2 Oct 2026
Is Iran becoming North Korea — or can society stop it? | Eye for Iran | EP 123 |
Are we witnessing the “North Koreanization” of the Islamic Republic of Iran?
From the growing presence of Basij paramilitary forces in elementary schools to the sentencing of musicians and the accelerating use of executions against those detained in connection with January’s uprising, repression inside Iran appears to be intensifying. Just this week, two protesters detained following the January unrest were executed.
But every society has a red line. Has Iran reached its own?
This week on Eye for Iran, we look beyond the possibility of another war with the United States or a new diplomatic deal to examine the forces unfolding inside Iran — and what they may tell us about the direction of the Islamic Republic itself.
Former US diplomat Alberto Fernandez, vice president of the Middle East Media Research Institute, warns of what he calls the “North Koreanization” or “Houthization” of Iran: a system that survives, but as a poorer, harsher and increasingly hollowed-out state. “It doesn’t mean that the regime falls tomorrow,” Fernandez says, but if it survives, Iran could become “a more ramshackle predatory state” in which repression becomes increasingly overt.
Kamran Bokhari, strategic forecaster and senior resident fellow at the Middle East Policy Council, sees what he calls a “slow meltdown,” arguing that the regime’s fundamental challenge is not simply war but governance and the economy. And there are limits to repression, he says: used on too great a scale, it can “backfire” and eventually raise questions even within the security forces.
David Patrikarakos, special correspondent for the Daily Mail and author of Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State, points to an even more basic indicator: whether ordinary Iranians can afford to live. “You can only terrorize people back into their homes for so many things,” he says. “If they’re starving, they can’t afford food, there’s nothing you can do.”
Together, the three experts identify the trends they are watching most closely — economic pressure, the cost of basic goods, internal regime infighting, unrest and the limits of the state’s coercive power — and what those indicators could reveal about what comes next for Iran.
We then turn from repression to resistance.
Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, editor and co-translator of Open Wide the Doors, the new memoir by acclaimed Iranian poet, writer and Baha’i prisoner of conscience Mahvash Sabet, discusses decades of persecution faced by Iran’s Baha’i community and Sabet’s philosophy of “constructive resilience.”
Nakhjavani describes it not as passive resistance, nor as aggression, but as a purposeful refusal to allow repression to define the individual. She connects Sabet’s experience in prison to a broader transformation she sees taking place in Iran, particularly since the Woman, Life, Freedom movement: the moment when people establish a red line and say, “thus far and no further.”
Finally, we examine a viral political exchange in Michigan that struck a nerve among many Iranians.
University of Michigan student Iman Dashti questioned Democratic US Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed at a town hall over whether he stood unequivocally against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. El-Sayed said he stood with movements for freedom and democracy and opposed US-led regime change, but Dashti says the answer did not address the specific question he had asked about the IRGC.
“I never asked about regime change,” Dashti told Iran International after the exchange. His question, he says, was fundamentally about whether an American political candidate would explicitly stand with Iranians facing repression.
Dashti joins Eye for Iran to explain why he asked the question, why the exchange resonated so widely and what happened after the video went viral — including the harassment, threats and alleged doxxing of...
