Iran's regime is increasingly forced to defend itself at home

From the seething streets to the armed peripheries of the country, the signs are multiplying in Iran, and they are increasingly difficult to dismiss as isolated incidents. The Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the institution that forged much of Iran's influence abroad, must now devote a growing share of its resources to protecting the regime on home soil. At the same time, Mohsen Rezaei was appointed secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and the supreme leader's representative to that body. These are not simply posts handed to familiar figures: these appointments symbolize the mobilization of the IRGC's men, the security apparatus, and unconditional loyalists at a moment when protecting the clerical regime has become inseparable from the war it wages abroad. In August, Germany joined 31 other countries as well as the EU high representative in a statement condemning the execution of protesters and denouncing the use of the death penalty to silence dissent and intimidate society. The writer is a UAE political analyst and former Federal National Council candidate.