Turan Research Center

On November 26, two West Virginia National Guard soldiers were shot just blocks from the White House in what officials describe as a targeted ambush. President Donald Trump labeled it an “act of terror” and ordered a federal investigation.

The facts of the attack are still emerging, and there is no evidence yet that it is linked to any foreign organization. What it already shows, however, is how abruptly terrorism can return to the center of American politics.

That reality has been ignored during Washington’s recent reengagement with Central Asia. On November 6, President Trump hosted the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan at the White House for the tenth C5+1 summit. The agenda was dominated by critical minerals, rare earths, and the “Middle Corridor” trade route that bypasses Russia.

After a decade of very limited engagement, treating Central Asia as a serious economic and energy partner is an important shift. So far, however, the revived C5+1 has placed more visible emphasis on critical minerals and connectivity than on the one area where the region is already central to Western security: the rise of Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K. For this new economic partnership to be truly durable, it will need to be matched by a more developed track of joint security measures against these shared threats.

Central Asia and the New Wave of ISIS-K attacks

Over the past two years, ISIS-K has turned from a largely Afghan-focused insurgent group into one of the most active external operations hubs in the Islamic State network. A striking share of the operatives involved are from Central Asia, especially Tajikistan.

The clearest example is Russia. On March 22, 2024, four gunmen stormed the Crocus City Hall complex outside Moscow, shooting concertgoers and setting the venue on fire. The attack killed around 150 people and injured more than 600, making it one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern Russian history. ISIS-K claimed responsibility, and Russian reporting has identified the four alleged gunmen as Tajik citizens recruited via online channels while living as migrant workers in Russia.

Just weeks earlier, on January 3, 2024, a commemorative gathering in Kerman, Iran, near the grave of Qasem Soleimani, was hit by twin suicide bombings that killed more than 100 people. The Islamic State soon claimed responsibility, and U.S. intelligence later assessed that ISIS-K organized the attack from Afghanistan. Iranian officials said at least one bomber and a key organizer were Central Asian, including a Tajik national.

Europe has seen the same pattern in disrupted plots. German prosecutors have charged a cell of Tajik, Kyrgyz, and Turkmen nationals with forming an ISIS-K network and scouting targets in Germany and other Western European countries. Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, French officials named ISIS-K the primary terrorist threat to the ames, and security services stepped up engagement with Central Asian communities in France in response to earlier attacks by Tajik ISIS-K supporters in Iran and Russia.

Recent events underline how quickly this threat is evolving. On January 20th, the group claimed an attack in Kabul that it framed as targeting Chinese interests, and pro-ISIS-K media channels followed by pushing anti-China messaging in multiple regional languages. On January 27th, Azerbaijani authorities said they disrupted a plot in Baku linked to ISIS-K that targeted a foreign embassy. These episodes reinforce the wider pattern. ISIS-K is not only projecting outward from Afghanistan but also seeking opportunities across the broader region.

The U.S. security agencies monitor the group’s external operations with increasing attention. The Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment lists ISIS-K as the Islamic State affiliate most focused on plotting attacks against the West, and U.S. defense and intelligence assessments increasingly frame affiliates in Afghanistan as among the most serious foreign terrorist threats to the homeland. Congressional testimony on South and Central Asia now routinely highlights Tajik and other Central Asian nationals in ISIS-K related investigations in Europe and the United States.

In other words, the pattern is already visible. Many of the most consequential ISIS-K attacks and plots in the last two years have either been carried out by Central Asian militants or built on recruitment pipelines that run through Central Asia, Russia, and Turkey and then extend into Europe.

Regional Factors Shaping ISIS-K’s Reach into Central Asia

Some of the ingredients are not entirely new. The Tajik civil war in the 1990s, the emergence of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the later travel of a number of Central Asian nationals to ISIS in Syria and Iraq created small but durable transnational linkages and security legacies. None of this means Central Asia is predisposed to extremism, and the overwhelming majority of Central Asians rejected these movements. But the history matters in a narrow sense. When contemporary drivers align, especially migration-related marginalization and online propaganda, external actors like ISIS-K can more easily activate existing networks and narratives.

Recently, several structural trends have created a set of vulnerabilities for ISIS-K recruitment and external operations.

First, the security landscape in Afghanistan has changed in ways that favor ISIS-K. Since the Taliban takeover in 2021, ISIS-K has lost territory inside Afghanistan but preserved much of its leadership and has shifted toward a strategy that prioritizes spectacular external attacks over holding ground. UN monitoring and independent analysis describe the group maintaining cells in northeastern Afghanistan, building an external operations wing, and using remote areas to train recruits and coordinate attacks in Russia, Iran, and Europe. The Taliban do fight ISIS-K, but they have limited capacity to police remote provinces or run a modern intelligence service. That creates pockets of space where ISIS-K can plan abroad, facing far less pressure than it did during the height of the U.S. presence.

Second, Tajikistan is especially vulnerable. It is one of the poorest states in the former Soviet Union, with a porous border with Afghanistan and a political system that fails to deliver broad-based growth. Remittances from migrant workers in Russia make up a large share of GDP, migrants comprising around 25% of the total workforce. [JA1] After the Crocus City Hall attack, Russian authorities intensified scrutiny of Central Asian migrant communities through stepped-up checks, detentions, and deportations. Economic dependence on migration, backlash in host countries, and weak governance at home all create exactly the kind of marginalization that ISIS-K recruiters exploit. Analysts and journalists who have traced the backgrounds of militants involved in Moscow and Kerman have repeatedly found patterns of low-wage work in Russia, social isolation, and exposure to online propaganda in Tajik and Russian.

Third, ISIS-K has built a tailored propaganda machine for Central Asians. The group’s media arms produce materials in Tajik, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz, as well as Russian, distributed through encrypted channels rather than high-visibility global platforms. The broader Middle East context shapes the information environment that ISIS-K exploits. Europol assessesthat the conflict in Gaza has amplified terrorist and violent extremist narratives inside the EU, driving radicalization and mobilization, and that propaganda around the conflict has been instrumentalized across the ideological spectrum. A recent UN briefing and independent monitoring highlight how ISIS-K has intensified recruitment efforts directed at Tajikistan and other Central Asian states, including outreach to disillusioned Taliban fighters and members of local extremist groups such as Jamaat Ansarullah. This shift has made radicalization less dependent on travel to Syria or Iraq. Instead, individuals can move from grievance to connection with ISIS-K networks almost entirely online, while physically located in Russia, Turkey, Central Asia, or Europe.

Fourth, regional powers are distracted. Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine has drained Moscow’s military and diplomatic bandwidth, while its response to Crocus City Hall has focused more on suggesting links to Ukraine and intensifying scrutiny against migrants. Iran is consumed by internal unrest and regional confrontation. China’s role in Central Asia remains primarily economic. That leaves Central Asian governments facing a transnational terrorist network with fewer reliable security partners and limited resources of their own.

C5+1: Big Economic Deals, a Quiet Security Gap

Against that backdrop, the 2025 C5+1 summit in Washington was a turning point. It showed that the United States is treating Central Asia as more than a logistical appendage to Afghanistan or a buffer between Russia and China. The summit produced major economic announcements, including new American-backed investments in Kazakhstan’s tungsten and uranium sectors and expanded cooperation on critical minerals and transit routes. Official statements and most media coverage framed the summit as a geoeconomic success. The Trump administration presented Central Asia as a “win-win” partner that can help diversify U.S. supply chains away from China and Russia while benefiting from American investment and technology. What was largely missing in the public agenda was any ambitious, visible initiative on counterterrorism.  Security was mentioned, but there was no flagship program on border management, no new joint mechanism focused specifically on ISIS-K networks, and no public signal that Washington views Central Asia’s role in the emerging terrorism landscape as a strategic priority on par with minerals and corridors. That is a notable shift from earlier phases of U.S. engagement in the region, when the U.S. Central Asia relationship was primarily organized around security cooperation linked to Afghanistan. In the years after 9/11, geography elevated Central Asia’s strategic value, and several regional governments supported U.S. and NATO operations through basing and transit arrangements, making counterterrorism and related security coordination the core frame for engagement. That may reflect understandable caution. U.S. policymakers do not want to be pulled back into Afghanistan or to revive the image of a boundless war on terror. But treating Central Asia as mainly a commercial opportunity at the very moment when Tajikistan has become central to ISIS-K’s external strategy might create a strategic blind spot.

