SUMMARY
Iran has long suffered from violence in its peripheral minority regions, especially the Kurdish northwest and Baluchi southeast. In the Kurdish regions, mainly two armed groups, PJAK and KDPI, have been involved in low-intensity insurgencies, that have occasionally flared up. Similarly, violence has been shimmering in Baluchistan since the formation of Jondullah in 2003. The violence died down as the movement splintered after the death of its leader 2010, but escalated again in 2019 as one of the splinters, Jaish al-Adl, carried out a series of unusually deadly attacks. 2024 saw another escalation. Notably, clashes between security forces and the group killed 34 on 4 April in the southeastern towns of Chabahar and Rasak, following attacks on the IRGC headquarters.
Since 2018, Iran has been involved against an interstate conflict against Israel, mainly conducted through Israeli airstrikes on Iranian targets, including Iran-backed militias, on Syrian territory. Since 2020, the Government of United States of America has supported Israel with airstrikes against Iranian targets in Iraq, Syria and Yemen as a secondary warring party. Notably, during the early months of 2024, Iranian-backed groups sparred with U.S. forces in Syria, leading to a tit-for-tat with the U.S and culminating into the drone attack on U.S. base Tower 22 in Jordan, killing three U.S. soldiers. The attack prompted a major retaliation by the U.S., which killed over 50 Iranian-backed fighters.
This pattern changed in 2024. On 1 April, Israel struck Iran’s consulate in Damascus, killing senior IRGC officials, after which Iran responded by launching over 300 drones and missiles at Israel on 13 April, the first direct Iranian strike on Israeli territory. A second direct exchange followed on 1 October, when Iran fired up to 200 missiles after Israeli airstrikes killed Hassan Nasrallah days earlier, the leader of Hezbollah in Beirut. Israel responded with airstrikes on military infrastructure in the Iranian cities of Isfahan and Tabriz. These exchanges marked a historic shift in the conflict and paved the way for a major escalation in 2025.
The Government of Iran has also been involved in several instances of one-sided violence, with violence continuously causing relatively high death tolls since the countrywide mass protests in 2019. 2021 witnessed renewed outbreaks of protests, coupled with widespread violent suppression of unarmed protesters by security forces. In September 2022, another wave of nationwide protests erupted following 21-year-old Mahsa Amini's death after an arrest by the morality police. The harsh crackdown on protests caused hundreds of mostly civilian deaths before protests subsided in early 2023.
IS was also active in Iran. In 2024, the group perpetrated a suicide bombing on 3 January targeting a memorial ceremony in the city of Kerman, commemorating the late IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani. The blasts killed over 90 civilians, amounting to the deadliest attack in decades.
Since 1989, Iran has experienced interstate, intrastate and one-sided categories of organized violence.
2025
In 2025, the interstate conflict between Iran and Israel reached levels of war for the first time. In June, during the so-called Twelve Day War, Israel opened a large-scale air campaign against military and nuclear targets across Iran, while Iran responded with large-scale missile and drone attacks against Israel. The U.S. also entered the conflict as a secondary warring party to Israel, striking Iranian nuclear facilities. Israeli and U.S. strikes caused nearly 1,200 fatalities in Iran, including hundreds of Iranian government forces and civilians. Fighting ended with a ceasefire on 24 June.
In the southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province, Jaish al-Adl continued its insurgency against the Iranian government, though at decreased levels. Fatalities halved from over 100 in 2024 to around 50 in 2025.
The year ended with renewed anti-government protests, which began on 28 December, similar to earlier waves of mass protest in 2019 and 2022. The protests escalated drastically in early January 2026, when government forces launched a nationwide crackdown that killed at least 20,000 over the course of a few days.
Iran pre-1989: Revolution, interstate war and insurgencies
Iran, formerly known as Persia, came under the rule of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925. Public opposition to the repressive rule of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi culminated in the so-called "Iranian Revolution" in 1979, and the abolishment of the monarchy. The same year, Rouhollah Mousavi Khomeini proclaimed the Islamic Republic of Iran that combined elements of a parliamentary democracy with a Shiite Islamic theocracy. Until his death in 1989, Khomeini was the Supreme Leader of Iran, which is the highest-ranking political and religious authority. He was succeeded by former President Ali Khamenei, who has maintained this position for over 30 years. Almost immediately the Islamic Republic made an enemy out of the United States during the hostage crisis 1979-1981, during which 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran by militarized Iranian students. The crisis led to the first US economic sanctions against Iran, which have since been expanded and has caused massive harm to the Iranian economy.
