Iran’s fascist theocratic regime on Tuesday said they’re readying their “justice” system to swiftly try, convict, and execute protestors arrested over the last few weeks, a formalized version of the wanton, indiscriminate slaughter by state security forces that quite possibly has cost as many as 20,000 lives since late December, the Wall Street Journal reports. “If we want to do a job, we should do it now. If we want to do something, we have to do it quickly,” said Tehran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei in a video address. As many as 18,000 civilian protestors are in custody, according to an estimate by group Human Rights Activists in Iran, all of them facing death.

“The signal that authorities keep sending is that they have ordered extraordinary measures by the courts,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights NGO.

In a separate report, the Journal also examines the precipitating event of the current crisis: the collapse and nationalization of Ayandeh Bank, a corrupt shitshow run by regime-friendly oligarchs that sank under $5 billion in debt that the Ayatollah’s economic geniuses tried to paper over by printing a shit ton of money which very quickly caused an explosive surge in inflation. “This was a very well-connected bank, corrupt et cetera, which underscored that the banking system in itself is a channel for enrichment of the well-connected,” said Adnan Mazarei, a former deputy director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the IMF, adding that Ayandeh’s failure was the cherry on top of “a crescendo of the loss of legitimacy of the regime following the Israeli attack.”