How Will the Iranian Government React to Increased U.S. Pressures?

The announcement of a death sentence for an 'Mossad agent' by Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the Tehran Prosecutor General, came just one day after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's speech on October 23, marking the 34th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. This indicates an acceleration of actions and reactions expected as a consequence of Donald Trump's speech on October 13 regarding Iran and the nuclear agreement. No previous U.S. administration has commemorated the October 23, 1983 bombing, which killed 241 U.S. Marines, and the accusation of the Islamic Republic of Iran's involvement in that explosion and another major bombing that destroyed the U.S. embassy in Beirut in April of that year, killing 58, has only been raised in the form of court rulings in favor of the victims' survivors, not as an official accusation by U.S. political officials. The Beirut suicide bombings, the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kuwait, the kidnapping of American and European citizens, and the 1985 hijacking of a Jordanian airline that ended with the intervention of Hashemi Rafsanjani leading to the release of hostages and the explosion of the plane at Beirut airport are part of the accusations attributed to 'Hezbollah Lebanon,' which the Islamic Republic has never denied having close ties with. The individual for whom the Tehran prosecutor announced a death sentence on Tuesday was accused of 'providing the addresses and some details of thirty prominent individuals involved in military and nuclear research projects to Mossad intelligence officers.' The details provided by the Tehran prosecutor align with accusations against 'Ahmadreza Jalali,' an Iranian researcher residing in Sweden, who traveled to Iran at the invitation of educational centers and was arrested on espionage charges by Iranian intelligence sources, and has been in prison since May 5 of last year. The Islamic Republic executed Majid Jamali Fashi in 2012 on similar charges. The Islamic Republic's resort to questionable executions in retaliation for the deaths of personnel at Iran's nuclear and missile facilities during terrorist actions, suspected to involve foreign agents, as well as increased violence against the people to instill fear domestically, is a pattern that the Islamic government has followed with varying degrees of intensity in the past. It is not unexpected that, as a result of new confrontational and punitive policies from the U.S. and changes in the nature of foreign relations and the internal situation in Iran, a new wave of violence may return to the country. A recent official report by Asma Jahangir, the UN Human Rights Rapporteur, addressing the crisis due to human rights violations in Iran (and Myanmar), expressed her concerns regarding 'the number of executions and torture, the execution of juveniles, the trial and harassment of human rights activists, restrictions on freedom of expression, and the status of women and ethnic and religious minorities.' In the past, the Islamic Republic has responded to internal and external crises with harsh measures, particularly through waves of executions. The first wave of executions at the beginning of the revolution continued until 1984, with some unofficial statistics indicating up to six thousand executions during that time in the prisons of the Islamic Republic. The second wave of executions in 1988 led to the deaths of up to 15,000 opponents of the Islamic Republic in prisons. The assassination of more than a hundred opponents of the Islamic Republic abroad, including Shapour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister before the Iranian revolution, Shahrayar Shafigh, a senior naval officer of the Imperial Iranian Navy, General Gholamali Oveisi, artist Fereydoun Farrokhzad, and Sadegh Sharafkandi, the Secretary-General of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, and the implementation of the 'chain murders' plan, which was mainly carried out during Rafsanjani's presidency and officially revealed during Khatami's presidency, with Dariush Forouhar being one of the most recognized victims, are just part of the violence perpetrated by the Islamic government in times of crisis. The trend of regional developments, the announcement of the new U.S. government's foreign policy lines regarding the Iranian government, which U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson addressed on Wednesday in New Delhi, emphasizing targeting the 'malicious behaviors' of the Islamic Republic, and the prediction of new sanctions that could return the country to the financial and economic situation it faced from 2012 to 2016, are preambles to a new crisis threatening the Iranian religious government.