Aligning Security and Connectivity

There are three ways the United States could effectively engage the region on security.

1. Make ISIS-K and Central Asia a formal, standing priority in C5+1. The U.S. and the five Central Asian governments should restore and upgrade a dedicated working group on terrorism and violent extremism within this framework. Its focus should be narrow and practical: mapping ISIS-K networks that connect Afghanistan to Central Asia, Russia, Turkey, and Europe, sharing information on Central Asian militants involved in recent attacks and plots, and pooling analysis of online propaganda in Tajik, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz language spaces. That would send two important messages. To Central Asian leaders, it would show that Washington takes their security concerns seriously. To U.S. agencies, it would create a regular venue for integrating regional partners into a threat picture that now directly affects Europe and, potentially, the United States.

2. Focus assistance on the specific gaps ISIS-K exploits. Central Asian governments do not need large American bases. They need better tools in three areas: Borders, especially along the Afghan frontier, and key transit nodes linking Central Asia to Russia and Turkey. Data and watch listing systems, so that high-risk individuals who move between Afghanistan, Central Asia, Russia, Turkey, and the EU do not disappear into bureaucratic cracks. Investigative capacity, so that terrorism cases are built on evidence and networks can be mapped, instead of relying on mass arrests that fuel resentment. These are relatively low-cost investments compared with traditional military deployments, yet they can significantly complicate ISIS-K logistics and recruitment.

3. Link security to the human terrain of Central Asian migration. Much of the ISIS-K story runs through Tajik and other Central Asian migrants whose grievances are rooted in humiliation, hopelessness at home, and online propaganda. A credible U.S. approach should therefore include support for programs that work directly with Central Asian communities in Russia, Turkey, and Europe, as well as with young people in Tajikistan and neighboring states. That includes legal assistance and labor rights work that reduces exploitation, educational and economic opportunities that give alternatives to recruitment, and locally grounded counter-narratives in Central Asian languages. Much of this can be funded out of existing democracy, governance, and development budgets if Washington explicitly defines preventing violent extremism as part of its development mandate.

None of these steps will fully eliminate ISIS-K, and Central Asia should not be portrayed as a region defined by terrorism alone. The point is narrower. ISIS-K’s external operations have increasingly relied on facilitation networks that touch Central Asia, and that has direct implications for European security and for U.S. interests. A C5+1 agenda centered on minerals and connectivity will be more durable if it is paired with a practical, partner-led security track focused on intelligence sharing, border integrity, and investigative capacity. Aligning the economic and security pillars in this way reduces the risk of strategic surprise and helps ensure that the Middle Corridor is built on resilience.

Ali Mammadov is a PhD researcher in political science at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and the Managing Editor of the Center for Security Policy Studies. His work focuses on military alliances, multipolarity, and the strategic behavior of rising and middle powers, with analysis appearing in the Atlantic Council and The National Interest and cited by the Financial Times and the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Shortly after midnight on January 18, Tajik security forces killed four armed militants who had crossed into southern Tajikistan from Afghanistan. According to official accounts, the group, described only as members of an unnamed “terrorist organization,” refused to surrender after a brief exchange of fire near the strategic Pamir Highway, a vital corridor linking Tajikistan to China.

Beijing has grown increasingly uneasy about the uptick in violence along its southern frontier with Tajikistan. Last November, an assault by an armed drone launched from Afghanistan killed three Chinese nationals working at a gold mining site in the Shamsiddin Shohin district of southern Tajikistan, prompting public demands for stronger protection of Chinese workers and investments.

Efforts by Tajik and Afghan officials to defuse border tensions quickly faltered. A day after the first attack, a Taliban delegation traveled to Tajikistan's restive Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO) – the stretch of territory that covers most of the shared border – to discuss de-escalation. The talks quickly broke down. Four days later, two more Chinese workers of the China Road and Bridge Corporation were killed near the village of Shodak in the Darvaz district.

The violence is already disrupting major investment projects.

Construction of the Dushanbe-China international highway in the Darvaz district, the site of the second attack, was suspended "to ensure the safety of Chinese workers" and will remain paused until the "security situation is fully restored." Although construction resumed in January, future attacks could trigger new delays.

These incidents illustrate how seemingly isolated acts of violence are reshaping China’s threat assessments and recasting Tajikistan from a cooperative partner into a frontline security concern within Beijing’s broader strategy to stabilize its western periphery.

China’s Strategic Interests in Tajikistan

China’s security engagement with Tajikistan is driven less by ambitions of regional power than by a desire to manage perceived vulnerabilities along its western frontier. At the center of Beijing’s concerns lies the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where Chinese authorities have long emphasized the risks posed by separatist movements. Since the early 1990s, Chinese officials have consistently framed neighboring Central Asia — and Tajikistan in particular —as part of a broader security buffer designed to shield Xinjiang from what they call the “Three Evils” of separatism, extremism, and terrorism.

Tajikistan is a key security link.

Its long, mountainous border with Afghanistan is notoriously difficult to police, and overlooks the Wakhan Corridor, the narrow Afghan strip that connects directly to China. During a 2014 tour of Xinjiang, President Xi Jinping warned that Uyghur fighters returning from Syria could exploit Afghanistan as a staging ground to launch attacks on China through this corridor.

The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) has demonstrated a growing capacity to target Chinese interests in Afghanistan, leveraging both operational partnerships and ideological narratives to advance its campaign. The group has cultivated tactical relationships with Uyghur Islamist militant organizations, most notably the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), to execute attacks against Chinese nationals and assets operating within Afghan territory.

Beyond these operational linkages, ISKP has sought to instrumentalize Beijing's policies toward Uyghur populations in Xinjiang as a mobilizing grievance, framing its anti-China agenda within a broader narrative of Muslim persecution. Since 2017, Chinese authorities have detained an estimated one million or more Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in extrajudicial internment facilities, imposed extensive surveillance and movement restrictions, and pursued policies that the United States and several other governments have characterized as genocide and crimes against humanity.

The January 19 assault on a Chinese restaurant in Kabul — for which ISKP claimed responsibility, resulting in at least seven casualties — underscores the operational seriousness of this threat. The attack was followed by a coordinated media campaign across ISKP -aligned channels, disseminated in eight languages, explicitly threatening further strikes against Chinese interests. This sophisticated information operation signals both the group's intent to sustain pressure on Beijing and its capacity to project messaging to diverse audiences across multiple regions.

Yet the threat to Chinese nationals in the region extends beyond ideologically motivated terrorism. Beijing's security concerns are not entirely unfounded, but they must be understood within a more complex local context — one in which Chinese commercial activities have themselves become a source of instability.

