street protests in Iraq by firing at demonstrators, as well as waging an assassination campaign against activists.

Americans have been targets of these same terror groups as well. Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran-backed militias, in various iterations, served as the Islamic Republic’s means to threaten American forces. They killed more than 600 American servicemembers between 2003 and 2011. These same militias launched nearly 200 attacks on U.S. forces, as well as dozens aimed at Israel, following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror attack.

Washington Should Sideline Iran’s Proxies and Support Iranian Protesters

To protect Iran’s people — and the rest of the region — from these Iraqi militias, it is imperative that they be sidelined at home. The Trump administration should stand firm on its position that politicians from the political parties behind the militias not be given leadership roles in Iraq’s next government, which is now forming. To reinforce this red line, possible financial and military consequences should be made clear.

Additionally, the United States should back protesters in Iran by amplifying chants on the ground through VOA Persian and USAbehFarsi, providing tools that allow Iranians to avoid the regimes internet restrictions, disrupting the regime’s communications through cyberattacks, and striking the state’s apparatus of repression to enable Iranians to push the regime toward collapse.

Janatan Sayeh is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he focuses on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic’s regional malign influence. Bridget Toomey is a research analyst at FDD, where she focuses on Iranian proxies. For more analysis from Janatan, Bridget, and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow Janatan on X @JanatanSayehand Bridget @BridgetKToomey. Follow FDD on X @FDDand @FDD_Iran. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.