How Iran survives - Defectors expose the secret apparatus

How do you make a soldier shoot at unarmed protestors? Iran's regime has spent 40 years perfecting the answer. In this DW investigation, two high-ranking defectors expose the brutal system of repression.

"No one says: shoot. The order is: stop the protest. How you do it — is up to you."
Two high-ranking defectors — a former intelligence officer and a commander in Iran's elite special forces — went on the record. Using burner phones, encrypted apps and code words, DW's investigative unit spent months verifying their identities and the documents, photos and footage they shared.
They reveal secret command centers activated during protests, a clandestine circle of officers responsible for ordering extrajudicial killings — and a system of total control that reaches into the private lives of those who serve it.
Both men say they have been handed death sentences in absentia.
This is the story they are risking their lives to tell.

An investigation by Naomi Conrad, Birgitta Schülke and Farzane Saeedi

00:00 "I cried during my prayers"
01:46 The two defectors
05:13 Recruited at 18
06:56 Life in the compound: total control
09:10 Anatomy of Iran's security apparatus
11:54 The command center
14:31 Kosar: "He smiled, and took aim"
18:52 Agents among the protesters
21:07 Dakhme: the killing machine
25:23 "Fight or die"

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