The Tajik-Afghan border has grown increasingly volatile over the past year. Tajik officials reported 10 armed incidentsalong the frontier, including the attacks on Chinese workers noted earlier. Between November 2024 and January 2026, at least 20 people have been killed in firefights in this area between Tajik border guards and militants from the Afghan side. Much of the violence has stemmed from the activities of Chinese mining companies diverting the course of local rivers and causing ecological damage. Despite armed conflicts centered on the village of Dovang in August and October, our sources indicate the Chinese company has expanded its operations — apparently emboldened by security guarantees from Dushanbe — further aggravating local tensions.

Attacks on Chinese nationals working in Tajikistan — including deadly assaults near the Afghan frontier — have underscored the risks facing Chinese personnel and investments. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon “sharply condemned the illegal and provocative actions of Afghan citizens,” framing the incidents as a direct threat to national stability. On December 4, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization also “strongly condemned” the violence, stating that Afghanistan"should not be used to create a threat to the security of neighboring countries and the region as a whole." Two days earlier, the Chinese embassy ordered its workers near the Afghan border to evacuate and urged Tajik authorities to take the “necessary measures” to ensure their protection.

The move was intended to pressure the Tajik government to step up its response and to signal to the Taliban that China was taking the threat with growing seriousness. Rather than deploying large numbers of Chinese forces, Beijing has relied on a low-visibility approach: funding infrastructure at remote border outposts, strengthening surveillance and monitoring systems, and embedding its security cooperation within bilateral and multilateral frameworks such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

To date, China has been careful to avoid any appearance of encroaching on Russia’s traditional security primacy in Tajikistan. Moscow remains Dushanbe’s principal security guarantor through its military base in the country and its leading role within the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) of which Tajikistan is a member. Russian border guards were stationed on the Tajik-Afghan border until 2004. After the most recent attacks,  Reuters published a piece saying that Tajikistan and Russia were in talks to conduct joint patrols on the border. But the article was quickly retracted. Such rumors are frequent, often started by Russian officials seeking to push the Tajik side to do more.

Chinese officials rarely frame their security activities in Tajikistan as a substitute for Russia. Instead, Beijing consistently portrays its role as complementary — focused on border management, counterterrorism, and protecting economic projects — while leaving conventional defense and crisis response to Moscow. In 2017, Beijing even invited Russian policy analysts to assess its intentions firsthand, making great efforts to reassure them that China's facility in the Pamir Mountains served logistical rather than military purposes.

Taken together, China’s security interests in Tajikistan are best understood not as a bid to supplant Russia, but as a calibrated effort to manage specific threats Beijing perceives along Xinjiang’s border. By prioritizing border security, counterterrorism cooperation, and quiet capacity-building — while deferring to Russia’ security primacy — China has sought to reduce risk without provoking geopolitical pushback. The result is a strategy aimed at preserving Tajikistan as a stabilizing buffer rather than as a contested security arena.China’s Growing Security Presence

Russia provides almost all of Tajikistan’s military hardware and stations more than 6,000 troops in the country. Yet China’s role as an arms provider has grown over the past decade. Since 2018, Beijing has gifted Tajikistan a range of military equipment, including Norinco VP-11 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, Shaanxi Baoji Tiger vehicles, Norinco CS/VN3 light tactical armored vehicles, Type 56-3 7.62 mm assault rifles, LR2 12.7 mm rifles, and CS/SS4 82 mm self-propelled mortars. Beyond hardware, China has invested in physical infrastructure for Tajikistan’s security apparatus, building or renovating at least 15 military facilities over the past decade.

Border insecurity has been a major driver of this policy. In 2016, China’s Ministry of Public Security established asurveillance facility in Tajikistan’s Pamir region, roughly ten miles from the Afghan border. Designed to house 50 personnel and equipped with a helipad, it represents China’s first security facility in Central Asia and the first outside its national territory. It was an early signal of the broader expansion that later produced Chinese military facilities in Djibouti, Cuba, and Argentina. In 2021, Tajikistan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs invited Beijing to finance a newreconnaissance facility in the Wakhan Corridor, directly adjacent to Afghanistan.

China has also prioritized improving interoperability with Tajik forces. A joint operation in 2014 involving more than 5,000 officers led to the arrest of thirty-eight drug smugglers. Chinese and Tajik forces have also conducted joint patrols along the border in 2017 and 2019 and Tajikistan has participated in nineteen of the thirty-six joint military exercises China conducted with Central Asia militaries between 2002 and 2023. Most of these were held under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with six conducted bilaterally. Across all formats, the exercises have centered on border security and joint counterterrorism – reflecting shared concerns about instability and militant spillover from the Tajik–Afghan border.

In 2023, Tajikistan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and China’s Ministry of Public Security pledged to hold joint anti-terrorist exercises at least once every two years in another sign of the growing institutionalization of security cooperation. That commitment was reaffirmed in a bilateral meeting shortly before the November border clashes, during which both sides pledged to “carry out solid bilateral joint patrols, prevent the infiltration and spread of terrorist forces, and build a strong security shield for the development of both nations.”

China’s expanding role is not limited to state-to-state channels. A growing range of private security actors have also become involved. Tajik law does not regulate foreign private military companies, creating space for Chinese firms to operate under the supervision of national law enforcement agencies and local partners. For example, Three Lions International — a subsidiary of China Shield Security Group, which formed a strategic partnership with Tajik security firm Red Line. In 2022, Chinese security contractors trained and exercised with Tajik police to simulate the defense of a Chinese mine in Vahdat, a city in western Tajikistan. The rise of such private security contractors offers Beijing additional flexibility in safeguarding its Belt and Road projects while reducing political and operational risks for its companies.

The Future of China’s Engagement in Tajikistan

China is unlikely to dramatically expand its security role in Central Asia, not because of a lack of capacity, but because deeper involvement in security would expose Beijing to political backlash and strategic entrapment it has long sought to avoid. Beijing’s regional approach is built along three pillars - regime stability, economic leverage, and risk minimization. A more assertive security role would pull China into the region’s web of local grievances and succession politics, all of which are inherently volatile and costly to manage.

Public sentiment presents an additional constraint. Sinophobia remains one of Beijing's most significant challenges in Central Asia. State-backed media in both countries routinely celebrate the China-Tajikistan relationship, casting the two as “good neighbors, kind partners, and loyal friends.” Tajik elites often echo this enthusiasm, in part because many benefitdirectly from lucrative Chinese contracts and security assistance that keeps them in power. Yet these friendly narratives mask a more ambivalent public mood. Among ordinary Tajiks, China’s expanding presence has generated unease, skepticism, and at times outright hostility.

During our 2022 fieldwork for the book “Backlash: China’s Struggle for Influence in Central Asia,” we encountered a wide range of critical views of China – many of them shaped by rumor, mistrust, and conspiracy theories. In Khujand, Tajikistan’s second-largest city, one resident told us:” They come here building roads, but what do you think they are for? They are built to support the tanks of the Chinese army.” Similar anxieties surfaced in the Pamirs, where communities living near China’s strategic facilities voiced fears that Beijing intended to annex Tajik territory.

China is more likely to draw on the “best practices” it has refined along its East and Southeast Asian land borders than to adopt a heavy-handed security posture in Central Asia. Across its frontiers, Beijing has developed a series of low-visibility management strategies tailored to local political constraints rather than a single coercive model.

In Bhutan, Beijing has pursued what scholars describe as “friendly annexation”: incremental territorial advances paired with infrastructure construction, diplomatic engagement, and carefully calibrated restraint. This approach is designed to expand China’s presence while avoiding international backlash.

Along the Myanmar border, China has combined conflict mediation with selective tolerance of instability. By leveragingethnic Chinese armed groups and economic dependencies, Beijing maintains significant influence without assuming formal responsibility for security outcomes.

