THE IRANIAN regime has been using a secret police force hidden in plain sight to quash dissent and rig elections, a Tehran insider told The Sun.
A bombshell new investigation reveals how Supreme Leader Khamenei relies on a band of shadowy agents dubbed the “Middle Ring” to keep a lid on descent.
The agents work as so-called “regime rats” who infiltrate society, squash dissent, rig elections and even beat those who disobey strict religious laws.
They also operate in a more subtle, nefarious way; bribing, coercing and policing the people of Iran into thinking the way the regime wants them to.
It comes as Iran goes to the polls today for a sham election to replace its former bloodthirsty president Ebrahim “The Butcher” Raisi – who died in a helicopter crash in May.
Kasra Aarabi, research director at nonprofit United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told The Sun the organisation uncovered a shadowy arm of the IRGC that has been hidden for at least five years.
UANI has exposed the Baqiatallah Headquarters in a new report, a “virtually unknown” organisation serving as an offshoot of Iran’s brutal Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Kasra, who investigates the hideous crimes of the IRGC, said the newly discovered HQ relies on those agents known as the “Middle Ring” to carry out their bidding.
The end goal is to achieve Khamenei’s ideal “Islamic society” and “Islamic government” – policing people’s thoughts and actions.
Kasra told The Sun: “What we’ve got here is evidence for the first time that reveals a shadowy branch of the Revolutionary Guard that has never really been properly exposed.”
Election rigging in Iran, Kasra explains, has hit “unprecedented levels” over the past five years and has happened in “a very smooth and orderly fashion”.
He told us: “That’s because the IRGC Baqiatallah HQ has been designed for election engineering.”
The regime’s Guardian Council – made up of Islamist hardliners – approved just six candidates out of 84 original names for the election today.
They include a nuclear negotiator, an IRGC commander, the mayor of Tehran and an apparent “reformist” politician, UANI reports.
The possible winner is Saeed Jalili – a regime favourite and the man who stonewalled international nuclear talks while Iran worked away on the devastating weapons in secret.
His main rivals are Bagher Ghalibaf, a former general and cop who oversaw brutal protest crackdowns, and the more moderate Masoud Pezeshkian, the only candidate who has talked up improved relations with the West.
It comes as The Sun was told by Iran’s main opposition group in exile that their forces won’t stop until they topple Khameini’s barbaric rule and put a new democracy in its place.
The Middle Ring agents corrupt elections in Iran at every stage, infiltrating the entire process to ensure a favourable result for the regime.
Kasra told The Sun: “In the pre-election phase, the middle ring plays a direct or indirect role in vetting candidates.”
You’ve got their role in a buying peoples votes, paying people to vote a certain way, intimidating them, threatening violence and actually using violence for them against them to vote a certain way
Kasra Aarabi
While Khameini’s Guardianship Council is responsible for the vetting in big elections like today, committees made up of Middle Ring agents asses candidates right from the local levels.
This “enables them very, very easily to say no, you’re not coming through”, to prospective candidates who don’t meet the hardline criteria.
Kasra said of the Middle Ring: “Its purpose is also to act as the eyes and the ears of the regime at the granular neighbourhood level, effectively operating as regime rats.
“Ratting individuals out, keeping an eye, conducting surveillance at the national level.”
This involves spying on potential candidates, visiting their local mosques, reporting back to the Baquiatallah HQ, doing family checks and filing reports back to the IRGC.
Said reports are fed back to the Guardian Council so they can also approve or deny a potential candidate.
During election day, the second stage, the Middle Ring will form the “bulk of election observers and volunteers at polling stations”, Kasra told The Sun.
He said: “They will go around buying people’s votes, mobilising their agents buried within communities to order people to vote for certain candidates, and intimidate people into making the choice they want.
“Voter intimidation, threatening violence as well, we’ve got a track record of that and buying off votes.”
The UANI expert explained how the agents also submit fake votes.
He said: “It’s all done on national ID cards, and they are literally printing off ID cards, identifying individuals, and submitting false votes.”
They will also “forge votes, complete absentee ballots, invalidate and spoil ballots” and even turn people away from the polling stations.
Shockingly, the agents also stick their heads into the actual voting booths, applying pressure to make sure that the individual is voting the “right way”.
The final stage of their election rigging comes with the count.
