THE GUARDIAN:
It is odd for the US defense secretary to be laying the groundwork for an event that could be organized by Tehran
Screenshot taken from this Guardian article. | Iranian police officers near the rope to be used to hang Muhammad Bijeh, in Pakdasht, Iran, on 16 March 2005. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP
Pete Hegseth’s plans to stage a public execution resemble a grotesque Iran-imitation game.
Having failed over the past seven months to defeat the Tehran regime on the battlefield, the self-styled “secretary of war” now proposes to mirror its notorious practice of enforcing the death penalty as a grand public spectacle.
“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth, with barely concealed relish, told the rightwing Real America’s Voice network of the planned execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, a former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at a military base at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009.
The prospect conjures vivid flashbacks of my own experience witnessing such an event in Iran, days after arriving as a correspondent for the Guardian more than two decades ago.
Then, the Iranian authorities hanged a convicted child serial killer, Muhammad Bijeh, from a crane – in contrast to the firing-squad execution Hegseth envisions – in the small town of Pakdasht, about 35 miles (56km) from Tehran.
…
It was a searing and unforgettable experience that deeply imprinted on me, as a new arrival, the ruthlessly repressive nature of the Islamic republic. In many ways, that seemed the intention.
For the locals, it was an exhibition they were encouraged to attend. I clearly recall police cars touring the streets as officers inside with loud-hailers summoned the local population to watch.
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Robert Tait in Washington | Friday, October 9, 2026