Taken together, these cases suggest that China’s future engagement in Tajikistan will mirror its broader playbook of quiet persistence rather than dramatic escalation. Beijing will keep tightening its grip through training, infrastructure, and intelligence cooperation. Still, it will stop short of assuming the responsibilities or liabilities of becoming a full-fledged security patron to avoid entanglement in domestic policies and regional rivalries.

Edward Lemon is President of the Oxus Society and Research Assistant Professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, Washington DC.

Bradley Jardine is a political risk analyst and managing director of the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs.

Oleg Antonov is a Researcher at Södertörn University. His research focuses on authoritarian governance in Central Asia, in particular Russia and China’s influence in the region.

On January 27, 2026, Azerbaijan's State Security Service announced the arrest of three young men for plotting an attack on a foreign embassy in Baku. The timing was striking: Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar had concluded meetings with President Ilham Aliyev just one day earlier. While Azerbaijani authorities did not officially name the target, multiple Israeli outlets confirmed it was their embassy.

Azerbaijani security services attributed the plot to Islamic State-Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K — the Afghan offshoot that has executed some of the deadliest terrorist attacks of recent years, including the March 2024 Crocus City Hall massacre in Moscow that killed 149 people. The suspects had allegedly obtained weapons and finalized their plans before security forces intercepted them.

The announcement received modest international attention. It should not have. The incident represents either a significant expansion of ISIS-K's operational reach into the South Caucasus or — more likely — evidence of a strategic shift in how Iran conducts covert operations in the South Caucasus.

A Pattern of Threats

This was not an isolated incident. Israeli and Jewish targets in Azerbaijan have faced a troubling series of threats in recent months. Despite close ties between Jerusalem and Baku and low levels of societal antisemitism, foreign operatives have historically managed to recruit locals for terrorist attacks. In October, an Azerbaijani court sentenced an ISIS-K affiliate to thirteen years in prison for plotting a Molotov cocktail attack on a Baku synagogue. The Conference of European Rabbis, scheduled to convene in Baku in November, was canceled over security concerns; organizers declined to provide further details.

Historically, such threats emanated from a different source: the Husseiniyyun, an ethnic Azerbaijani Shia militia created by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. While Azerbaijan's government is staunchly secular and a majority of the population is Shia Muslim, roughly a third adheres to Sunni Islam — a demographic reality that complicates assumptions about sectarian allegiance. The recent appearance of Sunni extremists allegedly operating at ISIS-K's direction marks a departure that demands explanation.

Two hypotheses present themselves. The first accepts the official attribution at face value: ISIS-K, emboldened by successful high-profile attacks, has expanded its ambitions to the Caucasus. The second posits that Iranian intelligence services recruited the cell, using the ISIS-K banner to obscure Tehran's fingerprints. An examination of both ISIS-K's recent trajectory and Iran's documented methods suggests the latter to be more likely.

Marginal, But Exploitable

Jihadist networks in Azerbaijan are not new, though they remain small compared to other Muslim-majority countries. Salafist communities took root in northern districts like Ismayilli and Sheki in the 1990s, later becoming modest recruitment hubs. When ISIS declared its caliphate in 2014, an estimated 200 to 300 Azerbaijanis — many of them Sunni radicals from these northern regions — traveled to fight in Syria and Iraq. The government responded with criminal code amendments and waves of arrests, and the country's strong secular identity and robust security apparatus have kept extremist networks marginal.

Yet ISIS-K's recent focus on Azerbaijan suggests even limited infrastructure can be exploited. In May 2025, Azerbaijani authorities extradited four nationals who had attended training camps on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border — an area strongly associated with ISIS-K activity — two others were arrested for financing. The December 2024 synagogue plot and the January 2026 embassy conspiracy indicate the group — or someone using its banner — has identified Azerbaijan as operational territory.

The Tajikistan Template

Iran's willingness to collaborate with Sunni extremists when geopolitical interests align is well-documented. Palestinian factions including Hamas and Islamic Jihad have received sustained Iranian support despite their Sunni affiliation. Tehran has maintained tactical relationships with the Taliban, providing limited assistance since the U.S. invasion in 2001 and expanding cooperation after the Taliban's return to power in 2021. Even Al-Qaeda senior leaders have received safe havenin Iran and been allowed to use the country as a base to organize terrorist activities.

But Tajikistan offers the most relevant precedent. Materials released by Tajik authorities reveal a systematic pattern of Iranian intelligence operations on Tajik territory, encompassing recruitment, proxy deployment, and the organization of terrorist attacks.

Consider the July 2018 ISIS attack in Tajikistan's Khatlon region that killed four foreign cyclists — two Americans, one Dutch national, and one Swiss citizen. According to testimony from the sole surviving detained suspect, key participants had undergone ideological indoctrination and military training between 2014 and 2015 in the Iranian city of Qom and at a camp in Mazandaran province. The attack's organizer had studied at religious institutions in Iran and received training at IRGC facilities before recruiting Tajik labor migrants in Russia on behalf of Iranian intelligence. The banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan reportedly served as a convenient cover for these recruitment activities.

A pattern emerges from Tajik security files: the IRGC has used the ISIS flag to conceal Iranian involvement in terrorist operations. Using ISIS also gives access to Tajik extremists, as the country’s significantly smaller Shia population has been traditionally shaped by the pro-Western influence of Aga Khan. In 2018, Tajik security services prevented an attacknear the Russian 201st Military Base in Dushanbe, detaining thirteen individuals who had trained with Iranian instructors. Subsequent investigations revealed that the operation's coordinator had been recruited in Moscow by Iranian intelligence, trained near Tehran, and dispatched with twenty-two other Tajik nationals to carry out attacks on government officials and foreign installations. The method proved effective — ISIS received blame while Iran preserved deniability.

Risks and Rewards

This strategy carries obvious dangers. ISIS-K maintains a violent hostility toward Shia Islam and Iranian interests. The January 2024 bombing at General Qassem Soleimani's memorial in Kerman — which killed at least 95 people — demonstrated ISIS-K's willingness to strike at the Islamic Republic's symbolic heart. Deploying such groups as proxies risks catastrophic blowback.

Yet the benefits may outweigh the risks from Tehran's perspective. Iran has consistently used proxy forces to maintain distance from operations that could trigger international retaliation. By employing groups nominally opposed to Iranian interests, it achieves an additional layer of deniability. This consideration has grown more pressing as Iran's regional position has deteriorated.

Iran's strategic interests in the South Caucasus are substantial and under threat. The Aliyev government is secular, maintaining close relationships with both Turkey and Israel — a posture that alarms Tehran on multiple fronts. The deepening Azerbaijan-Israel relationship, encompassing weapons sales, intelligence cooperation, and energy partnerships, represents a security concern on Iran's northern border. More fundamentally, Azerbaijan's existence as a prosperous, secular homeland to the Azerbaijani people presents an uncomfortable example to Iran's large ethnic Azerbaijani minority: a vision of what might be possible without rule by religious ideologues.

The Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process, if concluded, would remove a source of regional instability that Tehran has historically exploited. Most significantly, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), backed by the United States, threatens to diminish Iranian influence and expand American engagement in a region Tehran considers its sphere of interest. As details of TRIPP emerge and agreements take shape, these strategic imperatives have become more pressing.

An attack on the Israeli embassy during a high-profile ministerial visit would have served multiple Iranian objectives simultaneously. It would demonstrate that Jews and Israelis are not safe even in allied countries. It would intimidate Azerbaijan and other Muslim-majority nations that maintain ties with Israel. And it would signal to the Azerbaijani population that their government cannot maintain basic security — all while the ISIS-K attribution shielded Tehran from direct accountability.