Kasra told The Sun: “This is obviously distorting the count, distorting the count to favour a particular candidate.
“You’ve got their role in a buying peoples votes, paying people to vote a certain way, intimidating them, threatening violence and actually using violence for them against them to vote a certain way.
“And then the fact that they form the bulk of the election monitoring team and the volunteer roles in individual polling stations.”
ABOVE are the six candidates running in Iran's election today.
Tehran’s mayor Alireza Zakani and head of the Martyrs’ Foundation Amirhossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi dropped out on Thursday, according to state media – leaving four in the running.
The following three are touted most likely to win, particularly Jalili and Ghalibaf over their reformist challenger Pezeshkia.
SAEED JALILI
Jalili, 58, advocates for an even more conservative society in Iran.
He is known as the “Living Martyr” since his foot and part of his leg were blown off in a battle between Iran and Iraq in 1987.
Jalili has long made his extreme anti–Western views clear and lead Iran’s nuclear negotiations between 2007 and 2013.
BAGHER GHALIBAF
Ghalibaf, 62, is a prominent hardliner who currently works as the Iranian speaker in parliament.
He has worked as the Chief of Police, commanded the IRGC and was the Mayor of Tehran.
Ghalibaf was also a close friend of Qasem Soleimani, the former IRGC chief who was assassinated in an American drone strike outside Baghdad airport in 2020.
MASOUD PEZESHKIA
Pezeshkia, 69, is the oldest candidate and the only one campaigning on a somewhat reformist platform.
He has served in parliament since 2008 and previously criticised Raisi’s government for their brutal crackdowns on protests following the death of Mahsa Amini.
Pezeshkia is the only one who wants to improve relations with the west and strike a new nuclear deal.
After years of brutalising the Iranian population and waves of brave on-the-ground protests, Kasra told The Sun how the Ayatollah’s hardline support base is dwindling.
Resistance groups will plaster anti-regime messages across the streets, recruit young people and burn images of their brutal leaders.
There’s a five year plan to mobilise millions of hardline Islamist youths
Kasra Aarabi
UANI uncovered a trove of documents from inside the IRGC, including internal presentations, literature and even audio recordings.
One recording, made by the deputy chief of, revealed that in a population of more than 88 million people only eight million remain staunch supporters of Khamenei.
Kasra told The Sun: “They are seeking to recruit, train and mobilise this scattered eight million, consolidate them.
He said: “There’s a five year plan to mobilise millions of hardline Islamist youths,” recruiting them for the Middle Ring.
Turning them into “IRGC backed vigilante groups that carry out operations for the Revolutionary Guard”.
The idea is to “connect them directly to the upper echelons of power, mobilise them into groups and networks and send them on to train them for fire at will operations”.
Kasra explained how Baquiatallah HQ select recruits who are young, already “very pro regime” and “ well connected” in their communities.
“For example, university societies where they have hardline Islamist groups,” he said.
They target the “Islamist hardline youth who are connected” so that they might “establish their own networks and bring people together.”
Kasra described the Middle Ring agents as a “a law onto themselves”.
He told The Sun: “They’re able to punish, incentivise and they do this through various strategies.
“They buy people off. They have the authority to punish.”
They’re conducting surveillance on ordinary citizens, acting as the eyes and ears for the regime, physically enforcing the regime’s ideology
Kasra Aarabi
The agents will enter communities and bribe those who are struggling with free health care, “from surgery to heart health to anything”, to “buy support”.
After coming across communities who aren’t following Khameini’s rules they have previously threatened to knock down entire buildings with bulldozers.
And they will resort to physical brutality, policing dress codes for men and women if their clothes are too tight or their hijabs not fixed correctly.
One woman, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, died in the custody of Iran’s morality police in 2022 after she was arrested for violating the country’s hijab rules.
Her death sparked the country’s largest ever anti-regime movement for women’s rights and freedoms around the country.
Kasra said: “Punishments that can include anything from physical assaults, attacks, intimidation, beating individuals up, and lashes”.
“They have the mandate to detain, and on the other side of the spectrum, they can buy off and buy support, all with the goal of consolidating that Islamist base and also expanding it.
“They’re conducting surveillance on ordinary citizens, acting as the eyes and ears for the regime, physically enforcing the regime’s ideology,” he said.
