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Friday, February 06, 2026

6: Iran

In Counting the Dead in Iran, a Picture of Ferocity The regime suffered a body blow last month when large-scale street protests over the nation’s economic collapse quickly transformed into calls for the government’s overthrow. For a moment, it appeared the protesters might be gaining the upper hand.

Then came the state’s brutal crackdown.

..................... One common approach when people are confronted by such disparities is what is known as “the false dilemma,” in which they decide the true figure must lie somewhere in the vast middle. .................. In the revolution’s aftermath, a commission appointed by the Islamic government to determine the number of dead came up with the remarkably specific figure of 2,781. No matter. By then, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, was routinely proclaiming that there were as many as 60,000 “shahids,” or martyrs. ................ The recent unrest began in response to the collapse of the Iranian rial and hyperinflation when shopkeepers in Tehran took to the streets on Dec. 28. In subsequent days, thousands — and then millions — of other Iranians joined the protests. Their complaints swiftly went beyond the economic to the political, with many demanding that the government dissolve. Initially, violence was minimal, with the number of those killed reported as in the dozens. ................ By Jan. 21, and with order somewhat restored, the state said 3,117 had died, a toll that it claimed included several hundred members of the security forces. ............ their estimates of people killed during the protests now range from more than 6,800 by the Washington-based Human Rights Activists News Agency to as many as 30,000 reported in Time magazine, which cited two unidentified senior officials of Iran’s Health Ministry. ............. In the so-called Twitter revolution of 2009, when demonstrators took to the streets over what they insisted was a stolen presidential election, security forces killed several dozen. In the quashing of the Women, Life, Freedom movement that began in 2022, many place the body count in the neighborhood of 550. Even by the regime’s own figures, then, what took place this January is on a totally different order of magnitude. ..................... In the city of Rasht, for example, the normally reliable Human Rights Activists News Agency has documented at least 392 deaths. If that many were killed in Rasht, with a population of some 766,000, what might it reveal about the numbers in Tehran, population 10 million and the epicenter of the protests? ................ Civilians across the country have reported mass graves, morgues overflowing with body bags, relatives or neighbors disappearing without a trace. .................... On top of the dead,

estimates of the wounded range as high as 300,000.

That is far out of keeping with the usual one to three ratio of killed to wounded in combat situations, but it makes sense amid reports of security forces firing birdshot at protesters, taking aim at their eyes and heads. ............................ A hallmark of most every past civil disturbance in Iran is that security forces operate with even greater impunity in the countryside. This is especially true in corners where ethnic minorities like Kurds and Baluchis predominate and where the regime’s Revolutionary Guards have periodically conducted bloody crackdowns. With just these two ethnic groups joined to the rural population, it means we have heard little about the fates of people in a broad swath of the country. ........................

Whatever the final number proves to be, it may have carried out one of the worst state-sanctioned massacres of unarmed civilians anywhere in nearly a half century in order to survive.

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