The Alternative Hypothesis

While unlikely, the possibility that ISIS-K acted independently cannot be dismissed. The group has demonstrated both the capability and intent to conduct high-profile transnational attacks. The March 2024 assault on Crocus City Hall, which left 149 dead and more than 600 wounded, established ISIS-K as the most lethal transnational terrorist threat in years. The Kerman bombing three months earlier had already demonstrated the group's reach into Iran itself.

ISIS-K has pursued a deliberate strategy of internationalizing its operations since the Taliban's 2021 return to power created a more permissive environment. The group has targeted interests from Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China, and Russia, marking a calculated expansion beyond its traditional Afghanistan-Pakistan base. Just last week, an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed seven people, including a Chinese national, at a restaurant in Kabul — part of a sustained campaign against Chinese citizens in retaliation for Beijing's treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

Expanding to the Caucasus would fit this pattern. The group has cultivated relationships with Uyghur militant organizations and published propaganda in Tajik and other Central Asian languages. Its leader, Sanaullah Ghafari, is himself reportedly an ethnic Tajik. High-profile attacks generate recruitment, funding, and influence across the jihadist spectrum — commodities ISIS-K actively seeks.

Weighing the Evidence

Several factors tip the balance toward Iranian involvement. The target selection — the Israeli embassy during a ministerial visit — aligns precisely with Iran's documented priorities in Azerbaijan. The suspects were local Azerbaijanis, not the Central Asian migrants who typically execute ISIS-K operations abroad. Iran possesses established recruitment networks in Azerbaijan through the Husseiniyyun and related Shia networks. And the operational pattern mirrors the Tajikistan template: local recruits, ISIS cover, strategic benefit to Tehran.

The decentralized nature of organizations like ISIS-K makes them vulnerable to exactly this kind of exploitation. Iran does not need to coordinate with ISIS-K leadership in Afghanistan to recruit sympathetic individuals, provide training and weapons, and assign targets — all while allowing the recruits to believe they are serving the caliphate's cause.

None of this constitutes proof. Azerbaijani authorities have not released details of the investigation that would clarify the chain of command or expose any Iranian role. What can be said with confidence is that the incident deserves more scrutiny than it has received. If Iran has indeed adopted Sunni extremist cover for operations in the South Caucasus, the implications extend well beyond this single foiled plot. It would represent an evolution in Iranian tradecraft with significant consequences for regional security.

Policy Implications

For Azerbaijan, the incident underscores the complexity of its security environment. The country must contend not only with traditional Iranian pressure through Shia proxies but potentially with Sunni extremist cells that may or may not operate at Tehran's direction. Enhanced intelligence cooperation with Israel and Western partners becomes more valuable under these circumstances.

For the United States and its allies, the incident reinforces the importance of tracking ISIS-K's external operations while remaining alert to the possibility of state manipulation. The line between independent jihadist violence and state-sponsored terrorism has never been bright; it may be growing dimmer.

For Iran, the foiled attack — regardless of who ordered it — represents a setback. The Azerbaijani government has demonstrated the capability to detect and prevent such plots. The public attribution to ISIS-K, whether accurate or a diplomatic convenience, spares direct Iranian-Azerbaijani confrontation while putting Tehran on notice that its options for covert action are narrowing.

The three young men in Azerbaijani custody may have believed they were soldiers of the caliphate. They may have been pawns in a larger game they did not fully understand. The distinction matters less than the outcome: a plot disrupted, an attack prevented, and a reminder that in the murky space where terrorism and statecraft intersect, the most important questions often go unanswered.

Joseph Epstein is the Director of the Turan Research Center, a Senior Fellow at the Yorktown Institute, and a Research Fellow at Bar Ilan University's Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

Introduction

In January 2025, reports emerged that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had assured U.S. envoy Steven Witkoff that Tehran would not carry out 800 executions of protesters. According to multiple accounts, this assurance may have led President Donald Trump to halt a planned military strike against Iran. The episode raises a question with serious implications for both Iranian society and U.S. policy: Will the Islamic Republic follow through on mass executions, or will strategic considerations stay its hand?

The answer lies not in diplomatic assurances — which Tehran has broken before — but in understanding the regime's internal calculus when ideology collides with survival. For over four decades, the Islamic Republic has navigated between revolutionary principle and strategic necessity, sometimes sacrificing enormous national interests for ideological purity, and at other times shelving sacred commitments to preserve the system itself. The historical record reveals clear patterns about when each imperative prevails, offering insights into whether the current wave of protesters faces the gallows or a reprieve.

This paper examines the ideological and strategic factors that will determine the fate of Iran's detained protesters. It analyzes past episodes when the regime prioritized revolutionary doctrine over national interest, contrasts these with moments when survival imperatives forced ideological compromise, and applies these patterns to assess the likelihood of mass executions. The conclusion challenges conventional Western assumptions about both Iranian decision-making and the efficacy of external pressure.

The Doctrine of System Preservation

To understand Iran's approach to domestic dissent, one must first grasp the theological framework that governs the Islamic Republic. The regime operates on the principle of Velayat-e Faqih, or Guardianship of the Jurist, which transforms political survival into religious obligation. Protecting the Islamic government is not merely a matter of state security — it is a divine duty that supersedes conventional ethical constraints.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution's founder, articulated this principle with stark clarity. In various speeches, he declared that preserving the Islamic system constitutes the highest religious obligation, particularly when facing internal or external threats. In a 1983 address to officials, Khomeini went further, stating that maintaining the Islamic Republic "takes precedence over the life of any single person, even Imam Mahdi" — the twelfth Shi'a Imam revered as the promised redeemer. The statement is theologically radical: it places the political system above the most sacred figure in Shi'a eschatology.

After 1979, the regime systematically subordinated Iran's traditional religious establishment to political control, monopolizing the interpretation of Shi'ism and defining what constitutes proper Islamic governance. No religious authority could challenge these definitions without risking persecution. This consolidation meant that threats to the regime could be framed as threats to Islam itself, requiring a religious response from all faithful Muslims in Iran.

The doctrine has been implemented with brutal consistency. In April 1979, security forces suppressed an uprising in Khuzestan province, killing more than a hundred Arab Iranians seeking autonomy. The Kurdish revolt, which began in March 1979 and lasted over four years, claimed 5,000 Kurdish fighters and resulted in 1,200 executions. But the most chilling application came in the summer of 1988, when Khomeini ordered the mass execution of political prisoners — including leftists, Kurdish activists, and Baha'is — even as the Iran-Iraq War was ending and the country desperately needed reconstruction. Between July and December of that year, between 2,800 and 5,000 people were executed without trial in Iranian prisons.

These principles remain operative today. Following the suppression of the 2022 "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests, then-President Ebrahim Raisi visited the Fatehin Special Unit — an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) formation responsible for crushing dissent — and reiterated that "preserving the Islamic system is the highest religious obligation."

The Legal Machinery of Religious Repression

The regime's willingness to execute protesters rests on two complementary concepts embedded in the Islamic Republic's criminal law: Mohareb and Baghi. These categories transform political dissent into capital offenses while cloaking state violence in religious legitimacy.

Mohareb, defined as "someone who wages war against God and society," and Baghi, defined as "a rebel who takes up arms against the legitimate government," provide the legal and Islamic framework for executing those who challenge the system. Crucially, Shi'a jurists aligned with Velayat-e Faqih perceive domestic protesters not as citizens with grievances but as existential threats to the Islamic order. The judiciary has consistently labeled mass protesters under these categories, transforming demands for reform into acts of war against God.

During the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, the judicial system characterized protesters as engaged in "armed rebellion" against God and society. Following the 2026 protests, Asghar Jahangir, spokesperson for the judiciary, again invoked the Mohareb designation. For the regime, enforcing capital punishment in these cases is not discretionary — it is a religious obligation. Failure to act would constitute defiance of divine command, a grave sin in the regime's theological framework.

