Analysis: How the Iranian regime’s foreign proxies suppress Iranian protestors
By Janatan Sayeh | October 13, 2025
It is no secret that the Islamic Republic has long sponsored proxy groups abroad, yet far less is known about how these same networks have been used to protect the regime at home. Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias, and the Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade have all played roles in suppressing anti-regime movements inside Iran. Recently, reports of these fighters harassing Iranian female university students have ignited a new wave of public outrage.
Between October 6 and 11, residents of Iran’s western Hamedan Province protested after reports emerged that Iraqi fighters studying at Bu-Ali Sina University had been targeting Iranian female students for so-called “temporary marriages”—a practice permitted under Shiite law and frequently exploited by entities affiliated with Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to sexually exploit women and children.
