Omid, whose real name cannot be used, signed up to join Iran's security forces when he was 18 years old and harbored "a deep commitment to my country." At the academy, Omid told DW, cadets were under the regime's control "day and night," from their military training through the daily prayers and speeches.
"They mold the minds of the young cadets," Omid said.
Some of these recruits, Omid said, eventually rise through the ranks of Iran's security apparatus to join an elite cadre of officers who plot missions, abductions and assassinations inside and outside of Iran — and have access to unlimited resources and personnel. And, he said, he attended their meetings.
A defector speaks
When Omid, a burly man who carries scars accumulated during his decades-long service as a commander with Iran's elite special forces, reached out in early 2026, deliberations ensued: Could he have been sent to feed DW misinformation and lies to discredit the broadcaster, whose Farsi service is officially sanctioned in Iran? Could he be trying to harm DW or its Iranian employees?
Over the course of months, journalists from DW's investigative unit and Persian department corresponded with him. Omid shared records and photos of his training, which ranged from sniper practice and surveillance to street fighting, riot control and parachuting courses. He also provided photos and videos, documents and locations of a secret monitoring center and housing compounds reserved for high-ranking members of the Iranian security forces.
United in their absolute loyalty to Iran's supreme leader, he said, a clandestine circle of high-ranking officers plot and execute the murder and abductions of the regime's opponents.
Omid's testimony offered a rare insight into Iran's powerful and opaque security apparatus — and into the lives of the men at the core of the Islamic Republic — allowing DW to piece together a picture of how the regime has maintained deeply loyal forces despite widespread protest movements, international sanctions, rising inflation and recent attacks by its two main enemies, Israel and the United States, that eliminated much of its top military and political leadership.
DW corroborated substantial parts of Omid's account with documents, photos, videos and interviews with experts. An intermediary connected the investigative team with a second high-ranking defector, whose account corroborated key details provided by Omid. Though DW confirmed both men's identities, we are withholding certain details to protect them and their families.
In the past, Iran has gone after dissidents and opposition activists abroad, including journalists.
We asked the Embassy or Iran in Berlin and the Supreme Leader’s Office to respond to our findings. The Supreme Leader's Office did not reply.
The embassy in Berlin declined to address the individual allegations, stating that "the Islamic Republic of Iran firmly rejects these allegations and the conclusions drawn from them."
Prayers and privileges
As a high-ranking member of the special forces, Omid had access to the privileges the regime often bestows upon its own: From financial incentives and lucrative economic contracts for their own enterprises to special housing compounds, with their own mosques, schools and hospitals, where personal satellite dishes are banned and religious observance is enforced.
These privileges have their price, Omid said: "control, nothing but control." Officers are tightly monitored. "You're not allowed to just attend a wedding or travel," he said. "They confiscate your passport; they even decide which schools your children are allowed to attend."
The control extends to soldiers' prospective partners, who are first vetted by the regime. Even then, Omid said, he was not allowed to share the true nature of his work with his wife. That, he said, "really eats away at you."
By separating such agents from regular Iranians, the regime can keep a closer eye on its forces, said Saeid Golkar, political scientist at the University of Tennessee, who has extensively researched the command structure of the Islamic Republic's security apparatus. "They can create peer pressure and indoctrinate much more effectively," Golkar told DW.
And, Golkar said, security forces who are largely segregated from regular Iranians are less likely to balk at using force against their civilian compatriots.
A defector from Iran's intelligence agency
A month into DW's interactions with Omid, an intermediary connected us with another high-ranking defector. The man, whom we're calling Reza, worked with the Information Ministry, Iran's intelligence agency.
Like many who are recruited into the security apparatus, Reza hails from a religious family: He grinned as he showed DW a picture on his phone of himself as a young man, sporting the long beard and turban favored by the devout in Iran.
Many of his relatives, he said, still occupy prominent positions in the Iranian regime.
In the early days, he was an ardent supporter of the regime and would sometimes cry during prayers, he said, knowing that he was serving his people and the Islamic Republic and "might even die as a martyr for Islam."
Reza said he slowly turned against the regime as he witnessed the clampdown on protesters. Over the years, officers have shot, arrested and beaten Iranians protesting the country's deteriorating living conditions and strict "morality" laws.
Nowadays, his hair is cropped short.
'Years serving a cruel system'
On the evening of January 8, amid an almost total internet shutdown, security forces opened fire on Iranians protesting widespread shortages and spiking inflation. The extent of the massacre slowly came to light as images trickled out of the country documenting the regime's atrocities.
