Berşenk Doltari
News Center —Contemporary political experiences across different regions of the world indicate that waves of mass killing are not always tied solely to state violence; they may also, at times, be employed as calculated tools within the strategies of certain opposition forces. From Latin America to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, these experiences demonstrate that preempting repression can be transformed into political capital—invested in legitimacy, media mobilization, and the pursuit of international support.

In the absence of a material balance of power, opposition movements may seek to raise the moral and symbolic cost of a regime’s survival by increasing human losses. In this context, death is no longer merely the “price of resistance” but becomes a calculable unit in the game of power—aimed at shocking global public opinion, pressuring governments, and creating fractures within the international order. More precisely, bodies are translated into the language of politics.

Here a fundamental question emerges: where does the boundary lie between the “inevitable costs of the struggle for liberation” and “killing people as strategy”? This question cannot be reduced either to abstract moralism or to pure utilitarian rationality. It arises at the intersection of three domains: political philosophy, ethics of responsibility, and the analysis of power relations. From this perspective, the central issue is no longer whether violence occurred, but how violence is integrated into the logic of political action—and what relationship it establishes with human dignity, collective agency, and the horizon of liberation.

Within modern political philosophy, from Kant to Arendt, the moment a human being is transformed from an “end” into a “means” marks the point at which politics detaches from freedom. This principle applies not only to repressive states but also to forces that define themselves as resistance or opposition. When death is incorporated in advance into strategic design—not as a possible risk, but as an assumed instrument for achieving objectives—politics distances itself from emancipation and instead begins to reproduce the very rationality of domination it claims to oppose.

Historical experience shows that such strategies, while they may generate short-term media attention or international sympathy, carry three structural consequences in the long term:
First, the erosion of the human and social capital of the very society meant to be liberated.
Second, the normalization of death as a political instrument, thereby exhausting the ethical foundations of resistance.
Third, the dependence of a movement’s legitimacy on external perceptions rather than on rooted organization and internal capacities.

No political project that exploits death—even if it speaks the language of liberation—can truly possess emancipatory logic. The distinction between “paying the price of freedom” and “killing people as a strategic calculation” is not merely a simple ethical difference; it is an existential boundary within politics itself. Once crossed, resistance is hollowed out from within and transformed into a distorted mirror of the dominant power.

This discussion seeks to articulate that boundary through reference to specific historical examples and theoretical frameworks drawn from political philosophy and power analysis—a boundary at which politics still carries human dignity, and beyond which resistance collapses into yet another form of domination.

 

Karbala and the Rationality of Death

The Karbala 4 operation on January 4, 1986, cannot be explained simply through familiar classifications such as “intelligence failure,” “complex wartime conditions,” or “field unpreparedness.” What renders this operation theoretically significant is the leadership’s relative awareness that the plan had been exposed—yet its insistence on proceeding. Numerous later admissions by commanders, along with published documents, indicate that the enemy was on high alert, and nevertheless the decision was made to move forward, resulting in heavy Iranian casualties.

The issue here is not “mistakes” but the type of rationality that treats the death of troops as a factor within strategic calculation. The Fourth Battle of Karbala represents a decisive turning point at which the boundary between military operations and the instrumental use of human lives collapses. In classical military literature, “deception operations” are defined as efforts to mislead the enemy and minimize losses. In Karbala 4, however, the logic was reversed: deception did not aim to preserve forces but to accept—and anticipate—their killing. Human life was no longer an ethical value or human capital, but a consumable variable in the equation of power. This can be described as an extreme form of utilitarian rationality—one in which the value of human life is not intrinsic but functional, tied to its role in reproducing a system of power.

To understand the decision of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander at the time, Mohsen Rezaei, one must move beyond the individual level and examine the institutional mindset of the Islamic Republic. Since its inception, the regime has not portrayed death as failure but as a source of symbolic legitimacy. Within this system, “martyrdom” is not an exception but the core of politics. In this framework, the death of troops can serve three simultaneous functions: maintaining ideological cohesion by reproducing a narrative of sacrifice; concealing strategic failure in the language of destiny and historical necessity; and shielding leadership from accountability by attributing responsibility to transcendental forces.

