Important note: the original text contains very disturbing, illegal, and graphic content, so I've omitted or paraphrased the more disturbing parts. Links below go to the primary sourcing if you want the unfiltered version.

• In Tahrir al-Wasilah, his official book of religious rulings, Khomeini ruled that a man cannot have intercourse with his wife before she turns nine, but that every other form of "enjoyment", including "touching with lust", is allowed even if she is a nursing infant. https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Thighing

• This is not some fringe English mistranslation, as the original Arabic text itself contains the "even in a nursing infant" line. https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Thighing

• Iranian human rights researchers have pointed to this exact passage when explaining where child marriage practices in Iran draw their religious legitimacy from. https://wncri.org/2014/11/23/exclusive-report-on-child-brides-under-the-mullahs-rule-in-iran/

• Even though it may sound like this is just an obscure pamphlet, the truth is that his book is actually considered one of the texts that built Khomeini's reputation as a senior shia jurist before the revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahrir_al-Wasilah

While ordinary Iranians face hyperinflation, water shortages, and a collapsed currency that triggered the 2025-26 protests, the islamic republic’s ruling elite have systematically siphoned national wealth into private networks and offshore accounts. This extraction is not incidental corruption but a structural feature of the regime, where state resources are treated as patronage assets for security and clerical elites rather than public goods.

Here are some sources documenting this entrenched kleptocracy:

• A 2019 investigation from Reuters revealed that "Supreme Leader" Ali Khamenei controlled a financial empire worth an estimated $95 billion through Setad (EIKO), a conglomerate built on confiscated property and operating outside parliamentary oversight or audit: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1

• The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned numerous IRGC-linked entities and individuals (including the Khatam al-Anbiya construction conglomerate) for diverting billions in oil revenue and public contracts to fund regional proxies and enrich senior commanders while domestic infrastructure crumbles: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm703

• Research from the International Alliance for Rights in Iran details how bonyads (para-statal foundations) collectively control between 20% and 40% of Iran’s GDP, operate tax-exempt without external audits, and function as opaque vehicles for elite consolidation and financing proxy groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis: https://iari.site/2025/11/18/bonyads-the-opaque-world-of-irans-foundations/

The islamic republic has no law against domestic violence, and women are paying for it with their lives

The islamic republic has no law that criminalizes domestic violence. Not just "weak" ones or "outdated" ones but rather none at all. A bill meant to protect women from violence has been stuck in parliament for 14 years, blocked again and again by the same clerical establishment that runs the country. While that bill sat untouched, women kept getting killed.

This failure is not due to the Iranian society not wanting it, but rather, it's the regime's own institutions, year after year, choosing not to pass protections that might constrain men's power inside the household.

Findings: • In 2024 alone, at least 179 cases of femicide were documented in Iran, according to the UN human rights office.

• Femicide cases in Iran rose nearly 60 percent in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.

• Husbands and ex-husbands were the largest group of perpetrators, ahead of fathers, brothers, other male relatives, and boyfriends. Women were killed not just for "honor" but also for asking for a divorce, turning down a marriage proposal, or refusing to accept a second wife.

• Most victims were under 30, and in multiple cases, children witnessed the killing.

• Kurdish women faced especially high risk, with 109 femicide cases documented in that community between 2020 and 2024 alone.

• A 2021 review of dozens of academic studies estimated that 66 percent of women in Iran experience domestic abuse, and the same analysis concluded that after all this harm, there are still no laws against domestic violence, with reform efforts reduced to nothing more than a fine.

• A bill meant to prevent violence against women has still not passed after 14 years, blocked under different pretexts by every administration and parliament aligned with the "Supreme Leader".

• Under Article 301 of the regime's penal code, a father or paternal grandfather who kills his own child is exempt from the death penalty. Under Article 630, a man who catches his wife committing adultery can kill both her and the other man on the spot and faces no punishment for it.

• CHRI's executive director said women in Iran are being shot, stabbed, and burned to death by husbands and fathers in shocking numbers, while the judicial system lets these cases go with little or no punishment.

