The international community is failing the Iranian people

For more than four decades, Iranians and the international community have documented the Islamic Republic’s atrocities. Twenty-three days into the nationwide protests, under a digital blackout and intense security pressures, the verified death toll has reached 3308, with another 4382 cases still under review; 26,015 arrests have also been confirmed, as well as 5811 severe injuries. While the extent of atrocities is most shocking, the pattern remains familiar and deeply gendered: protest, repression, documentation, global outrage, expression of solidarity, followed by diplomatic normalisation with the Islamic Republic. Iranians are victims of the world’s failure to impose real-time costs on state violence.

Geopolitical constraints continue to make foreign military intervention difficult: Russia and China ensure that binding UN resolutions under Chapter VII remain out of reach, regional states fear destabilisation, Europe prioritises economic and migration concerns, and Washington balances deterrence with domestic and alliance politics. These dynamics have produced a form of strategic paralysis. Ordinary Iranians pay the price.

The Islamic Republic has learned a dangerous lesson: it blames foreign economic sanctions for poor governance, uses state sovereignty as an excuse, kills in full view with impunity and governs using force with meaningless theatrics of reform. Holding the regime accountable is deferred to an imaginary post-transition future – if at all.

While Iranians demand their rights and military intervention is neither feasible nor ideal, the decades-long policy challenge revolves around how to operate effectively within a veto-constrained international order. This sets a wider precedent for states invoking sovereignty to suppress their own citizens.

When the Responsibility to Protect is blocked at the Security Council, multilateralism fails Iranians. Responsibility must instead shift to bilateral action using non-military tools that can impose consequences on the Islamic Republic for violations of human rights and the social contract.

Legal exposure through universal jurisdiction is one such avenue. States with authority to prosecute crimes against humanity regardless of location can launch coordinated investigations into judges, prosecutors, prison administrators, intelligence officials, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders. Arrest warrants and open cases can restrict travel, freeze assets, and complicate mobility for perpetrators. Yet within Europe, such steps are still a matter of debate, as divisions persist over measures as basic as the formal designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.

Instead of broad economic sanctions, Magnitsky-style sanctions can sever perpetrators from the global system. In Iran’s case, their narrow and inconsistent application has allowed regime officials to retain overseas privileges through their networks. Expanding such sanctions to cover entire chains of command, coordinating listings across jurisdictions, and targeting the financial and residency pathways of these individuals and their families would move sanctions from signalling to cumulative pressure.

The Islamic Republic has used internet blackouts for a third time since 2019 to suppress citizen demands. Supporting circumvention technologies, satellite access, and resistance to jamming can mitigate this effect. While such measures do not interrupt state violence immediately, they provide accountability tools and support the right to internet access.

Perhaps most urgently, diplomatic normalisation should cease. Islamic Republic officials continue to present legitimate citizen demands and suppression as internal matters while maintaining access to diplomatic posts, international fora and routine international engagement. Reducing relations, restricting visas for officials implicated in abuses, and limiting participation in international bodies would signal that systematic violence carries diplomatic cost.

Lastly, an often-underestimated policy option lies in supporting Iranian civil society. State repression is most effective when it isolates individuals, exhausts collective action, and deprives society of organisational resources. Funding for secure communications, legal defence, medical care, strike support, and youth- and women-led organising are forms of civilian protection.

International support for Iranian civil society has undergone severe erosion. Following the restructuring of US foreign assistance during the Trump administration, funding streams that sustained Farsi-language independent media, digital security training, circumvention tools, gender equality advocacy programs, survivor-centred support and human rights documentation have effectively ceased.

Europe has not filled this vacuum. European engagement with Iran has increasingly prioritised humanitarian relief, refugee support and disaster response, reflecting a shift away from the recent ambitious feminist and human-centred foreign policy commitments. The European Union does not maintain a permanent delegation in Iran. Blaming sanctions, it lacks a dedicated, sustained funding architecture focused on Iranian civil society or digital freedom. Funding schemes available require collaborating with a state-affiliated entity in Iran. While human rights and democracy promotion feature in EU external action instruments, parliamentary dialogue and statements have replaced an operational presence in Iran.

Iran presents the problem of political will within a constrained system. The international community excels at documenting atrocities and expressing solidarity instead of deploying tools that make crimes against humanity costly. For policymakers, the choice is not between intervention and inaction, but between tolerating a manageable level of repression or recalibrating policy to impose sustained non-military costs on state violence. The result has shifted the burden of protection onto Iranian citizens confronting a heavily securitised state amid economic crisis and declining external support.