Campaigners fear Iranian authorities are intent on launching a new crackdown on opponents even under wartime conditions, after the police chief threatened to shoot protesters and treat them as enemies.
The war between Iran and the United States and Israel erupted just weeks after unprecedented protests against the clerical establishment peaked in January.
But rights groups say those demonstrations were put down in a crackdown that left thousands of people dead and tens of thousands arrested.
The conflict, which began with an air strike that killed supreme leader Ali Khamenei and other top security officials, is the latest existential threat to the Islamic republic in its 47-year history after years of economic crises and protests.
Rights activists say that even after the killing of its leader, Iran's system still has powerful levers of repression including the Revolutionary Guards as well as the regular police who both played a key role in putting down the protests in January.
"If anyone comes forward in line with the wishes of the enemy, we will no longer see them as merely a protester, we will see them as an enemy," national police chief Ahmad-Reza Radan said in comments aired by state broadcaster IRIB late on Tuesday.
"And we will do to them what we do to an enemy. We will deal with them in the same way we deal with enemies," he added.
"All our forces are also ready, with their hands on the trigger, prepared to defend their revolution."
A prominent figure in Iran, Radan had initially been reported to have been killed in an Israeli strike during Israel's 12-day war against Iran in June 2025 but later emerged unscathed.
He is also one of several key officials to have so far survived the current conflict.
Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) said Wednesday security forces had continued to arrest civil society activists in the western regions of Iran despite the ongoing wartime conditions.
It said sociologist and civil rights activist Ghorban Abbasi in Naghadeh in west Azerbaijan province had been detained and taken to an unspecified location.
- 'Real existential threat' -
"This is the bitter reality of the Islamic republic: Even in the midst of a crisis, it seizes the opportunity for repression," Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi wrote in a post on Telegram.
"When the police chief says 'hands on the trigger' it means he is ready to kill citizens instead of protecting people's lives," she added.
Iran "says in a thousand languages that its first enemy is its own people, followed by Israel and America."
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) recorded more than 7,000 killings in the January crackdown, the vast majority protesters, though the toll may be far higher. More than 50,000 have been arrested, it said.
There have been few reports so far of protests against the authorities amid the bombardments, although videos verified by AFP did emerge of people chanting "death to Mojtaba" in Tehran after Khamenei's son Mojtaba was named supreme leader in his place.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah deposed by the 1979 revolution, and who cheered on the January protests from his US exile, on Wednesday called on people to stay home and await a further call for action.
In a clip shared virally on Wednesday, a presenter on state TV was seen warning "we will make mothers mourn those inside or outside the country who have the foolish idea that amid chaos something must be done".
- 'Harsher repression than ever' -
"Radan's statement is part of a broader pattern of threats from Islamic republic officials about an even more brutal crackdown on protests," said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Norway-based IHR.
"The authorities know that their real existential threat is not American or Israeli bombs and missiles, but the Iranian people who demand fundamental change," he told AFP.
The Iranian judiciary under its chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, another powerful figure who also survived the initial phase of this conflict, has already vowed harsh punishment for those arrested over the January protests, including the use of capital punishment.
Iran executed more than 1,500 people in 2025, according to IHR, and is the world's most prolific executioner after China.
"If it survives this war, we fear that the republic will respond with even harsher repression -- mass arrests, violent crackdowns on protests and the execution of prisoners, including political detainees and protesters -- than ever before," said Amiry-Moghaddam.