• Researchers studying the issue concluded that the legal framework actively embeds and legitimizes violence against women as a tool of patriarchal control, turning gender-based killing from a prosecutable crime into state-sanctioned enforcement of male authority.

• A UN Special Rapporteur tied this directly to the state, noting that the lack of prosecution for femicide cases contributed to Iran ranking 121st out of 193 countries on the UN's Gender Inequality Index, the lowest ranking of any country classified as having high human development.
Sources:

• https://iranhumanrights.org/2025/01/killed-because-you-are-a-woman-violence-against-women-in-iran-reaches-new-heights/

• https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/understanding-femicide-and-legal-neglect-in-iran-does-the-system-let-women-down

• https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/iran-country-policy-and-information-notes/country-policy-and-information-note-women-fearing-honour-based-violence-iran-may-2022-accessible

• https://www.unodc.org/cld/uploads/res/islamic-penal-code_html/Islamic_Penal_Code.pdf

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femicide_in_Iran

• https://www.iranintl.com/en/202501070286

Starting in November 2022, girls' schools across Iran were hit by a wave of chemical gas attacks. It went on for months and thousands of girls ended up in hospitals. The regime's response went from denial, to admitting it was a crime worth the death penalty, to finally declaring that none of it ever happened at all.

Please keep all of the following in mind next time the regime acts like it cares about the Minab schoolgirls. If they ignored their own girls getting poisoned, the Minab girls are just propaganda to them.

Findings:

• It started at a school in Qom in late November 2022, then spread fast. Between November 2022 and March 2023, up to 7,000 schoolgirls were poisoned at dozens of schools in at least 28 of Iran's 31 provinces. https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2023/mar/08/mass-poisoning-schoolgirls-iran

• UN experts said targeted chemical attacks against girls' schools were reported in 91 schools across 20 provinces, hospitalizing more than 1,200 schoolgirls. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/03/iran-deliberate-poisoning-schoolgirls-further-evidence-continuous-violence

• At first, officials just lied about what was happening. The government initially dismissed the illnesses as rumors and blamed the girls' anxiety and underlying health issues, even though the girls reported distinctive smells like citrus or chlorine before falling ill. https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2023/mar/08/mass-poisoning-schoolgirls-iran

• The Washington Post interviewed Iranian doctors who said regime officials instructed them to diagnose poisoning victims with stress instead. https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/iran-update-april-26-2023

• Once it got too big to deny, Khamenei himself called for executions. "If the poisonings are proven, it would be an unforgivable crime ... the perpetrators must be handed severe punishments, with no amnesty for them", Khamenei said. Iran's judiciary chief said suspects would be charged with "corruption on earth", a charge that carries the death penalty. https://www.dawn.com/news/1740731

• Despite Khamenei's own words calling this a proven crime, no one was ever actually convicted or punished for it.
  While girls were being hospitalized, the regime focused its surveillance on the witnesses, not the attackers. A prosecutor announced the arrest of a woman for sending photos of the poisonings to "hostile media", identified using CCTV cameras (the same surveillance capability the regime apparently could not use to find the people poisoning children). https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/iran-update-april-20-2023

• Journalists covering the story were targeted too. Authorities arrested Qom-based journalist Ali Pourtabatabaei, who had been regularly reporting on the suspected poisonings. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/those-who-poisoned-iranian-schoolgirls-guilty-of-unforgivable-crime-supreme-leader-says

• Children died, and the regime denied even that. An 11-year-old girl, Fatemeh Rezaei, died after activists said she had been poisoned at school, but the islamic republic denied the connection, with her doctor saying on state TV that the cause was an infection. https://observers.france24.com/en/middle-east/20230301-do-not-send-your-children-to-school-iranian-schoolgirls-victim-of-mysterious-poisonings

• The World Health Organization offered to help investigate. The WHO said an expert team was on standby for deployment if the islamic republic requested it, but the regime officials did not respond to the offer. https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/iran-update-april-26-2023

• After months of attacks, hospitalizations, and a Supreme Leader publicly calling it an unforgivable crime, the regime simply reversed course completely. On April 29, 2023, Iran's Intelligence Ministry concluded the illnesses were not caused by toxic substances at all, but by mass hysteria and malingering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_schoolgirls_mass_poisoning