Thousands of protesters were killed across Iran. Both Omid and Reza said the mass killings which, human rights organizations report, included the shooting of unarmed protesters in hospital beds — had horrified them.
Indeed, this ongoing brutality ultimately led them to speak with DW.
Omid was adamant that he had never shot at protesters nor ordered his subordinates to do so, although DW is unable to corroborate this.
When pressed, he conceded that he had witnessed the killing of demonstrators.
Reza said the guilt he carried after having "wasted 10, 11 years serving a cruel system" compelled him to speak out despite the risk to him and his family. "The truth is: When your opponent is a regime that doesn't adhere to any moral values, you need to be prepared for anything," he said.
Who are Iran's Revolutionary Guards?
Surveillance and suppression
Omid and Reza discussed secret command centers that are central to clamping down on protests. High-ranking members of all units and agencies gather in a monitoring room where, Omid and Reza say, huge monitors on the walls display real-time feeds from countless CCTV cameras around the capital, Tehran. They say there are other such rooms around the country.
Protest marches are also monitored from above by drones. And, Reza said, "information from forces on the ground and from Twitter, Telegram and other social networks, as well as information obtained through surveillance and interception devices — all this information is collected there."
Plainclothes agents often infiltrate protest groups. Omid said such agents were sometimes used to redirect protest marches to places where security forces lie in wait.
A representative of Iran's supreme leader "had a free hand" in ordering operations from within the command center, Omid said, as well as deciding "how harshly the protesters should be dealt with."
When regular police can no longer quell demonstrations, Omid and Reza said, elite units from the Revolutionary Guard and police, often clad entirely in black, their faces hidden behind balaclavas, are sent in to finish the job.
Human rights organizations have documented the use of automatic and semiautomatic machine guns and even heavy machine guns mounted on top of pickup trucks to clamp down on protests.
"The fact that the security forces are equipped with military-grade firearms that were designed for combat situations, for responding to protests, shows that the killings of protesters in the country are intended," finds Amnesty International Iran researcher Raha Bahreini, the author of a recent report analyzing the regime's chain of command during the 2022 protests following the death of Jina Mahsa Aminiin custody.
The Dakhme 'killing machine'
After months of correspondence, Omid pointed DW to an outwardly unremarkable location in Shahr-e Rey, on the outskirts of Tehran: A prayer hall sandwiched between an occupational therapy practice and a pharmacy. Though the prayer hall is named Beit al Shohada, or the house of martyrs, Omid said many officers call the place Dakhme, meaning crypt or tomb.
Omid described how high-ranking officers met under Dakhme's corrugated iron roof to plot off-the-books operations that bypass government structures. He said he had attended several meetings at Dakhme "where decisions about murder are made: It's a killing machine."
Though Omid insisted repeatedly that he had only attended the meetings because he had been ordered to by his higher-ups and he had never taken part in any of the operations plotted at Dakhme, he listed murders and abductions within and outside of Iran that he said were planned there. DW could not verify these cases, but found that some of the people named had indeed died under unresolved circumstances.
Several experts DW contacted knew of Dakhme in connection with a murder attempt on an adviser to a reformist president over two decades ago. Others had never heard of Dakhme. No one DW spoke with could confirm its continued operation.
Experts agree that a facility such as Dakhme is plausible. "The Islamic Republic probably feels more of a need now to have these types of groups," Miad Maleki, a former US Treasury official who until recently designed US sanctions programs targeting Iran, told DW.
Indeed, Maleki said, military operations planned covertly at Dakhme would likely give the regime plausible deniability in cases of killings.
Religious and ruthless
Because of the secrecy surrounding Dakhme, much of the following is based only on Omid's accounts and the rare images DW obtained of religious ceremonies inside the hall. The secret meetings usually kick off under the guise of religious ceremonies and rituals, he said, in a large hall often adorned with green drapes and religious banners. After a communal dinner, only those in the inner circle stay.
Those who remain hand over their mobile phones, which are locked away. Then, Omid said, "seasoned specialists from Iran's special forces and intelligence operation " discuss murder and abductions late into the night.
"For these people, a person's position isn't that important," Omid said. "If they consider someone a threat to the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, they take it extremely seriously and take action."
After each operation, Omid said, the men return to their respective roles within Iran's security apparatus, until they gather again to defend the Islamic Republic at any cost.
Additional research by: Youhanna Najdi
Translation from Farsi by: Farhad Payar
Edited by: Mathias Bölinger
Copyedited by: Milan Gagnon
Fact-checked by: Carolyn Thompson
Legal advice: Florian Wagenknecht