If accurate, the death toll would put the Iranian regime’s crackdown on a scale the region has not seen since Syria’s former president, Hafez al-Assad, killed thousands of dissidents in 1982; it would mean more Iranians have been killed in just over two weeks than even the highest casualty numbers estimated after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. It’s a degree of opacity that’s become increasingly rare in the 21st century: In conflicts like Russia’s war in Ukraine, and even in Gaza, despite a lack of access by international journalists, atrocities are often scrupulously documented on social media by witnesses. But as Vali Nasr, a professor of Middle East studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a leading expert on Iran’s domestic politics and foreign policy, explained to my colleague Joshua Keating last week, these protests are, more than anything, a signal that “this phase of the revolution of the Islamic Republic has reached its limits, and that the country needs a different direction.”
Author: Cameron Peters
Published at: 2026-01-13 22:52:20
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