This creates a powerful internal logic: regime officials face religious pressure to execute those deemed threats to the system. Any hint of leniency risks being interpreted as weakness before God, potentially undermining an official's standing within the ideological hierarchy. The question, then, is whether strategic considerations can override this theological imperative.

When Ideology Trumps Strategy: Six Cases

The Islamic Republic's history reveals multiple instances when the regime chose ideological purity over obvious strategic advantage, often at devastating cost. These cases establish a pattern: when core ideological commitments or clerical authority are at stake, Tehran has repeatedly sacrificed national interests.

The Rushdie Fatwa: Permanent Diplomatic Damage for Clerical Authority

Perhaps no decision better illustrates this pattern than Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie. The timing revealed its strategic irrationality. The Iran-Iraq War had just ended after eight years of devastating conflict. Iran's economy lay shattered, its cities damaged, its population exhausted. The regime desperately needed reconstruction aid and normalized trade relations with Europe.

The fatwa destroyed these prospects immediately. Britain severed diplomatic ties. European investment evaporated. Iran's image as a potentially normalizing state collapsed overnight. Yet the regime never formally rescinded the fatwa, despite repeated opportunities over subsequent decades to do so at minimal political cost.

The logic was ideological, not strategic. Revoking the fatwa would have implied clerical fallibility and undermined the foundational claim that the Supreme Leader's religious rulings carry divine authority. The regime chose long-term ideological credibility over short-term diplomatic and economic gain. Decades later, despite warming relations with Europe at various points, the fatwa remains in force — one of the clearest examples of ideology trumping strategy in modern statecraft.

Hostility Toward Israel: The Enemy That Justifies Everything

Iran's uncompromising stance toward Israel operates on similar logic. While Tehran has at times modulated its approach to the United States, engaging in backchannel negotiations and even cooperation, it has consistently refused to soften its position on Israel. The regime will not recognize the Israeli state, continues to deny Israel's legitimacy in official rhetoric, and maintains maximalist positions even when unnecessary for deterrence.

At multiple junctures — particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s — reducing rhetorical hostility toward Israel could have eased international pressure at minimal internal cost. The regime chose otherwise. Anti-Zionism is foundational to Iran's revolutionary narrative, and Israel functions as the symbolic enemy that legitimizes militarization, regional proxy networks, and domestic repression. Retreat on this front would risk unraveling the regime's ideological coherence, a cost Tehran has refused to pay.

The Hostage Crisis: Revolutionary Consolidation Through Catastrophe

The 1979-1981 seizure of the U.S. Embassy and its 52 hostages followed similar logic. The crisis paralyzed Iran's economy, undermined moderate factions, triggered sanctions, and established a framework of U.S.-Iranian hostility that persists today. Strategically, it was catastrophic. Yet the leadership allowed it to continue for 444 days, even after the costs became undeniable.

The hostage crisis served ideological purposes: it consolidated revolutionary power, destroyed liberal and nationalist rivals within Iran's fractured post-revolutionary elite, and established the regime's anti-imperialist credentials. Ideological mobilization mattered more than international standing or economic welfare. The pattern would repeat: ideology as a tool of internal consolidation, deployed even at enormous external cost.

Exporting the Revolution: Inviting Invasion

In its early years, Iran openly called for overthrowing neighboring regimes, supported subversive movements throughout the Gulf, and rejected basic norms of state sovereignty. These actions directly endangered Iran's security and helped trigger Saddam Hussein's 1980 invasion, which would claim hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives over eight years.

The regime persisted because it was still defining itself, and leaders believed revolutionary expansion was necessary for survival. Retreat would have signaled weakness at this formative moment. Only when survival itself became threatened did expansion give way to defensive consolidation. During the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini doubled down on revolutionary export, claiming the “road to Jerusalem passes through Karbala.”

The 1988 Prison Massacres: Purification During Vulnerability

Even as Iran was ending the catastrophic war with Iraq and desperately needed reconstruction, the regime carried out mass executions of political prisoners in 1988. Strategically, this was unnecessary and damaging, inviting international condemnation at precisely the moment Iran needed to rehabilitate its image.

But the leadership feared ideological contamination more than external pressure. Internal enemies were perceived as existential threats regardless of cost. The regime prioritized ideological purification during a moment of maximum vulnerability — a decision that presaged its approach to future domestic unrest.

Mandatory Hijab: The Symbol That Cannot Bend

Despite repeated waves of unrest — including the massive 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests triggered by Mahsa Amini's death — the regime has refused to abolish mandatory hijab laws. The strategic costs are clear: continuous protests, alienation of youth, loss of legitimacy among educated urbanites, and international condemnation.

Yet ideology prevails. The hijab represents clerical authority over public life. Backing down would signal that mass protest can rewrite Islamic law, establishing a precedent the regime fears more than ongoing unrest. As with the Rushdie fatwa, retreat would imply clerical fallibility — an admission the system cannot afford.

When Survival Trumps Ideology: Seven Cases

The Islamic Republic's willingness to compromise ideology is less well understood but equally consistent. When the regime has faced genuine existential threats, it has demonstrated remarkable flexibility, shelving core revolutionary principles to preserve the system. These cases establish the conditions under which ideological compromise becomes possible.

The "Poisoned Chalice": Khomeini's Strategic Retreat

In 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini accepted UN Resolution 598, ending the Iran-Iraq War on terms he had spent years rejecting. He had insisted the war must continue until Saddam Hussein was overthrown, framing it as a sacred struggle. By 1988, however, Iran faced military exhaustion, economic collapse, U.S. naval intervention in the Gulf, and real risk of elite fracture and popular uprising.

Khomeini described accepting the ceasefire as "drinking a poison chalice" — an unusually candid admission of ideological defeat. The statement established a template: preserve the Islamic Republic even if revolutionary ideals must be shelved. The survival of the system superseded the maximalist goals that had justified eight years of war.

Post-Khomeini Pragmatism: Abandoning Revolutionary Economics

After Khomeini's death in 1989, the regime faced economic ruin and a legitimacy crisis. President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani abandoned radical economic policies including aggressive nationalization and war economy measures, prioritizing reconstruction, foreign investment, and oil revenue. Iran quietly sought better relations with Europe and regional states.

This wasn't ideological liberalization — it was technocratic survivalism. The revolution's form was preserved, but much of its early economic content was softened or discarded. The flexibility demonstrated that revolutionary doctrine could be reinterpreted when the alternative was systemic collapse.

Scaling Back Revolutionary Export: Going Underground

After incidents like the 1992 Mykonos restaurant assassinations in Berlin nearly collapsed Iran's ties with Europe, the regime recalibrated its approach to exporting the revolution. Tehran scaled back overt assassinations abroad, reduced rhetorical calls for overthrowing regional governments, and rebranded its foreign policy language while maintaining proxy networks through less visible means.

The ideology didn't disappear — it went underground and became more deniable. The regime demonstrated it could modulate revolutionary zeal when faced with severe international isolation and intelligence warfare that threatened its security.

The Taliban's Enemy: Post-9/11 Cooperation

Perhaps most striking was Iran's quiet cooperation with the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Despite "Death to America" being a foundational revolutionary slogan, Iran shared intelligence against the Taliban, helped shape the post-Taliban Afghan government, and facilitated U.S. operations in Afghanistan.

This cooperation occurred because Iran feared becoming the next target after Afghanistan, especially with U.S. forces building up on its borders. The Taliban were Sunni extremists hostile to Shi'a Iran, making cooperation strategically logical, but it required temporarily deprioritizing ideological hostility to America — a significant compromise.

