As U.S. and Israeli bombs and missiles seek their targets across Iran, the regime is drafting the population into service as human shields. While the war dismantles the Islamic Republic’s military capabilities, a parallel campaign has targeted the regime’s repression apparatus. With their bases gone, regime forces are now embedding in civilian areas to raise the cost of the war for ordinary Iranians and force a rally-around-the-flag effect, to no avail.

Nightly rooftop chants against the Islamic Republic have echoed across cities throughout the war, with many cheering strikes on regime targets. The campaign against the repression apparatus has resonated widely, with Iranians sharing the locations of security forces online to aid Israeli strikes. Survivors of the January massacre say the public remains on standby for another wave of protests, while Washington has indicated it will send a clear signal when the time comes for mobilization.

As the campaign shifts toward urban areas, the regime has predictably sought to portray the strikes as indiscriminate, even as it tries to turn homes into targets. This is not only a military tactic but part of a deliberate information campaign to frame the conflict as an attack on civilians.

Iranian authorities have not installed air raid sirens or constructed bomb shelters despite the warning provided by the June 2025 conflict with Israel. During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, officials dedicated radio broadcasts to warning the public of nightly Iraqi strikes, allowing residents to seek refuge. Today, despite constant rhetoric about an imminent confrontation with the United States and Israel, the regime has deliberately avoided taking even minimal protective measures — revealing how little the regime values its people.

Senior regime officials do not share the risks imposed on civilians. The leadership operates from hardened underground bunker complexes in Tehran, including multi-entrance command centers and tunnel-linked shelters used by Ali Khamenei and other officials during crises, ensuring continuity of command even as military assets are embedded near populated areas.

U.S. Central Command and the Department of Defense have warned that the regime is exploiting “heavily populated civilian areas” by “deliberately positioning missile and drone launchers” in major cities. The Israel Defense Forces’ Persian-language X account echoed this point and posted a photo of Basij forces stationed inside a school. Israeli Air Force similarly reported on a strike against the IRGC’s internal repression headquarters that was “embedded within civilian infrastructure.”

Ordinary Iranians are corroborating these claims by sharing footage online that documents such conduct. Videos sent to Persian-language diaspora media show armored security vehicles and military personnel stationed in schools throughout the country, while other clips depict a destroyed missile launcher positioned in a non-military storage shed in the densely populated city of Tehran.

The regime has not spared medical facilities. In Tehran, IRGC forces sought to take over part of the Hamdaman rehabilitation institute, a center for orphaned girls with disabilities, to house roughly 50 personnel during the war. The head of the facility objected to the request, after which she was assaulted by the officers and later detained. Many military commanders were also reported to be holding meetings in hospitals.

One example of the regime’s infamous underground “missile cities” sits directly beside a civilian leisure hub. The IRGC embedded a 500-meter-deep missile complex into the mountains beside Yazd Mountain Park, a recreational site built with the intention to draw visitors, containing lakes and leisure facilities, with underground networks extending through the same foothill zone. The missile base includes rail-linked launch systems, assembly halls, fuel depots, and multiple launch exits. It falls under the control of the IRGC’s Al-Ghadir Corps, which oversees regional forces. The park, opened in the same area a few years earlier, provided both cover for construction and a steady civilian presence.

Azadi Sports Complex is another case of how the Islamic Republic repurposes civilian sites for repression and war. Tehran has used sports facilities this way since at least 2009, and the 12-Day War again showed that Azadi and other venues housed personnel. The complex’s director said Azadi had served the armed forces “with full capacity” during the June conflict, and the regime even built an anti-riot police base beside the stadium. So when Azadi was struck earlier in March, the regime’s claim that civilian infrastructure had been targeted omitted the fact that the site was again being used as a staging ground for internal security forces.

Once Israeli strikes shifted toward hyperlocal targeting of specific patrol units and checkpoints, videos indicate that these repression squads began sheltering beneath bridges. Missile launchers and other weapons were spotted along roads and inside several tunnels in western Iran, calculating that any attack would endanger passersby and bolster the regime’s narrative about indiscriminate strikes and feed its broader disinformation campaign.

Winning the information battle is as critical as battlefield success in this context. The United States and Israel have the Iranian people on their side, but that advantage is not guaranteed. If Washington plans to send a clear signal for Iranians to take to the streets, the people of Iran must understand who their real enemy is.

***

Janatan Sayeh is the Iranian analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies focused on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic’s regional malign influence. Born and raised in Tehran, he studied Hebrew and Arabic at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received his B.A. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Menu

Iran Is Using Its Citizens As Human Shields