Where Did—and Does—the Order to Kill Come From?

The Chain of Command and Criminal Responsibility in the Islamic Republic’s Machinery of Repression

When people are killed in the streets, the first image is of the officer who fired; the baton that came down; the plain-clothes agent who moved through the crowd; the force that dragged a young person along the ground. But if justice looks only at that final scene, the central part of the crime remains hidden.

Street killings do not begin in the street. The street is the final scene. Before that, people have securitised the situation, held meetings, called in forces, appointed commanders, blocked the flow of information, brought hospitals, detention centres and courts into the cycle of repression, and then sought to conceal the figures, the names and the responsibilities.

So the central question is this: where did—and does—the order to kill come from?

Does responsibility lie only with the officer who pulled the trigger? Can the commander who gave the order, the governor who securitised the situation, the interior minister who managed domestic security, the Supreme National Security Council that set the overarching security policy, and the Commander-in-Chief, who stands at the head of this structure, simply wash their hands of it?

To answer, we must look at the structure. Article 110 of the Constitution places the Leader of the Islamic Republic in the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and gives him the authority to appoint and dismiss senior military and law-enforcement commanders. Article 176 concerns the Supreme National Security Council, which determines the country’s defence and security policies within the framework of general policies, and whose resolutions can be implemented after the Leader’s approval.

Taken together, these two articles show the map of power. In the Islamic Republic, a major security decision is not made by a street officer or a local commander. The Supreme National Security Council includes the heads of the three branches of government, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, the ministers of the interior, intelligence and foreign affairs, two representatives of the Leader, and, where relevant, the most senior figures in the Revolutionary Guards and the Army. In other words, the government, the judiciary, parliament, the Revolutionary Guards, the Army, the Ministry of Intelligence and the Leader’s direct representatives all converge at one point.

So when repression unfolds in several cities according to a similar pattern, when the FARAJA, the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, special units, plain-clothes agents, the Ministry of Intelligence, the judiciary and state media each play a part, it can no longer be reduced to the conduct of a few rogue officers. We must trace the chain: from the street to the security room, from the field commander to the Commander-in-Chief.

At the head of this chain stood Ali Khamenei. He was not merely a ceremonial figure. He was the Commander-in-Chief. The senior military and law-enforcement commanders were appointed through a structure that led back to him. He appointed the head of the judiciary. His representatives sat on the Supreme National Security Council, and major security resolutions could not be implemented without his approval. Now that he has been removed from the scene of power, and Mojtaba Khamenei’s name is being put forward as his successor amid ambiguity, absence and concealment, the issue is not simply one person’s death; it is the continuation of the same machinery of power.

Khamenei was not an isolated individual; he was the head of a system. A system that saw protest as a security threat, turned citizens into enemies, sacrificed the right to life in the name of preserving the regime, and then used words such as security, rioting, expediency and law to conceal the bloodshed.

For nearly four months, the government kept Ali Khamenei’s body from public view, then sought to craft a heroic, saint-like narrative of his death by holding an unprecedented ceremony and displaying coffins in cities across the country. This is not the first time the Islamic Republic has used mourning and state ceremonies to rebuild its legitimacy. But for many Iranians, Khamenei was not a saint, but a dictator who was ultimately consigned to the grave and the dustbin of history. Even so, the end of one individual does not mean the end of that structure. As Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has repeatedly stressed, the aim is not merely to see one person go; it is to dismantle a system that reproduces despotism, repression and violations of people’s rights. As long as that structure remains in place, the struggle of the Iranian people is not over.

This is where it becomes important to recall Hannah Arendt’s discussion of personal responsibility under dictatorship. Arendt warns that people cannot hide behind the sentence, ‘If I didn’t do it, someone else would.’ Under totalitarian regimes, many see themselves as mere cogs; but those very cogs set the machinery of crime in motion. The officer, commander, minister, judge, interrogator, media executive and security official must each say what they did and why they did it.

On the day of justice, it must not be only the street officer who is tried. That officer must be held accountable, but that is not enough. The field commander must answer. The commanders of the FARAJA, the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, the special units and the plain-clothes forces must explain what orders they gave. Governors, provincial governors and security councils must clarify when they securitised the situation and why they sent repressive forces into the streets. The Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Council must answer for the management and coordination of domestic security. The Ministry of Intelligence and the Intelligence Organisation of the Revolutionary Guards must explain the identification and arrest of people, threats against families and the fabrication of cases. The judiciary must answer for how it turned street repression into sentences, imprisonment and execution. State media, too, must answer for concealing the truth and replacing the voices of victims with the narrative of the repressors.

But at the head of all this, the Commander-in-Chief must be held accountable. Khamenei cannot be presented as an outside observer. If organised killings took place, his role must be examined in the body of the case—not in the margins.

As for the number of those killed, the final figure still requires an independent investigation and access to hospitals, cemeteries, families, medical records and security files. Some reports have spoken of several thousand dead, while some accounts have put the figure at tens of thousands. But the issue is not only the number. Even if the government accepts the lowest figures, we are still faced with the killing of people. No government has the right to kill its citizens in the name of security and then evade accountability.

The order to kill is not always a written sentence. Sometimes it is issued by securitising a protest. Sometimes it lies in deliberate silence. Sometimes it takes the form of support after the crime. Sometimes it is found in concealing figures, threatening families, preventing an independent investigation and granting immunity to the forces of repression.

Justice must see the entire chain: who fired, who gave the order, who approved it, who failed to prevent it, who concealed it, and who stepped over the blood of the people to preserve the regime.

Until this entire chain is brought into view, justice will not be done.