The "Grand Bargain" That Wasn't: 2003 Panic

In 2003, as U.S. forces swept through Iraq, Iran reportedly offered comprehensive negotiations covering nuclear transparency, implicit recognition of Israel, and limits on support for militant groups. Whether this offer was fully authorized at the highest levels remains disputed, but its existence reflects genuine elite panic.

The regime was willing to discuss previously untouchable ideological red lines when it believed its survival was directly threatened by U.S. military force. The episode reveals how regime-change fears can override even core revolutionary commitments.

"Heroic Flexibility": The 2015 Nuclear Deal

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) required Iran to accept severe limits on enrichment, intrusive inspections, and rhetorical softening toward diplomacy — all contradicting the regime's narrative of nuclear "resistance" and defiance of Western pressure. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei justified the compromise as "heroic flexibility," a revealing phrase that signals doctrine: ideology is flexible when the system faces existential risk.

The regime calculated that economic strangulation posed a greater threat than ideological concession. The JCPOA demonstrated that even core strategic programs could be constrained when the alternative was internal unrest driven by economic collapse.

Brutal Repression: Sacrificing Islamic Legitimacy

Paradoxically, the regime's repeated brutal suppression of mass protests — in 1999, 2009, 2017-18, 2019, 2022, and 2026 — represents another form of ideological compromise. By killing large numbers of protesters, lying transparently about casualties, and sidelining religious rhetoric in favor of raw coercion, the regime undercuts its own ideological self-image as a just Islamic state.

Yet survival trumps legitimacy. When faced with serious unrest, Tehran has consistently chosen violent repression over accommodation, accepting the damage to its Islamic credentials in exchange for maintaining control. This pattern suggests the regime views immediate survival as more important than long-term ideological consistency.

The Protester's Calculus: Four Determining Factors

Whether Iran executes hundreds of detained protesters depends on how the regime weighs four competing pressures. Each has historical precedent, and their interaction will determine the outcome.

Factor 1: Threat Perception—Existential or Manageable?

The regime's response will depend critically on whether it perceives the recent protests as an existential threat or a manageable challenge. The historical record suggests a clear pattern: when the system itself appears threatened, the regime responds with maximum force regardless of cost.

The 1988 prison massacres occurred precisely because the regime, exhausted from war, feared that surviving political prisoners represented an ideological contagion that could unravel revolutionary authority. The 2019 protests, which saw several hundred killed, were suppressed with exceptional brutality because they spread to working-class areas and included attacks on banks and government buildings — suggesting deeper social rage beyond middle-class reformism.

If regime elites conclude that current protesters represent a broader revolutionary movement rather than contained unrest, the ideological imperative to eliminate "enemies of God" will intensify. Conversely, if they assess the threat as manageable through imprisonment and selective punishment, mass executions become less likely.

Factor 2: International Pressure—Credible or Performative?

The reported Trump administration threat to strike Iran if executions proceed represents an unusual form of external pressure. Historically, Western criticism has rarely deterred Iranian repression, but credible military threats have occasionally altered regime calculations.

The key word is "credible." Tehran has extensive experience managing international condemnation and has shown willingness to accept severe diplomatic costs for ideological goals, as the Rushdie fatwa demonstrates. However, when faced with immediate, concrete threats to regime survival — as in 1988 with the ceasefire, or 2015 with the JCPOA — the regime has proven capable of tactical flexibility.

The challenge for external actors is that threats must be both credible and proportionate. If Tehran believes that refraining from executions will not fundamentally alter its relationship with the United States or spare it from regime-change pressure, the incentive to show restraint diminishes. The regime may calculate that it will face American hostility regardless, making the domestic imperative to execute "enemies of God" more salient than foreign policy considerations.

Factor 3: Internal Elite Cohesion—United or Fractured?

The regime's approach to political violence has historically depended on elite consensus. The 1988 prison massacres required coordination between the judiciary, the IRGC, and clerical authorities. The 2019 crackdown succeeded because hardliners dominated all key institutions.

If elements within the regime question the wisdom of mass executions — whether for pragmatic reasons or concern about long-term legitimacy — implementation becomes more difficult. However, there is little evidence of such dissent currently. President Ebrahim Raisi, who himself is linked to the 1988 executions, represented the ascendancy of hardliners committed to uncompromising repression. His death in 2024 and the selection of Masoud Pezeshkian as president potentially introduces uncertainty, though Pezeshkian operates within severe constraints imposed by hardline institutions.

More important is the IRGC's assessment. If the Guards leadership views executions as necessary for deterrence and system preservation, they will likely proceed regardless of diplomatic costs. The IRGC's increasing dominance over Iranian politics since 2009 means that revolutionary ideology, rather than pragmatic statecraft, increasingly drives decision-making on internal security matters.

Factor 4: Precedent and Deterrence—The Moral Hazard of Restraint

From the regime's perspective, showing mercy creates a dangerous precedent. If protesters believe they can challenge the system without facing capital punishment, the cost of dissent decreases and future unrest becomes more likely. This logic has driven previous waves of executions: the regime seeks to establish that certain forms of opposition carry an absolute, non-negotiable penalty.

The theological framework of Mohareb and Baghi reinforces this calculus. If the regime designates protesters as enemies of God, failing to execute them amounts to defying divine command. This creates internal pressure within the judiciary and security apparatus to follow through on death sentences, independent of external considerations.

However, the regime must also weigh whether mass executions will trigger even larger protests or potentially fracture its own support base. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement demonstrated that excessive repression can generate sustained domestic and international backlash. If executions risk catalyzing a broader revolutionary movement, they become counterproductive even from a pure survival perspective.

The Verdict: Between Ideology and Survival

The historical evidence points toward a grim conclusion: the Islamic Republic is more likely to execute significant numbers of protesters than to show systematic clemency, but the scale will depend on its threat assessment and the credibility of international consequences.

Three factors support the likelihood of executions:

First, theological imperative. The regime has consistently demonstrated that when core ideological principles — particularly clerical authority and the inviolability of the Islamic system — are at stake, it prioritizes ideology over strategic cost. The Rushdie fatwa, mandatory hijab enforcement, and the 1988 massacres all demonstrate this pattern. Designated as Mohareb, protesters represent not political opponents but enemies of God. The religious obligation to punish them creates powerful internal momentum toward execution.

Second, precedent and deterrence. The regime fears that restraint will encourage future unrest. Every major protest wave since 2009 has been met with escalating violence precisely because the regime concluded that insufficient repression in one cycle emboldened protesters in the next. From this perspective, executions serve a functional purpose beyond punishment: they raise the cost of dissent to prohibitive levels.

Third, hardline dominance. The current configuration of Iranian politics favors uncompromising repression. The IRGC, hardline judiciary, and conservative clerical establishment control all key institutions and have shown no indication of questioning the necessity of severe punishment for protesters. The ideological infrastructure that enabled the 1988 massacres remains firmly in place.

However, three factors could limit the scale of executions:

First, regime survival calculus. If mass executions threaten to trigger a broader revolutionary movement or risk catalyzing international military action that endangers the regime itself, Tehran has demonstrated capacity for tactical restraint. The 1988 ceasefire, post-Khomeini economic reforms, and 2015 nuclear deal all show that when survival is genuinely threatened, ideology can be shelved.

Second, international leverage. While Western diplomatic criticism alone has rarely deterred Iranian repression, concrete and credible threats — particularly military action — have occasionally altered regime behavior. The reported Trump administration warning, if backed by clear and proportional consequences, could influence Tehran's calculus. However, this influence is likely to result in reduced numbers rather than wholesale clemency.