• The same ministry that decided it was all fake also tried to blame the panic on outsiders. The Intelligence and Security Ministry blamed "mischievous" students using pepper spray and stink bombs for the symptoms, and blamed foreign outlets for spreading hysteria by reporting the incidents as poisonings at all. https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/iran-update-april-28-2023

• Parents weren't fooled, and neither were analysts tracking the regime's behavior. Researchers assessed with moderate confidence that the regime was tolerating a coordinated campaign to poison Iranian schoolgirls, noting the regime's security services have proven more than capable of identifying people when it wants to. https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/iran-update-march-1-2023

The islamic republic has run a parallel, decades-long campaign of sexual violence against women held for political reasons, and it continues in the present.

Findings:

• Allegations of rape and sexual violence against political prisoners began emerging in the earliest years of the islamic republic. Amnesty International documented a 1982 case of a young female prisoner who was raped by members of the IRGC while held alone in a cell, and beginning in 1985 UN Special Representatives to Iran started issuing regular reports on sexual violence and rape allegations in Iran's prisons. https://iranhrdc.org/surviving-rape-in-irans-prisons/

• The most documented form is the rape of virgin girls the night before their execution, rooted in a belief among prison officials that executing a virgin sent her to paradise, an outcome they wanted to deny her by having her raped first. https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20231206-rape-torture-used-to-silence-iran-s-mahsa-amini-protesters-amnesty-says

• To give the rape religious cover, officials would have the girl enter a "temporary marriage" (sigheh) with a guard or official the night before her execution, with a dowry, sometimes literally a box of sweets, sent to her family afterward. https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20231206-rape-torture-used-to-silence-iran-s-mahsa-amini-protesters-amnesty-says

• This was not one official acting alone. Justice for Iran's research found the practice recurring across multiple cities and prisons, supporting the case for organized policy rather than isolated abuse. https://www.ihrr.org/ihrr_article/violence-en_sexual-torture-of-women-political-prisoners-in-the-islamic-republic-of-iran/

• Hossein Ali Montazeri, Khomeini's own designated successor until he was removed in 1989, wrote in memoirs published in December 2000 that he knew sexual assault of girls in the regime's prisons was widespread and systematic, and that he tried and failed to stop the execution of women on this basis. He was placed under house arrest for years after raising it. https://iranwire.com/en/society/60172/

• The regime's response to evidence has been consistent across decades: total denial, framed as a smear campaign run by foreign powers and opposition groups trying to delegitimize the government. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmintdev/107/107vw33.htm

• It took until October 2013 for the UN to officially break its silence, when Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women Rashida Manjoo cited Justice for Iran's research on the rape of female political prisoners, including virgin girls before execution, in a report to the UN General Assembly. https://justice4iran.org/6519/

• During the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, Amnesty International documented 45 cases of sexual violence against detained men, women, and children, and said the real number is likely far higher. The organization concluded that rape and sexual assault are still being deployed systematically by the regime to punish and silence detainees. https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20231206-rape-torture-used-to-silence-iran-s-mahsa-amini-protesters-amnesty-says

• In 2024, the European Parliament passed a resolution by 562 votes to 2 condemning the islamic republic's escalating repression of women, including the use of forced psychiatric confinement against women who defy state control over their bodies, which it characterized as a form of torture. https://oeil.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/en/document-summary?id=1797577

• No official has ever been held accountable inside Iran for any of this, across more than four decades. The same judiciary that oversaw the abuse remains the only body with the power to prosecute it. https://www.ihrr.org/ihrr_article/violence-en_sexual-torture-of-women-political-prisoners-in-the-islamic-republic-of-iran/

• Two people detained in Kermanshah, including 16-year-old, were sexually assaulted in the january 2026 protests. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/19/iran-protesters-teenager-sexually-assaulted-in-custody-rights-group

Summary of findings:
Findings:

