Iran's regime pays them to shoot. What happens when the money runs out? - opinion

One of the strangest stories in Iranian politics recently moved into international headlines.

Whether every allegation is true remains impossible to establish publicly. Yet the story is revealing for another reason: it sounded possible.

Perhaps the most important part of these stories is not whether every detail is accurate. It is that, inside today’s Islamic Republic, such accusations no longer sound unbelievable. Rumors of betrayal do not necessarily prove betrayal, but their plausibility reflects something real: a regime that can no longer be certain whom it controls, whom it merely pays, and whom it should fear.

That crisis of trust does not exist only at the highest levels of government.

A man who served within Iran’s security apparatus told me that during the January uprising, he abandoned his duty. He says the authorities subsequently began searching for him, that he received threats and that he remains under IRGC scrutiny.

For his protection, I cannot disclose his name, rank, unit, location, or any other information that could help the authorities identify him.

His explanation for why others remained at their posts was painfully simple.

“Most of them stay because they receive money,” he told me. “If it were not for the money, they would have turned their weapons toward the IRGC a long time ago.”

His testimony changes the question we should be asking. It may no longer be simply how loyal Iran’s security forces are. It may be how much that loyalty costs, and what happens when the regime can no longer afford it.

The January uprising demonstrated that the Islamic Republic still possesses an enormous capacity for violence. Human-rights organizations documented the widespread use of firearms, mass arrests and the killing of protesters and bystanders after demonstrations escalated on January 8.

Because that violence was so extensive, it is tempting to imagine every armed person on the street as an ideologically committed defender of the regime. But Iran’s machinery of repression is not one unified body. It includes the IRGC, the Basij, regular police, special units, the Artesh, and young conscripts performing mandatory service.

The scale of their deployment remains difficult to establish because of the communications blackout. An initial report estimated that approximately 800 Iraqi militiamen had entered Iran. Iraqi and European security sources later placed the number closer to 5,000. Independent monitors treated the deployment as reported but not fully verifiable.

Their reported presence changes the calculation.

An Iranian policeman or conscript may hesitate before shooting someone from his own neighborhood. A foreign militiaman has no such social connection. He does not share the protesters’ families, economic suffering or future inside Iran. Importing these forces may therefore serve two purposes: providing additional manpower and placing some of the bloodiest work in the hands of people less likely to disobey.

It may also reveal that the regime does not fully trust its own personnel to carry out every order.

Iran’s different military and security institutions have very different relationships with the Islamic Republic. The IRGC’s senior leadership is deeply connected to the regime’s political and economic survival. A young conscript or poorly paid police officer may have a different calculation. He may come from the same neighborhood as the protesters. His parents face the same inflation. His family experiences the same shortages. The person standing across from him may be his classmate, cousin, or childhood friend.

There were signs of that conflict during the uprising.

On January 8, independent conflict monitors reported that several members of the security forces had allegedly been arrested after refusing orders to fire on protesters. The monitors stressed that this was the only incident of its kind they had observed at that point, meaning it should not be misrepresented as a nationwide mutiny.

A human-rights organization later reported that a young soldier named Javid Khales had been arrested and sentenced to death after refusing to shoot demonstrators. The US State Department publicly condemned the reported sentence. However, no transparent information about his trial, official charges or present condition has been released, making independent verification difficult.

Other accounts have alleged that personnel who argued with commanders, abandoned their posts or refused to participate in the crackdown were executed. Due to the blackout, secrecy surrounding the military justice system and pressure placed on relatives, those claims remain extremely difficult to verify. They should be treated as allegations unless further documentation becomes available.

The regime’s own language may be even more revealing. On January 9, the IRGC Intelligence Organization reportedly published, and then removed, a warning that “defiance, desertion or disobedience” among military personnel would result in trial and “decisive action.”

These incidents must be kept in proportion. The security forces remained broadly loyal during the January uprising, and the reported refusals did not prevent the regime from carrying out a massacre. A British House of Commons research briefing concluded at the end of January that the security apparatus had retained control.

But “broadly loyal” does not necessarily mean ideologically loyal. It can also mean frightened, financially dependent or unable to see a safe path out.

THE ECONOMIC evidence adds another dimension.

Shortly before the uprising, rare videos circulated of Iranian police officers describing severe financial hardship and inadequate salaries. One officer reportedly said he could no longer provide for his three children and was considering selling a kidney. Another described personnel driving for ride-hailing services to survive. Some of the officers later retracted their statements, prompting suspicions that they had been pressured.

