The Islamic Republic, for the first time, acknowledged Thursday the execution of a protester involved in that country’s constantly growing anti-regime movement. As of yet, such harsh moves have failed to deter the revolution. 

Mohsen Shekari was hanged after a revolutionary court sentenced him to death for the crime of “moharebeh,” or enmity against Allah, according to Farsi press reports. 

The early morning hanging followed conflicting reports in the Western press earlier this week that the regime was relaxing rules mandating head covering for women.

The Khomeinist regime’s judicial system is based on its Shiite-hued reading of Islamic laws. Rules prohibiting moharebeh, forcing hijab, and the like are part of the regime’s raison d’etre. At times the regime may attempt to signal relaxation of enforcement, yet without such laws the Islamic Republic would cease to be. 

That is why participants in the anti-regime revolution are not falling for promises that such laws will be eased. Now entering its fourth month, the movement was launched to protest hijab laws. It is now a full-fledged revolutionary force. Ignoring a Sunday statement that hinted at a disbandment of the notorious morality police, the protest movements called for a nationwide strike.

In its fourth day now, that strike has turned entire cities into ghost towns. Closed shops, empty streets, and a paralyzed economy attest to the fact that the Iranian rebels are far from retracting their call for regime change. That staying power has surprised the country’s supreme leader and his henchmen. Rather than unclenching their fists, they instilled further repression measures. 

Clashes between protesters and regime enforcers are a daily occurrence in 160 cities across the country. According to the Human Rights Activists’ News Agency, at least 475 protesters have been killed by security forces since September, and 18,240 others have been detained. Sixty-one security personnel also have died, the independent group reports.

In Shekari’s forced confession, taped before the Thursday execution, he said that on September 25 he had blocked Tehran’s Sattar Khan Street and used a machete against a member of the regime-backed basij force, who was injured in the incident. Shekari’s badly bruised  left cheek was visible while he was making the confession. 

Beyond Shekari, at least 11 people have been sentenced to die since the September 14 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police, the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran reports. In addition, at least 28 others, including children, are facing charges that can carry the death penalty. A prominent leader of the revolution, Masih Alinejad, has published a Twitter thread with the names and photos of the condemned. 

A “steady drip of death sentences, and now a reported execution, is designed to erode the protesters’ resolve and deter the Iranian people from staying in the streets,” an Iran watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Behnam Ben Taleblu, told the Sun. To date, however, the regime’s tactics have only intensified the revolution. 

The world’s democracies could help the protesters by stepping up support of their cause. On Thursday, Secretary Blinken and eight other foreign ministers issued a joint statement in support of Iranians protesting for women’s rights. It called for “urgently working with technology companies to do everything in their power to enable women and girls’ access to information online.” 

Such expressions of sympathy may not be enough. The Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamanei, is yet to be  sanctioned personally under the Magnitsky Act, which authorizes the president to punish foreign leaders for human rights violations. America is yet to lean on allies in the European Union and the United Kingdom to impose any sanctions against Mr. Khamenei. 

One reason is that President Biden and his colleagues in Europe remain eager to renew the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “Iran must never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Blinken told a Washington-based lobby, JStreet, Sunday. “We continue to believe that the best way to ensure this is through diplomacy,” he added 

“They’re very hesitant to impose harsher sanctions because of their desire to maintain a dialogue” with Tehran, the policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brodsky, told the Sun. Why, he asked, do America and Europe impose harsh personal sanctions against President Putin, who already controls a large cache of nuclear arms, while at the same time they fear doing the same to Mr. Khamenei, whose Iran is not yet a nuclear state?

The Iranian revolution is seemingly intensifying, as is the regime’s harsh response. Sooner or later America will have to make a public choice between the two sides.