• Europol identified 14,200 posts, accounts, and links tied to the IRGC and targeted them in a coordinated crackdown on terrorist content online.
• The operation was led by Europol's EU Internet Referral Unit and involved law enforcement from 19 countries, running from February 13 to April 28.
• The network spread content in Arabic, English, French, Persian, Spanish, and Bahasa Indonesia, across mainstream social media, streaming services, blogs, and independent websites.
• The material included AI-generated videos glorifying the IRGC and calls for revenge tied to Iran's late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
• Investigators also found content from the IRGC's proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
• The IRGC's main account on X, which had more than 150,000 followers, was withheld in the EU as a result of the operation.
• Europol found the IRGC relied on hosting providers spread across multiple countries, including Russia and the US, to keep its sites running, and used cryptocurrency to finance the network and dodge sanctions.
• This crackdown was only possible because the EU formally designated the IRGC a terrorist organization in February 2026.

The provocative images in the most visible parts of Tehran are intended to be photographed, posted and shared widely on social media.

After the president ordered the internet to be restored it's gradually coming back, currently only one ISP has it restored (TCI) and mine hasn't been restored and i have been connected to the internet through very difficult methods
CORRECTION: president doesn't have power to do shit the real reason it's gradually coming back is a order from the Supreme National Security Council to the ministry of communications
UPDATE: My ISP (Shatel) has gotten internet back too, i still have to use a vpn and tank my speed because it's heavily restricted like before the blackout.

In what would be unprecedented control over one of the world's most important shipping lanes, Tehran has announced a new transit regime.

Attached: 1 image

📉 It's now the 82nd day of #Iran's digital blackout, with the country still largely cut off from the global internet after 1944 hours.

In an era when a disconnection lasting minutes would be a crisis, Iran continues to shatter records, destroying livelihoods and eroding rights.

Greetings, I'm in iran right now and after 76 days I hardly connected to the internet with a psiphon fork, its very slow and the internet in iran is not coming back, so if I disconnect again I will miss everyone from the internet very much, we have a domestic intranet right now with a few whitelisted websites like Google and GitHub, Please don't let the internet blackout be buried under the war news. Goodbye for now.

The American empire cannot win the war against Iran at acceptable financial, military, and political costs.

It does not claim to be a government in waiting, or a new political party. “We cannot claim from exile to return after 47 years and run a country which is by and large foreign to those that have not been there for 50 years,” said Youssefiani, who until 2018 was an adviser to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah. “The patronage or help must come to those inside Iran who are capable of moving the needle.”

He said the group had a “responsibility to break out of the classic pitfalls of exile politics by creating a pluralist movement to help the democratic forces inside the country”.

The bloody crackdown on anti-regime protests at the start of this year was the catalyst for many of its now members. “After the shock of thousands [being] slaughtered in January … the moment came when we said: ‘Enough is enough,’” Youssefiani said. “At the time the threat of war was looming. We just saw our boys and girls killed and we equally share the blame, or the shame of this. For too long there was a lack of imagination, there was only classic exile politics, an inability to get along. It was a terrible failure.”

“Arms will not bring democratic change, as we have seen, and we worry about what is the end goal of the war,” said Youssefian. “No one has defined what is peace, and this is where our problem is. Personally I am enormously concerned by the war, since the outcome was not thought through. There were those that thought they could chop off the head of the snake, and all would fall into place, but that misunderstands Iran.”

Will the regime crumble if the pressure continues? “The difficulty in Iran today is that those who own and control the guns also own and control the butter,” said Youssefian. “The IRGC own and control billion-dollar enterprises. If there is a defeat, these people are not going to go to Paris or London. Their wealth, power and assets and their ideology is deeply rooted in Iran’s ground.”

Full report: https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/iran-update-special-report-april-25-2026/

Milani calls the internet blackout a war crime because it leaves tens of millions of Iranians unable to avoid Israel or the U.S. bombing them.

Iranian business owner, who said he had traveled to Turkey for just two days to check his WhatsApp messages and the international news.

Cross-posted from https://sh.itjust.works/post/59090182

Wendy Sherman helped Obama reach a deal with Iran. Here’s what she thinks Trump is doing wrong.

The assessments come as the U.S. is working to cement a cease-fire that would fully open the Strait of Hormuz and also insulate Iran, American troops and states in the region from further attacks.

What are the risks and rewards of the different military options?

Skip the first 10 minutes if you don't need all the background intro.