Iran under the Shah and SAVAK (1953–1979)
Following the 1953 coup that restored Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi to power, his government built an extensive internal security apparatus. Established in 1957 with U.S. and Israeli assistance, SAVAK (the Bureau for Intelligence and Security) became the primary instrument for monitoring, arresting, and silencing political opposition. Its mandate expanded over two decades to encompass a vast network of informants, secret prisons, and interrogation centers used against students, lawyers, writers, religious leaders, labor organizers, nationalists, artists, and members of banned political parties.
By the early 1970s, SAVAK and the Komiteh Moshtarak (the Joint Anti-Sabotage Committee) had become the centerpiece of the Shah’s crackdown on opposition movements. Survivors and contemporaneous human rights reports describe routine use of torture—including electric shock, beatings, and prolonged stress positions—to extract forced confessions and dismantle political networks.
The 1979 revolution and its aftermath
The Shah’s government collapsed in early 1979 amid mass protests. The new Islamic Republic rapidly developed security and intelligence services, incorporating SAVAK’s architecture and tools, including arbitrary detention, forced confession, and execution of dissidents.
Ongoing repression and the search for accountability
More than four decades after the revolution, Iran continues to face a severe human rights crisis. Following nationwide protests in early 2026, authorities carried out a sharp escalation in executions of political prisoners and demonstrators, alongside reports of secret trials, torture, and coerced confessions—echoes of the methods first institutionalized under the Shah and SAVAK. For decades, the Islamic Republic has used torture, imprisonment, and executions as instruments of political control. As one of the world’s leading executioners, often among the highest per capita, it has sustained a climate of fear intended to silence dissent and opposition. Yet despite this repression, grassroots movements inside Iran have continued to organize and demand justice, including for political prisoners.
For survivors of repression under both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republic, avenues for justice within Iran remain effectively closed. CJA works with survivors and partner organizations to pursue accountability for these crimes where it can be found—through litigation in courts that have jurisdiction over perpetrators living outside Iran, and through efforts to preserve the historical record and advocate for an end to impunity for all perpetrators of atrocities, regardless of their affiliation.