The Khomeinist regime's habit of regarding every critic as an enemy also affects domestic politics. Unable to conceive of dialogue, let alone making a deal, with its critics, the regime has often opted for their physical elimination. More than 100,000 dissidents have been executed or died in prison under torture. Five million Iranians have fled into exile in more than a hundred countries across the globe. Between 1989 and 2012 at least 120 dissidents were murdered abroad, including assassinations in Britain, the US, France, Germany and Switzerland. 

Even regime officials at the highest level could suddenly become dushman by questioning the "path of the Imam" in its latest version. Of the regime's six presidents only one is still alive and in Iran and enjoying freedom of movement. He is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini as "Supreme Guide" (rahbar) in 1989. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the first President, fled to exile in Paris. The second, Muhammad-Ali Raja'I, was blown to pieces in a bomb attack weeks after being sworn in. Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami are still in Tehran but subjected to a daily barrage of abuse in the official media. Both have had their passports withdrawn and are not even allowed to visit their respective home towns. Of the regime's three prime ministers, before the post was abolished in 1989, one died in disgrace and under house arrest. A second was killed in a bomb blast believed to be an inside job. A third, Mir-Hussein Mussavi, has been under house arrest since 2009 along with his wife. Senior clerics have been defrocked and war heroes transformed into non-persons overnight because they criticised aspects of the regime's policies. The highest crime is any suggestion that compromise with the US might well be in Iran's national interest. Ataollah Mohajerani, a Khomeinist firebrand and long-time Minister of Islamic Guidance, found himself transformed overnight into an "enemy of Islam" by calling for a debate on relations with the "Great Satan". He had to flee to London to work for a Saudi publication. 

In November 2012 an estimated 400 former officials of the Islamic Republic, including several of ministerial rank, were in exile in western Europe, the United States and Canada. The Governor of the Central Bank fled to Canada after warning that, economically, Iran was paying too a high a price for its anti-American stance. "We want to destroy America, not negotiate with it," says Ayatollah Mohammad Saeedi, Special Representative of the "Supreme Guide" in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.