Months later, reports indicated that members of the Special Units Command had experienced repeated salary delays. According to the sources, some personnel subsequently refused to attend pro-government events, disrupting planned deployments in several cities. That account also remains difficult to verify independently, but it closely resembles what my source described.

The regime apparently recognizes the danger. During the January unrest, Iranian lawmakers discussed increasing the salaries of armed-forces personnel. A government does not attempt to buy greater loyalty at the height of an uprising if it believes morale is irrelevant.

This is where sanctions become part of the discussion, although the distinction between different forms of economic pressure is essential.

Broad economic isolation can devastate ordinary families, including the same families from which conscripts and police officers come. It can destroy civilian life while allowing the Islamic Republic to blame foreign enemies for suffering created partly by its own corruption, repression and economic priorities.

Targeted financial pressure serves a different purpose. Sanctions aimed at the IRGC’s revenue, oil-smuggling operations, procurement networks, currency exchanges and sanctions-evasion mechanisms can restrict the money sustaining the regime’s military and repressive institutions.

The objective should not be the destruction of Iran’s civilian economy. It should be separating the regime from the money it uses to monitor, reward and mobilize those who protect it.

However, the presence of foreign militias complicates that strategy.

Some Iraqi militias operate within the Popular Mobilization Forces and receive salaries through the Iraqi state while remaining closely aligned with Tehran. A former Iraqi official, Entifadh Qanbar, argued that Baghdad’s role in paying these forces made the Iraqi government responsible for their reported participation in Iran’s crackdown.

Cutting the Islamic Republic’s resources may therefore weaken Iranian units without necessarily stopping foreign militias financed through other channels. Any serious pressure campaign would also have to follow the financial networks sustaining the foreign groups used to reinforce Iran’s machinery of repression.

The regime’s answer to uncertain Iranian loyalty may be to import men whose loyalty has already been purchased elsewhere.

My source also drew a sharp distinction between pressure on the regime and damage to the country.

He argued that attacks on power stations, factories and other civilian infrastructure weaken the Iranian people rather than the IRGC. They leave families without electricity, workers without employment and any future Iranian government with a country it will struggle to rebuild.

In his view, military pressure, if used, should concentrate on the institutions and facilities responsible for repression rather than the infrastructure ordinary Iranians need to survive. He also believes that personnel prepared to abandon the regime would require protection, access to weapons and trusted support on the ground near Iran’s borders.

His proposal is not evidence of a consensus among Iranian soldiers or police officers. Nor should it be presented as a detailed operational recommendation. It is significant because it reveals the calculation occurring inside at least part of the security apparatus.

The question for potential defectors is not necessarily whether they oppose the regime. It is whether they can survive opposing it.

The Islamic Republic has spent decades making the answer terrifyingly clear. Disobedience can mean imprisonment, torture, execution or retaliation against relatives. A salary is only one part of the system. Fear is the other.

We must also distinguish between refusing an order, deserting a post and cooperating with a foreign intelligence service. They are not interchangeable.

A soldier who refuses to shoot civilians is making a moral choice. A policeman who leaves his unit is defecting from the state. An official who secretly supplies information to Mossad is engaged in espionage. Treating all three as identical would reproduce the regime’s propaganda, which labels every form of disobedience as foreign treason.

Yet from the regime’s perspective, they create the same institutional problem: uncertainty.

The Islamic Republic does not require every soldier or policeman to believe in it. It only requires enough of them to obey at the decisive moment. In January, enough of them did. The reported refusals did not prevent a massacre, and isolated defections should not be romanticized as evidence that the security apparatus has already collapsed.

But the cracks matter.

At the top of the system, a former president is accused of secret contact with Israeli intelligence. Within the intelligence establishment, officials have faced allegations of working for the very agency they were supposed to combat. At street level, soldiers and policemen are reportedly refusing orders, abandoning their duties or quietly asking what support would exist if they turned against the regime.

The decisive question in Iran’s next uprising will not only be how many people return to the streets.

It will be what happens when the person ordered to shoot them looks at his salary, looks at his commanders, looks at the people standing in front of him and decides which side offers him a future.

The Islamic Republic has survived the hatred of millions. It may not survive the moment its own forces conclude that obedience is more dangerous than defection.