The Mullahs’ Mask is Gone
An Iranian state-TV host recently went on air and mocked Iranians killed by the regime, cracking jokes about where to put the bodies. He framed it like a casual, jokey question — floating options like storing them in refrigerators or ice containers, as if he were talking about leftovers, not murdered people. The tone was light, almost playful. No sympathy. No gravity. Just open contempt, broadcast on state television.
The cruelty alone is newsworthy. But what really matters is what this tells us about where things now stand in Iran. This wasn’t just sadism slipping through the cracks. It was a signal. It’s diagnostic of a real state change in the Iranian landscape — a shift in how the regime now relates to the people it rules.
For decades, the Islamic Republic didn’t rely only on force. It relied on managing what people thought other people thought. It put on a show of respecting “the people,” talked about dignity and justice, and pretended its violence was reluctant or imposed from outside. That performance wasn’t for true believers. It was for everyone else — to keep people unsure. You might hate the regime, but you didn’t know whether your neighbor did. Or your coworker. Or even your cousin.
That uncertainty didn’t have to be imposed. It arose naturally from fear and silence, and then reinforced itself socially — in families, workplaces, and on the street. That’s the heart of totalitarianism: not just repression from above, but a population kept fragmented by not knowing who else is aligned.
The massacres shattered that. Everyone saw what happened, and everyone knows everyone else saw it too. Silence stopped meaning consent. It started meaning “not yet.”
Once that happened, the regime no longer needed to pretend. It no longer needed to sound humane or respectful, because belief had already collapsed. What remained was enforcement — and with it, a willingness to speak openly with contempt rather than hide it behind ritual language.
This segment would not have aired a month ago. Someone would have stopped it. The fact that it aired now tells you the regime understands that the old pretense no longer works.