Yesterday, bombs fell on the prison where I was jailed. It may be a metaphor for the Iranian people’s fate

The last time I saw the gates of Iran’s Evin Prison was November, 25, 2020. Handcuffed, blindfolded yet finally out of my cell, I was driven to a point just outside the prison walls. Behind me was a nondescript blue and white sign proclaiming the name of the prison, and a single-lane entrance point with guard posts on either side of three-storey stone walls. It was a relatively unimposing thoroughfare for such a consequential symbol of power and brutality.

I was told to stand in front of the gates, now closed to traffic. A man with a television camera mounted on a tripod appeared, and a Revolutionary Guard member started firing questions at me in Farsi. It was clear that I was expected to participate in one final humiliation: a propaganda clip for the evening news broadcast.

Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert seen in Iran shortly after her release from prison.Credit: Iranian State Television

Knowing that nothing I said now could possibly derail the deal which had been made to secure my freedom, I stood outside those gates and did my best to render the footage unusable. No, I was not a spy and I do not confess. No, I wasn’t treated well in prison. No, I am not thankful to my captors for releasing me, having lost two years and three months of my life to this cruel and barbaric place.

Those gates are instantly recognisable to every Iranian, whether or not they watch the propaganda clips routinely aired on state TV targeting people, like me, who had been held inside. They stand for the immense coercive power of the Islamic Republic and the supremacy of its behemoth security apparatus. They stand for the ability of a totalitarian state to reach deep into the lives of ordinary people, threatening to take from them everything and everyone they hold dear should they, for whatever reason, be unlucky enough to cross its threshold.

Israel’s strike on Evin Prison in Tehran in the hours before US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire agreement came into effect had no plausible military purpose. Along with other targets, such as the headquarters of the Basij militia and Revolutionary Guard Corps, this was a highly symbolic attack designed to send a message about Israel’s longer-term goals for Iran. To the regime, the destruction of the gates of Evin, filmed by the Israeli Defence Force and circulated online shortly after, represented not only the ruination of Iran’s feared internal security apparatus, but that of its ideology too. To the political dissidents housed within Evin, and the Iranian people more broadly, the message was similarly clear: The clerical kleptocracy which has oppressed you for four decades is a paper tiger. Rise up, walk out those gates, and free yourselves.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert spent 804 days in an Iranian prison.

Of course, amid all this potent symbolism, Israel has its own narrow interests at play, and these do not necessarily align with those of the Iranian people. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers have made numerous statements about regime change in Iran, as has Trump, but it remains to be seen whether Tel Aviv, Washington or other Western powers will actually do anything to advance the Iranian people’s well-documented desire to be rid of the Islamic Republic, beyond talking a big game on social media.

Reports emerging from inside Evin Prison after the strikes paint a concerning picture of fear, chaos and, even while under fire, repression and crackdown. The account of Reza Khandan, the husband of prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and an activist himself who is currently imprisoned in Evin, posted a statement online on behalf of a group of prisoners trapped inside. In it, he described inmates injured from broken glass, and a stampede triggered by the panic of those who had “nowhere to run”. According to Khandan, prison authorities responded with “threats, intimidation and pressure on prisoners”, and have refused to treat the injured.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, who was until recently also imprisoned in Evin, has posted to social media that the prison’s medical centre was destroyed in the strike, and that scared and injured prisoners are locked inside their wards under “intensified security conditions” with all requests for access to external medical facilities denied.

Israel’s attack on Evin, with all its value as a tool of psychological warfare, might very possibly ensure that the prisoners inside are actually worse off than they were before. In this sense, the destruction of the gates of Evin risks becoming a metaphor for the fate of the Iranian people more broadly, once the missiles stop falling.

Israel and the United States have been content to get in, take out high-value targets and get out, all the while calling on the Iranian people to overthrow a deeply entrenched and still-powerful police state in which, domestically at least, all the bad guys still hold all the guns. It is not for any external actor to force regime change, but it is also deeply irresponsible to call for it, before disengaging, doing a victory lap and leaving the local population vulnerable to the reprisals, score-settling and recriminations that will inevitably follow.

Evin Prison is a symbol that cannot be demolished through bombs alone. The Iranian people are bracing themselves for crackdown, retribution and a spike in executions and arrests, as the regime, humiliated and licking its wounds, begins to hunt down those that betrayed it from the inside. Will Western powers, who entered this war, in part, on their behalf, once again abandon Iranian civilians to their fate?

Kylie Moore-Gilbert is an academic in Middle Eastern political science at Macquarie University and is the author of memoir The Uncaged Sky: My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.