'Every family knows a victim': Iranians in exile speak out on mass killings

For Alex, an Iranian living in Texas, the violence is no longer something he is witnessing from afar.

His cousin Mehdi was killed on Friday, January 9, in the western Iranian city of Kermanshah after joining nationwide protests following exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s call for Iranians to rise up.

Iran International is withholding Alex’s last name to protect family members inside Iran.

“The Basij shot him in the head and the stomach," Alex said, recounting what his aunt told him. "They (Basij) hunted him like a dog."

Authorities later cut internet access across much of the country, severing communication and leaving families unable to confirm who was alive or dead.

Alex only learned what had happened days later, on Wednesday afternoon, when landlines briefly reopened during the blackout. The connection was poor and repeatedly cut out, but he could hear his aunt howling in tears and screaming.

"I only got like three minutes out of the call but what I got out of it was my aunt screaming and she said he's been killed."

Mehdi was 32 years old. Alex said his aunt later identified the body at a forensic center after days of searching. He says his aunt recognized her son by his hair.

"His face was completely unrecognizable," said Alex.

He said authorities are now demanding payment from the family to release Mehdi’s body.

From Texas, Alex said he feels hollow and barely able to function, but believes speaking publicly is the only way to honor his cousin and push back against the silence imposed by the blackout.

"He wanted a free Iran and King Reza Pahlavi."

'Fear and helplessness'

In Canada, Iranian-Canadian Ghazal Shokri described a similar sense of fear and helplessness as she waits for fragile contact with her family inside Iran. She said she has heard her mother’s voice only for seconds and her sister’s for minutes since the violence escalated.

Shokri said the scale of the killings is unlike anything Iranians have experienced before, warning that nearly every family now knows someone who has been killed.

She said she is increasingly worried not only about the physical destruction of the country but about the long-term psychological toll on Iranian society, including widespread trauma, depression and lasting social damage.

“There is every family now in Iran knows a few people got killed," Ghazal said.

"Honestly, it's not easy to talk about it. I mean, as a human being, we haven't been designed for this," she said.

Another Iranian in exile, Sobhan Nofar, said the nationwide communications blackout has intensified fear among Iranians living abroad.

“That silence is terrifying,” he said.

He said the loss of contact with people inside Iran has left many Iranians outside the country sleepless and consumed by anxiety for their families, with every fragment of information feeling like evidence of a growing bloodbath.

Hediyeh, a journalist based in Washington, DC, says she is worried not only about the health of her parents and her husband's family, but also about their financial situation, as they largely relied on allowances the couple sent through friends and relatives.

With the internet shut down, it is no longer possible to send money to the family, leaving Hediyeh concerned about how the elderly parents will make ends meet under Iran’s severe economic conditions.

Iran International has reported that at least 12,000 people were killed in just two days as security forces unleashed what analysts describe as the deadliest wave of state violence in the Islamic Republic’s history. Other estimates suggest the toll may be even higher as the blackout continues to limit verification.

Growing calls for US action

The testimonies come as calls by Iranians inside the country and across the diaspora for US military action have intensified, with demands for targeted strikes against the Islamic Republic’s security and repression apparatus.

For Iranians in exile like Alex, Shokri and Nofar, the debate is no longer abstract. It is shaped by the names and faces of people they knew and by the fear that more families will soon join them in mourning.

"Every piece of news, videos or photos coming from Iran feels like another sense of a blood bath," said Nofar "I'm really scared, deeply scared but I don't allow myself to completely fall apart because I truly believe Iranian people are bigger than this terrorist regime."

As Iran remains largely cut off from the outside world, they say speaking publicly is one of the few ways left to ensure the dead are not reduced to statistics.