Iran fought a long-lasting conflict against neighboring Iraq. Sporadic border clashes occurred along the disputed Shatt al-Arab river in 1974, and in 1980 Iraq invaded the oil-rich Iranian province Khuzestan, marking the beginning of eight years of heavy fighting. The conflict was extremely brutal, with both sides rapidly reverting to WWI tactics of trench warfare and costly human wave assaults. Iraq also employed chemical weapons, both against Iran and, in the aftermath of the war, against its own population. In 1988, the two sides agreed on a ceasefire and withdrew to their respective borders. During the conflict, Iraq armed and fought alongside the Iranian opposition movement MEK (Mujahideen e Khalq), which aimed to topple the Islamic Republic. MEK continued to occasionally clash with the Iranian regime after the ceasefire until 2001, after which it was again exiled to Iraq. The Iranian government executed thousands of MEK members and sympathizers in 1988, just as the war with Iraq ended and MEK tried to re-establish itself within the borders of Iran.
Furthermore, several pro-independence movements formed within some of the Iranian ethnic minorities and engaged in intrastate conflicts over territory. The Iranian population is predominantly ethnic Persian, though statistics on ethnic and religious minorities are generally unreliable. Major ethnic minorities are Azeris (16-24%), Kurds (7-10%), Lurs (6%). Arabs (2-3%) and Baluchs (2%). The vast majority of Iranians follow Islam, with most estimations in the realm of 98-99%. Converts from Islam and many religious minorities are subject to persecution, however, making actual numbers uncertain. The majority of the Muslims are Twelver Shi’a, the state religion of Iran, while only approximately 4-8% are Sunni. Ethnic and sectarian tensions has repeatedly led to outbreaks of armed conflicts in the Iranian periphery, in particular with Kurdish, Baluch and Arab separatists. The KDPI (Partiya Demokrat a Kurdistan - Îran; Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran) struggled for an independent Kurdistan in 1966 and in the following 30 years the intrastate conflict was periodically active. A short-lived independent Kurdish republic within Iran existed as early as 1946. In 1979, the APCO (Arab Political and Cultural Organisation) instigated an armed conflict to gain more autonomy for the Khuzestan region, also known as Arabistan.
Post-1989: a tightening political space and conflicts in the periphery
The Iran - Iraq war caused immense damage to Iran's economy and civil society, but it helped stabilize the newly established theocratic regime of Ayatollah Rouhollah Mousavi Khomeini and his successor as Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei by radicalizing much of the Iranian population in their support for the ideology of the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic had a complex political system, in which the Assembly of Experts elected the Supreme Leader, whom was the ultimate source of authority in Iran, whilst the people elected the parliament and president in a semi-competitive electoral system. The candidates that can be selected were vetted by the Guardian Council, which consisted of experts on Islamic law largely appointed by the Supreme Leader, which has restricted the emergence of any electoral resistance towards the system of the Islamic Republic.
Elections became increasingly tightly controlled by the clerical regime after the 1997 elections resulted in the inauguration of reformist Sayyid Mohammad Khatami as President. Khatami's attempts to introduce reforms to the system of Islamic governance put him at odds with the Supreme Leader Khamenei, whom has since been quietly supporting more hard-line conservative candidates. In 2005, ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president. He was re-elected in 2009 after a controversial election which his main opponent, the reformist candidate Hussein Moussavi of the Green Movement, alleged was marred by fraud. Mass protests against the election resulted in a crackdown of dissent, and reformist candidates have since generally been banned from running for office. In 2013 and 2017, no reformist candidate was allowed to run for the presidency, with the reformists instead backing the moderate Hassan Rouhani, who won. During the 2021 elections, the field of presidential candidates were even more severely restricted by the Guardian Council, shocking even many within the governing elite. Several prominent political figures were disqualified, including the current vice president, Eshagh Jahangiri, a former speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, and a former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In 2005 a new group became active in the conflict over government power. This was the Kurdish group PJAK (Parti Jiyani Azadi Kurdistan, The Free Life Party of Kurdistan), created by Iranian PKK members. PJAK claimed to fight for a change of the present regime in Iran in order to establish a democratic confederate system, with self-governance for Iran's different ethnic groups. PJAK focused on the Kurdish regions of northwestern Iran, and had military bases in Iraq from which it operated.
