In the wake of the June 23rd Israeli airstrike on Evin Prison—long synonymous with the Islamic Republic’s reign of terror—the regime in Tehran has responded not with aid, transparency, or repair, but with a campaign of cold-blooded cruelty. Exploiting the chaos, the Khomeinist regime has launched a coordinated operation to degrade, disperse, and disappear its political prisoners under the cover of infrastructure collapse.
While state media rushed to present the casualties as innocent victims of foreign aggression, a closer look reveals a different reality. Of the 71 individuals killed in the blast, the vast majority were regime personnel—administrative staff, conscripted guards, and prison security—not political prisoners or civilian visitors. Crucially, no known interrogators, intelligence agents, or high-ranking officials were among the dead. Despite Tehran’s claims, independent reporting confirms that prisoners made up only a small fraction of the fatalities, and none were from among the regime’s feared cadre of enforcers. This calculated obfuscation is designed to deflect blame, distort the narrative, and frame the regime’s operatives as martyrs rather than tools of oppression.
Total confirmed deaths: 71 people
Breakdown (according to Iran’s judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir):
Prison staff (administrative personnel)
OSV conscripts / guards / soldiers
Detainees (prisoners)
Visiting relatives
Nearby civilians / bystanders
Unfortunately, detailed numbers for each category haven’t been released. Most reports simply state that the victims included "staff, soldiers, prisoners, visiting family members, and residents". Some sources mention at least 35 staff members, 2 inmates, 1 visitor, and unspecified guards or bystanders — but even those aren’t independently verified.
Rather than tend to the wounded or assess the damage, regime authorities began forcibly transferring dozens of political detainees—activists, journalists, dual-nationals, and ordinary dissenters—from Evin to some of Iran’s most notorious torture sites: Qarchak, Fashafouyeh (Tehran Grand Prison), and Qezel-Hesar. Each of these institutions has a reputation soaked in blood and decay. Each stands as a monument to Iran’s archipelago of torture.
● Tehran Grand Prison (Fashafouyeh): “Iran’s Guantanamo”
Originally constructed for petty drug offenders, Fashafouyeh has now become an open-air death trap. Political prisoners have been crammed into former infirmaries—dark, insect-infested cells without running water or functioning toilets. Inmates report being shackled hand and foot during the transfer, then dumped in a sewage-like facility with no separation from violent criminals and regime enforcers. Families say they’ve been denied all contact, updates, or visitation rights. One detainee described the space bluntly: “a sewage pit with bars.”
● Rajaei Shahr Prison (Gohardasht): “The Regime’s Execution Theater”
Located in Karaj, Rajaei Shahr—also known as Gohardasht—has long served as one of the regime’s most brutal death chambers. Used heavily during the 1988 prison massacres, it remains a key site for executions and psychological torture. Political prisoners are housed alongside violent offenders, often subjected to solitary confinement, starvation, and beatings. Multiple wings are designated for death row inmates, and the prison's notorious “Black Cells” are designed for maximum sensory deprivation. Detainees here do not vanish quietly—they are methodically broken.
● Ghezel Hesar Prison (Karaj): “The Regime’s Slaughterhouse”
A site of mass executions during the 1980s and again during the 2022 protests, Ghezel Hesar holds four times its intended capacity. More than 70 political prisoners have reportedly been dumped into Quarantine Unit 3, a windowless, suffocating block engineered for disappearance. No access to lawyers, families, or telephones. No sunlight. No oversight. No hope. Rights groups report that violent convicts have been intentionally placed next to political prisoners to provoke assaults—state-sanctioned violence by proxy.
● Qarchak (Varamin): “The Hell of Varamin”
Once a slaughterhouse, now a women’s prison, Qarchak is a uniquely perverse engine of state cruelty. Female political prisoners were herded into a gymnasium—no beds, no ventilation, no privacy. Just two toilets and showers for dozens of women in 100-degree heat. Some collapsed from dehydration and infection. Guards reportedly call them “Zionist traitors,” revealing the ideological hatred driving these conditions. One observer summed it up chillingly: “This isn’t quarantine. It’s a soft execution.”
A Dual National Speaks: “Inhumane and Critical”
Reza Valizadeh, a dual Iranian-American journalist imprisoned since his return to Iran in March 2023, managed to send a message to his brother describing “critical” and “inhumane” new conditions in Greater Tehran Prison. According to a report obtained by Deutsche Welle, he was moved in shackles into a disease-ridden cell once used for methadone addicts. His brother, Mohammad Reza Valizadeh, relayed details of the filth, the lack of sanitation, and the deliberate degradation inflicted on prisoners.
This is not accidental neglect. It is state policy.
The Regime's Retaliatory Logic
Two blasts struck Evin Prison on June 23rd—one near the entrance, another to the northeast. Prisoners scrambled in panic, sustaining injuries as they fled collapsing stairwells. A group of detainees issued a desperate statement: the prison’s medical infrastructure was “practically destroyed.” Yet instead of rebuilding or aiding, the regime pounced.
It used the destruction as pretext for mass transfers. Not out of necessity—but out of malice.
What followed was not the relocation of prisoners—it was their erasure. A bureaucratic black hole designed to strip dissidents of their last connection to the outside world. Families left in the dark. Lawyers barred. Medical care revoked. Food and water rationed or denied altogether. Basic hygiene ignored. Privacy eliminated.
The German Section of the International Human Rights Association called the transfers “catastrophic”—and confirmed they were carried out “at gunpoint.”
Turning Bombs into Blueprints for Repression
The Evin strike briefly disrupted the regime’s psychological stranglehold. Families swarmed prison gates. Inmates shared water, bread, and first aid. For a fleeting moment, community and compassion flickered in the dark.
But for the Islamic Republic, crisis is never a call to conscience. It is an opportunity to crush unity, degrade humanity, and punish resistance.
Their strategy is simple:
Disperse the prisoners to prevent solidarity.
Degrade them to assert domination.
Disappear them into invisible corners of hell.
This is not justice. This is not law. This is death by attrition—slow, deliberate, and brutal.
The Logic of Tyranny
The Islamic Republic has turned the June 23rd attack into a gift. It has weaponized destruction. Rather than fix what was broken, it broke what was whole: the spirit of the prisoners, the hopes of their families, the last illusions of justice.
No regime so committed to torment and silence can survive the light of truth. What we are witnessing is not the last gasp of desperation—but the steady pulse of systemic evil.
In the Khomeinist playbook, no tragedy is too sacred to weaponize. And no prisoner is too invisible to punish.