Don’t Discount Iran’s Internal Opposition

The Islamic Republic takes domestic critics seriously. Other oppositionists should, too.

By Arash Azizi

Killing thousands of protesters last month was apparently not enough for the Islamic Republic, which followed up by arresting prominent internal critics, too.

The Iranian regime wouldn’t have gone after these figures if it didn’t fear them—perhaps even as much as it fears the royalist movement that has surged around former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.

Its sensitivity about both groups is a reminder that uniting them remains the Iranian opposition’s best move, if only activists would take it.

On January 31, the domestic oppositionists Abdollah Momeni, Mehdi Mahmoudian, and Vida Rabbani were swept up and sent to prisons in northern Iran, far from their Tehran residences.

They were released on bail on February 17. Mahmoudian’s case attracted international attention because he is the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Jafar Panahi’s 2025 film, It Was Just an Accident. All three figures were once associated with the regime’s internal movement for incremental reform; all three long ago abandoned that stance to advocate the wholesale transformation of the system instead.

Last month, the three arrested activists had joined two like-minded figures—former Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh and the Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi, both in prison—in calling for a democratic transition and free elections for a constituent assembly.

In an interview with BBC Persian, Mahmoudian called on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to resign.

Hassan Asadi Zeydabadi, a lawyer who represents Rabbani and Momeni, told me that his clients were most likely arrested because they advocated for Khamenei’s dismissal and because “the regime wants to prevent the formation of a national opposition inside the country.”