Alireza Jafarzadeh: The IRGC wants to turn the war into a political shield for the regime at home and abroad.
By NCRI-US Staff
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30, 2026 — The Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has taken the dubious step of directly appealing to American voters, urging them to reject U.S. policy toward Iran, even as Tehran continues regional aggression and intensifies repression, executions, and imprisonment of dissidents at home.
In a lengthy open letter addressed to the American people, the IRGC urged U.S. voters to follow the advice of a terror entity operated by the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism. IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi also portrayed Tehran as the “defender of Iran” against foreign aggression.
The absurd appeal comes from an organization with a decades-long record of creating, funding, and training proxy groups and involvement in terrorism abroad.
The United States designated the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2019. The European Union formally added the IRGC to its terrorist list in 2026, while Argentina, Paraguay, and other governments have taken similar action. Most recently, Colombia designated the IRGC a terrorist organization on September 24, saying it represents a grave danger to international peace and security and citing both its repression of the Iranian population and covert operations beyond Iran’s borders. Britain has separately designated the IRGC under its state-threats regime.
Against that background, the IRGC’s attempt to present itself as an opponent of “warmongering” also serves a critical domestic purpose.
Tehran has increasingly used war, foreign threats and allegations of espionage to portray protesters and political opponents as national-security threats. Independent human rights organizations say the authorities have already used the current conflict to expand repression.
Human Rights Watch reported this month that Iranian authorities arbitrarily executed at least 59 men between March and the end of August on politically motivated national-security charges following grossly unfair trials. At least 29 had been arrested in connection with the December 2025-January 2026 protests. HRW said authorities have portrayed protesters as the “ground troops” of a U.S.-Israeli effort and used executions to instill fear and deter further dissent.
At the UN Human Rights Council on September 21, Human Rights Watch said mass arrests, torture and unjust prosecutions continue and that Iranian authorities have used “the guise of national security” to further eliminate dissent.
Amnesty International has reached a similar conclusion. It said the Iranian regime authorities have used the cover of “wartime conditions” to intensify internal repression, militarize public spaces, threaten protesters and escalate politically motivated executions. Amnesty reported in May that at least 36 people had been arbitrarily executed on politically motivated charges after the current war began, while dozens more protesters and dissidents faced execution.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, Deputy Director of the U.S. Representative Office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said: “The IRGC wants to turn the war into a political shield for the regime. Abroad, it portrays itself as defending Iran from foreign aggression. At home, that same narrative is used to brand protesters and organized opponents as enemies, spies, or collaborators, and to justify executions, arrests, and repression.”
He added: “The regime is indeed in a very dire situation internally, with increasingly ferocious factional infighting, a nosediving economy, and, more importantly, the growing scale and scope of operations by the MEK’s Resistance Units against IRGC centers of suppression and terrorism.”