A slow-and-steady death toll is underway outside Iran, and internet blackouts have cast a veil over the scale of the regime’s crackdown on anti-government protesters earlier this month.
Even as it stands, analysts say it is the most brutal crackdown since the Islamic Republic was founded 50 years ago.
The number of protesters who have been confirmed dead has reached More than 4,000 and exitNon-governmental organizations – including the US-based Human Rights Watch news agency – have provided credible figures on past actions.
Iranian state television released the death toll on Wednesday. Just over 3,000. This comes after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday that “several thousand were killed”, blaming the United States.
“After we connect with Iranians on the Internet and after this closure, (the number) will be shocking for all of us,” said Soran Mansournia, an Iranian exile in the Netherlands who is helping the Hiwa Foundation, an NGO that tracks the dead, injured, missing and detained.
“We estimate there are about 50,000 Starlink users in Iran, and they send data when they can,” he said, adding that the satellite internet provider has left some people with power outages.
“According to this information… we expect that something terrible and terrible has happened in Iran,” he said, adding that Iranian security forces are continuing to hunt down individuals using a portable satellite dish.
There are aAlso Protesters reported being taken from the hospital. When they were injured and treated or when they gave blood, they were arrested and families were asked for “bullet payment”. Money to release the bodies of their loved ones.
In a televised address, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he would not “back down” from anti-government protests and accused the opposition and those acting on behalf of the United States. Authorities have largely cut off Iran from the outside world with internet blackouts.
Death threats remain: activist
The regime-ordered violence seems to have worked, especially since protests in late December turned from anger at Iran’s failing economy into demands for an end to the country’s repressive theocracy.
The international response to the violence that followed the January 8 internet shutdown was initially overshadowed by US President Donald Trump’s pledge to “send aid” if protesters were harmed by Iranian security forces.
While thousands of people are known to have died in the past week, Trump praised Iran’s leadership for not proceeding with the planned execution of 800 political prisoners.
“And I really respect that they canceled that,” he said.
Since then, Trump’s threats have been toned down, although the US Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and an accompanying strike group are expected to arrive in the Middle East, prompting speculation that the threat of US action remains.
Also last week, exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, a divisive figure who has been positioning himself for a future role in Iran despite decades outside the country, said he believed Trump was a “man of his word.”
Mahmoud Amiri Moghadam, head of the Norway-based Iranian Human Rights Group, said Iranians did not risk their lives because Donald Trump asked them to, but because they had enough of the regime.
Amiri-Moghadam said the death threats are still very real.
“The international community must take the Islamic Republic authorities’ threats to execute and execute opponents seriously, and act to prevent another large-scale massacre, this time in prisons,” he said.
“I think it is important to see what the world can do and act within the framework of international law.”
A few visible cracks in the Iranian regime
The world is busy discussing the collapse and possible collapse of the international rules-based system as we know it, with Trump’s focus on Greenland this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The organizers of Davos reported Canceled the invitation. For Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to attend the attack, Iran did not make many headlines at a Swiss ski resort.
Meanwhile, there are still few visible cracks in the external crackdown on Iran’s regime or its state watchdog, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is charged with protecting the integrity of the Islamic Republic.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Trump administration thinks they’re going to do this regime simply, for example, by cutting off the head and doing it at no cost to the wider region,” said Iskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, a professor at the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
He has said that even in the event of an assassination attempt on Khamenei, a security plan would be in place within the political and security establishment — especially following a 12-day bombing campaign last June by Israel and the United States targeting Iran’s nuclear program.
Sadeghi-Boroujerdi said: “All the top ranks of the revolutionary guard were taken, they were all killed (during the war), but they were replaced very quickly.”
Khamenei’s age, pushing 86, meant that there was already some inside humor among powerful forces in the upper echelons of the clerical administration.
Sadeghi-Boroujerdi said genuine reformers seeking change in the Islamic Republic were overthrown in 2009 after the opposition – dubbed by some the Persian Spring – was overthrown.
“Maybe we have a lot of people who are more pragmatic and realize that society has made some demands and has to make some concessions for the sake of stability,” he said.
“Iranian regime is really nothing.”
There is no clear negotiation for the ruling government unless the US-led sanctions, which have crippled Iran’s economy with corruption and mismanagement, are lifted.
“We have this effort to capture and control mass discontent,” Sadeghi-Boroujerdi said. So that’s why you have this real crisis in Iran.”
But it is one where the regime still stands. So where does he place some of the opposition who gave their lives to change the country more than once?
Soran Mansurnia’s brother Borhan In 2019, he was shot and killed during a peaceful demonstration in the city of Kermanshah, a previous wave of protests in Iran.
Mansournia describes the mood in Iran today as a complex mix of hope and fear.
“Even if the Islamic Republic suppresses these movements again, I think that in the near future – and I expect in less than three years – we will (at this stage) have another wave of protests and it will be even bigger,” he said.
He said that the regime will continue to persevere until further action is taken from the international community.
Mansoornia wants more countries to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization. Canada is one of the few countries that has banned revolutionary protection in 2024. He also wants Iranian embassies abroad to be closed.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. But what we can say is that the Islamic Republic is definitely over in people’s minds.