The Islamic Republic’s New Enemies List Reveals Its Greatest Fear: The Iranian People

A regime that threatens its own citizens with years in prison, or even death, for speaking to journalists, musicians, and human rights advocates has already exposed its true priorities.

The Take: When the Islamic Republic officially designated me this week as its second “hostile media person,” it wasn’t trying to intimidate me. It was trying to terrorize millions of Iranians into silence because, above all else, the regime fears its own people.

WHAT’S AT STAKE

When I opened the Islamic Republic’s newly published enemies list, I was stunned to find my own name listed as the #2 “hostile media person” designated by the Islamic Republic Ministry of Intelligence. The document, issued under Article 4 of the regime’s post-war espionage law, formally blacklists journalists, researchers, democracy activists, musicians, broadcasters, activists, and opposition figures. But despite my name appearing near the top, this list is not really about me. It is about every Iranian still living under the Islamic Republic.

This is not merely another propaganda campaign. It is the first official designation issued under a sweeping new law designed to criminalize contact with people and organizations the regime considers “hostile.” Ordinary Iranians can face two to five years in prison simply for sending information, photos, videos, or other material to designated individuals or organizations. Broader forms of media or political cooperation can result in ten to fifteen years in prison, while prosecutors retain the authority to pursue capital offenses such as moharebeh (“waging war against God”) and efsad fel-arz (“corruption on earth”), both of which carry the death penalty. Even more alarming, these designations are issued administratively by the Ministry of Intelligence, not an independent court, can be updated whenever the regime chooses, and provide no meaningful opportunity for appeal.

The implications are staggering. This document does not simply blacklist critics abroad, it criminalizes contact with them. If an Iranian citizen messages me, sends a protest video to me, shares information with any listed journalist, or communicates with one of hundreds of designated organizations, they are the ones who face prosecution. The regime has transformed journalism, research, human rights work, and even ordinary online communication into potential crimes. It also deliberately places Nobel Peace Prize laureates, journalists, women’s rights organizations, Israeli public diplomacy figures, democracy groups, and think tanks into the same legal category as armed organizations and separatist movements — meaning the list functions as propaganda in its own right. The ordering bears little resemblance to the people the regime actually appears to fear most. Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the most prominent opponent of the Islamic Republic and the favored opposition figure by Iranians, is buried at number 23, while many far less influential figures appear above him (myself included). Even stranger, the regime collapses fundamentally different actors into a single category of “hostile entities,” including journalists, musicians, Israeli analysts, human rights organizations, Kurdish separatists, Sunni jihadists, and the MEK—an Islamist-Marxist terrorist organization that helped bring Ayatollah Khomeini to power during the 1979 Islamic Revolution before later turning against the regime. The purpose is not to accurately describe reality. It is to manufacture a single, all-encompassing enemy that can justify repression against anyone the regime finds inconvenient.

Perhaps the most revealing names on the list are not politicians at all. Artists like Itay Benda and Liraz Naz are musicians whose work has been dedicated to bringing Israelis and Iranians together through music and culture. The regime fears singers. It fears scholars. It fears journalists. It fears women advocating for freedom. It fears anyone capable of reminding Iranians that another future is possible. A government confident in its legitimacy does not prosecute music, ideas, or conversations. Only a dictatorship does.

The timing is equally revealing. Iran faces one of the gravest crises in its modern history: a collapsing currency, chronic inflation, crippling economic mismanagement, corruption, energy shortages, and growing public frustration. Yet instead of addressing those problems, the regime has devoted enormous intelligence and legal resources to cataloguing Instagram accounts, journalists, researchers, musicians, and human rights organizations. That tells us everything we need to know. The Islamic Republic never governs for the benefit of the Iranian people. It governs for the survival of the Islamic Republic.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Ultimately, this document tells us far more about the Islamic Republic than it does about the people whose names appear on it. It reveals a regime that sees its own citizens as the enemy. It would rather imprison a young Iranian for sending a message to a journalist than fix the economy. It would rather threaten death for sharing information than allow its people to speak freely. It would rather criminalize music, journalism, friendship, and human rights than confront its own failures — which is a recurring theme in the Islamo-Marxist world, and one U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently exposed for all its faults in an iconic speech this past week.

Rubio correctly observed that totalitarian ideologies seek to destroy all that is good, true, and beautiful because they cannot create those things themselves. That observation perfectly captures the ideology of Khomeinism. It fears music because music brings people together. It fears journalism because truth exposes corruption. It fears friendship because human connection undermines hatred. Above all, it fears the Iranian people, because they alone