Images and videos of men with machetes and swords at a march backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Isfahan have once again raised questions about the use of informal armed groups to suppress protesters. According to Iran International, the march, titled "Those Who Sacrifice Their Lives" (Janfadayan), was held on Thursday, 1 October 2026, from Azadi Square in Isfahan to the city's Golestan-e Shohada cemetery.
According to state media, members of the Basij and religious groups took part in the march, and its organizers presented it as a show of their readiness and mobilization capacity. Ali Mojtahedzadeh, a lawyer, described the scenes as a display of power with weapons and called on the province's security officials to explain why it was allowed.
A record of plainclothes groups in the suppression of protests
In its report, Iran International looked at the Islamic Republic's record of using informal forces to suppress unrest. Ali Hashemi, a former deputy minister of intelligence for security affairs, said in an audio file published by the outlet that during the protests of July 1999 and the attack on the Tehran University dormitory, about 250 people whom he called thugs were organized. According to him, the same pattern was used after the 2009 election, and people with criminal records were employed to beat detainees at the Kahrizak detention center.
Hossein Hamedani, a senior IRGC commander who was in charge of security in Tehran in 2009, had said earlier that the IRGC identified about 5,000 people who had joined the protests and organized some of them into three battalions; he said that to train them, it needed people familiar with machetes and knives. Hamedani was killed in Syria in 2015. Reports also point to the presence of similar groups in the protests of December 2017–January 2018, 2018 and November 2019.
Isfahan, a centre of repression in recent months
The identity and affiliation of the armed men at the Isfahan march have not been independently confirmed, and Iran International stressed that no organizational link has been proven between them and the groups used in past crackdowns. Even so, the display took place in a city that has been one of the centres of repression in recent months, from the Isfahan judiciary's order to begin identifying unveiled women to the pressure on the lawyer of the defendants in the Alikhani Square case.
The display of machetes and swords at the official march in Isfahan recalls the role of plainclothes groups in suppressing protests over the past three decades.
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