Third, tactical flexibility. The regime may opt for a mixed approach: executing a significant but not catastrophic number to establish deterrence while showing selective mercy to manage international pressure and avoid the appearance of mass slaughter. This would allow Tehran to satisfy its ideological imperative to punish "enemies of God" while maintaining plausible deniability about systematic repression.

Policy Implications: The Limits of Engagement

For policymakers in Washington and European capitals, the analysis yields sobering conclusions about leverage and limits. Four implications merit emphasis:

Diplomatic assurances should be treated with extreme skepticism. Foreign Minister Araghchi's reported promise to forgo 800 executions should be understood as tactical rather than binding. The regime has repeatedly demonstrated willingness to mislead international interlocutors when core ideological commitments are at stake. Any claims that executions have been "abrogated" likely represent strategic attempts to manage international pressure rather than genuine policy shifts.

External pressure works only when survival is threatened. The regime has proven willing to endure enormous costs — economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, international condemnation — for ideological goals. Pressure becomes effective only when it credibly threatens the system's existence, as during the 1988 war exhaustion or 2015 economic crisis. Short of such threats, Tehran can absorb external criticism while proceeding with domestic repression.

Ideology and survival are not mutually exclusive. Western analysis often treats these as distinct categories, but the regime views them as integrated. From Tehran's perspective, failing to execute designated enemies of God threatens the ideological foundations that legitimate the system, making such executions a form of survival strategy. Convincing the regime otherwise requires demonstrating that repression endangers the system more than restraint does.

Long-term engagement requires acknowledging immovable positions. Certain ideological commitments — clerical authority, the nature of Islamic governance, and the right to eliminate perceived existential threats — have proven non-negotiable across four decades. Effective policy must work around rather than through these obstacles, focusing leverage on areas where the regime has demonstrated flexibility rather than core theological principles.

Conclusion: The Probability of Tragedy

Will Iran execute the protesters? The weight of historical evidence suggests yes, though likely in calibrated rather than wholesale fashion. The regime will almost certainly proceed with significant numbers of executions, framing them as religious obligations under Mohareb and Baghi designations, while attempting to manage international blowback through strategic ambiguity about precise numbers and limited clemency in high-profile cases.

The theological framework of Velayat-e Faqih, the historical pattern of prioritizing ideology over strategy when clerical authority is at stake, and the current dominance of hardline institutions all point toward repression. Foreign Minister Araghchi's assurances to American envoys should be understood as tactical rather than definitive — a pattern consistent with the regime's historical approach to managing international pressure while pursuing domestic imperatives.

Yet the regime retains capacity for strategic calculation. If executions genuinely risk triggering a broader revolutionary movement or invite military action that threatens system survival, Tehran has demonstrated it can modulate its approach. The question is not whether the regime will show mercy — it will not, in any systematic sense — but rather how many must die before the ideological imperative to punish "enemies of God" is satisfied.

For the protesters awaiting judgment in Iranian prisons, this analysis offers little comfort. They have become pawns in a larger contest between revolutionary ideology and strategic survival, their individual fates determined by calculations that treat human life as instrumental to regime preservation. The Islamic Republic's 45-year history suggests that when this contest plays out, survival wins only when genuinely threatened — and ideology extracts a terrible price along the way.

The international community's ability to alter this trajectory remains limited. Without credible threats to regime survival or genuine willingness to fundamentally alter Iran's strategic environment, external pressure will likely affect the scale but not the fact of repression. The protesters' best hope lies not in diplomatic assurances or Western criticism, but in the regime's own cold calculus: that mass executions might trigger the very revolutionary crisis they are meant to prevent.

That is a thin reed on which to rest the lives of hundreds, but it is the only one history provides.

Hussain Ehsani is a Research Fellow at the Turan Research Center. He previously was a senior researcher at the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Tehran.

Alex Grinberg is a Senior Fellow at the Turan Research Center, a resident Iran expert at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a research fellow at the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, and a Captain in the reserves of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Intelligence.

Joseph Epstein is the Director of the Turan Research Center, a Senior Fellow at the Yorktown Institute, and a Research Fellow at Bar Ilan University's Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

Since the 1990s, Kazakhstan’s connections with the South Caucasus have accelerated. Kazakhstan’s recent foreign policy toward the South Caucasus is indicative of this trend. Astana has always maintained active ties with Tbilisi and Baku, and it has recently boosted contacts with Yerevan through mutual high-level visits (Arka, April 15, 2025). On February 11, Kazakh Ambassador to Armenia Bolat Imanbayev and Armenian Deputy Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure Armen Simonyan discussed strengthening Kazakhstan–Armenia cooperation in logistics and transport, particularly in establishing direct air service and building business, cultural, and humanitarian ties (Facebook/kazakhembassyarm; Arminfo, February  11). In November 2025, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met in Astana. During this visit, they signed numerous cooperation agreements on digitalization, artificial intelligence, and innovation (Prime Minister of Armenia, November 20, 2025;The Astana Times, November 21, 2025). Kazakhstan’s strengthening cooperation with the South Caucasus is just one way it is diversifying its partnerships, particularly in the realm of economics and transit.

Read the full article on the Jamestown Foundation.

Emil Avdaliani is a Research Fellow at the Turan Research Center.

J.D. Vance toured Armenia and Azerbaijan on February 9-11, the first such high-level US visit to Armenia. The trip underlined two things: America’s indifference to Russia’s claimed areas of influence, and Kremlin weakness.

Vance’s visit underlines that while the Trump administration seeks better relations with Russia, the United States is undaunted about entry to an area the Kremlin likes to call its “near abroad”.

The vice president’s visit brought a frustrated response from the Russian state-controlled newspaper Kommersant. “There’s disappointment, frustration and a sense of helplessness,” the author wrote of Vance’s arrival in the South Caucasus. “Because it’s precisely in this region that Russia’s position has eroded noticeably in recent years. The main reason is obvious: excessive absorption in the Ukrainian conflict ties the hands in all other areas.”

Read the full article on the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Emil Avdaliani is a Research Fellow at the Turan Research Center.

A political earthquake hit Kyrgyzstan on February 10.

The tandem of President Sadyr Japarov and security chief Kamchybek Tashiyev was seemingly broken when Japarov dismissed Tashiyev from his post. The reason given for relieving Tashiyev of his position was that it was “in the interests of our state, in order to prevent a split in society, including between government structures,” which hinted that something serious had caused the rift.

Old Friends

After the brief tumultuous events of October 5-6, 2020, that saw the government of President Sooronbai Jeenbekov ousted in the wake of parliamentary elections plagued by violations, Japarov came to power and appointed Tashiyev to be head of the State Committee for National Security (GKNB). The two have remained in those positions and were often referred to as a tandem. Some believe Tashiyev has actually been the one making many of the important state decisions.

Read the full article on the Times of Central Asia.

Bruce Pannier is a Senior Fellow at the Turan Research Center.

Iran may have a new weapon in its shadow war against the West—and it’s one that Tehran spent decades fighting: Sunni jihadists.

Last week, Azerbaijani security forces arrested three men planning to attack the Israeli embassy in Baku. The suspects claimed allegiance to ISIS-K, the Afghan branch of the Islamic State responsible for the devastating Crocus City Hall massacre in Moscow that killed 145 people in 2024. On its face, this looks like another data point in ISIS-K’s expanding campaign of global terror.

But look closer, and a more troubling picture emerges—one that should concern policymakers in Washington. The South Caucasus is becoming a new front in the shadow war between Iran and its enemies, and the Islamic Republic may be using Sunni extremists as a cover for its own malign activities.

Read the full article on The National Interest.

Joseph Epstein is the Director of the Turan Research Center.