As both Jondullah and PJAK was significantly weakened after 2011, the conflict over government in Iran entered a period of relativer calm, until the re-initiation of fighting by PJAK and KDPI in 2016, and escalating violence by Jaish al-Adl in 2019.
PJAK continued to launch a low intensity insurgency against Iran until a major Iranian military offensive drove it from the country in 2011, resulting in several years of relative calm in the region. In 2016, PJAK declared their intention to re-initiate the armed struggle. The conflict has since been active most years between 2018 and 2021, with fighting mainly consisting of minor cross-border raids from bases in Iraq's Kurdistan Region. Simultaneously as PJAK re-initiated its armed struggle, another Kurdish group, KDPI (Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran), renewed their armed conflict for the territory of Iranian Kurdistan in 2016, despite having maintained a truce with Iran since 1996. The conflict has largely lapsed since 2018. Both groups mostly attacked Iranian security forces after entering Iran from bases across the border in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, unable to sustain any permanent presence within Iran itself.
The region known as Baluchistan covers the southeast of Iran, the south-west of Afghanistan and extensive parts of western Pakistan. Whereas the rest of Iran and its government was Shiite, Baluchistan was mainly Sunni. By 2006, Jondullah (Army of God) had emerged as the leading Baluchi militant group, and was actively attacking Iranian security forces with small-unit ambushes, assassinations and abductions. Suicide bombings became its main tool after it launched its first suicide bombing mission in 2009. In 2010, Jondullah's leader, Rigi, was arrested and later executed when his plane from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan was forced to land when flying over Iranian airspace. Jondullah was significantly weakened by the death of Rigi, with many members breaking away and forming new groups, the strongest of which was Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice). The conflict with Jaish al-Adl was active for the first time in 2019, but has since decreased in intensity.
Growing domestic opposition and escalating interstate conflicts
On the 31st birthday of the Iranian Revolution in 2010, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran could now be considered a ‘nuclear state’, after succeeding to enrich Uranium to 20% for the first time. While Iran announced that it does “not believe in manufacturing a bomb”, many countries around the world feared that Iran would soon possesses nuclear weapons. Therefore, in June 2010, the United Nations Security Council voted to impose the fourth round of sanctions on Iran. Sanctions relief was provided in 2015 after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly called the Iran nuclear deal, was agreed upon. The future of the deal has been uncertain since the United States withdrew from the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions.
The threat of Iranian nuclear capabilities, combined with Iran's growing presence within Syria since it intervened in support of the Asad regime during the Syrian Civil War, caused considerable concern in Israel. Iran has for years built up its influence in Iraq and Syria by fostering local militias to do its bidding. In Syria, the most notable militia is Hezbollah, originally a Lebanese rebel group that emerged to oppose the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon, that have been fighting alongside the Syrian government during the conflicts there. Iran's growing influence, and its support for anti-Israeli groups set off an interstate conflict between Iran and Israel in 2018. Israel began actively targeting Iranian military installations in Syria, resulting in the interstate conflict between the Government of Iran and the Government of Israel becoming active for the first time in the UCDP data. It continued to be active in 2019 and 2021, with airstrikes in Syria and targeted assassinations against the Iranian nuclear program in Iran. Hostilities with the United States escalated during 2020, with the United States motivating the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani with the need to defend of Israel. The United States thus participated in the Iran - Israel conflict as a secondary warring party to Israel. The hostilities caused Iran to mistakenly shoot down a passenger plane, in the belief it was an U.S. warplane, killing all 176 onboard. The United States has also targeted Iran's Iraqi proxies, many operating within the Iraqi governments military formation the Popular Mobilization Forces, that have been targeting the US presence in Iraq with rocket strikes in recent years.
A long-running economic crisis brought on by the international sanctions and economic mismanagement has caused an upswing in domestic opposition. In November 2019, the largest protests since the Iranian Revolution brought the clerical regime to power erupted in all major cities of Iran over increased fuel prices. The government responded with a brutal crackdown that left hundreds dead. Because many protests turned violent, and it has often been impossible to discriminate between deaths during violent and non-violent protests, most deaths are included in the "violence in popular protest" category, though hundreds were stil included as part of Government of Iran - Civilians. Protests broke out anew in 2021, notably over water insecurity that began in Khuzestan province in July and over the killing of some traders in Sistan and Baluchistan in February, with the government responding with lethal force.