Thus, the decision to carry out Karbala 4 was not a deviation from the system’s logic but its embodiment.

Why did this decision not lead to the removal or punishment of its architect but instead pave the way for his promotion? The answer lies in the triangular linkage between ideology, power, and institutional immunity. In a system where death is capital, failure is redefined, catastrophe is renamed “historical necessity,” and responsibility dissolves in the fog of destiny. Accountability is not merely undesirable—it is perceived as a threat to ideological cohesion.

From this perspective, Karbala 4 is not simply a failed operation but a model of governance—one in which internal forces are not rights-bearing subjects but raw material for politics. This model has since been reproduced in civilian forms, from the repression of protests to the management of social crises. Karbala 4 may be considered a deception operation against the enemy, but at a deeper level it was an exercise of power over lives already stripped of their right to live.

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The Political Economy of Death in Royalist Strategy

The killings in Iran’s current protests are undoubtedly the product of the Islamic Republic’s repressive structure—a system that has institutionalized bloody repression not as exception but as rule for decades. This distinction must remain clear: shootings, arrests, torture, and killings are the direct outcome of the existing state.

Yet critical analysis does not stop there. Politics is not confined to the moment of firing bullets; it also manifests in calls to action, timing, narrative framing, and the management of expectations. At this level, the role of the right-wing opposition—particularly the royalist movement—can be examined.

After the experiences of 2017 and 2019, the regime’s pattern of repression was neither unfamiliar nor unpredictable. Direct shootings, internet shutdowns, arbitrary arrests, and street killings had become political “constants.” In this context, calls for demonstrations on January 8 and 9 were not issued in a vacuum but with awareness of the likelihood of large-scale massacres.

The question is not whether the opposition was responsible for pulling the trigger, but whether it was aware of the risk; whether it factored it into its calculations; and whether it possessed mechanisms to reduce losses, alter tactics, or even suspend the call. When the answer is negative, what emerges is a form of organized strategic irresponsibility—a situation in which anticipated death is considered an “acceptable cost” of politics. Reza Pahlavi, in an interview with CNN, referred to the dead as “victims.”

The role of affiliated media outlets, including Iran International, is not merely reflective but actively interventionist. Downplaying or obscuring the January 18 massacre while encouraging participation in events the following day is not a professional error but a political act with grave consequences. Here we encounter a modern form of “operational deception”—not deception of the enemy, but deception of the people. A deception aimed not at immediate victory but at accumulating symbolic capital through the imagery of victimhood.

Why does the high number of casualties matter here, regardless of state propaganda? Within the logic of external legitimization—particularly in the framework of liberal right international politics—the scale of killing becomes an index of crisis. The greater the number of bodies, the more brutal the regime appears, the deeper the “humanitarian” crisis, and the greater the likelihood of foreign intervention or support. In this logic, bodies become political data—numbers for reports, images for media, bargaining chips for opposition leaders. A “mountain of corpses” is not an unintended mistake but a potential reservoir of legitimacy.

Promises by politicians such as Trump—largely conditional verbal commitments lacking implementation—are interpreted as green lights for such projects. Yet historical experience shows that these green lights often lead to dead ends: no intervention, no responsibility, no shift in power balances. What remains is a more wounded society, a more exhausted social force, and a memory saturated with death. Death here does not become a path to liberation but fuel for an unequal geopolitical gamble.

Ultimately, the danger of this strategy lies in its structural resemblance to the logic of the Islamic Republic. On both sides of this confrontation, the people are not treated as political agents but as instruments of legitimacy—one through bullets, the other through hollow calls; one through overt repression, the other through promises of salvation from above. The result is the same: the death of the people and the paralysis of democracy at its roots.

The issue is not merely who directly or indirectly leads the deception of the people—whether Mohsen Rezaei boasts or Reza Pahlavi lays claim to the throne—but the shared mechanism between them in a strategy of “waves of killing” serving their respective interests and purchasing legitimacy and support. It is a strategy with devastating consequences.