Sudden deadly fusillade on Iran protesters culminated in Rasht bazaar inferno

Through scattered Starlink messages, rare phone calls, and videos smuggled out at great personal risk, fragments of evidence have begun to form a picture of mass killings across major cities, smaller towns, and even villages.

In a brief message sent via Starlink from Tehran to Iran International, one resident said the situation in the capital and other cities was so dire that “every person is reporting the death of a family member, relative, neighbor, or friend,” stressing that “this is not an exaggeration.”

“The air was filled with the smell of blood in Tajrish and Narmak,” an Iranian user outside the country quoted a contact as saying in a post on X, referring to neighborhoods in north and east Tehran.

“They were washing the blood from the streets with the municipal irrigation tankers they use to water roadside plants.”

A Tehran resident told Iran International that he saw heavy deployments of IRGC forces early on Thursday morning—just before the blackout—with security units transporting heavy machine guns and concealing them in parking garages across different neighborhoods.

An image later circulated showing a mounted military-grade machine gun on a security forces vehicle in Tehran’s Sadeghieh district, reportedly taken days earlier.

Iran International has reported that as many as 12,000 people may have been killed over just two days, January 8 and 9. CBS News, citing two sources—one of them inside Iran—suggested the figure could be as high as 20,000.

Thousands more have reportedly been detained nationwide. Iranian authorities have labeled anyone present on the streets after January 8 a mohareb—“one who wages war against God”—a charge that carries the death penalty.

The whereabouts of most detainees remain unknown.

The government, meanwhile, claims protesters killed hundreds of security personnel and government supporters. State media has broadcast images of a mass funeral for 100 alleged victims.

Unverified reports suggest that some families have been pressured to sign documents identifying their killed relatives as members of the Basij militia—an apparent effort to inflate official casualty figures.

BBC Persian journalist Farzad Seifkaran reported receiving a message from Tehran stating that one family was told it must either declare its relative an “active Basij member” or sign a document demanding retribution against three unnamed individuals before being allowed to retrieve the body.

Similar pressure was reported during the 2009 protests. More recently, authorities attempted to portray Amir-Hesam Khodayari, a 22-year-old killed in Kouhdasht, Lorestan province, as a Basij member—an effort publicly rejected by his father during the burial.

In several cases, families have also said they were asked to pay for the bullets used to kill their relatives..

On Sunday, two short videos surfaced showing families inside a hangar belonging to Tehran’s forensic medicine organization in the Kahrizak area. Dozens of bodies wrapped in black bags were visible, some on gurneys and others laid directly on the floor.

In one clip, a woman’s voice can be heard crying out to her child: “Get up my love, get up for God’s sake,” as families wander among the bodies searching in shock.

The footage appeared to capture only a fraction of what was taking place.

Hours later, Vahid, an Iranian user based in the United States who has documented Iranian protests since 2009, released a compilation of 12 videos. Some showed the interior of the same facility, where a screen displayed names and photos of the dead while a loudspeaker called out names, instructing families to collect bodies.

According to Vahid, the footage was brought out of Iran by someone who had recently escaped the country. “They are bringing in the bodies in pick-up trucks and telling people to search them themselves,” the individual told him.

Later footage showed bodies being unloaded from trailers. Outside the building, hundreds of people moved among rows of corpses laid directly on the ground, wailing and screaming.

A source who sent images from Kahrizak told Vahid he had traveled nearly 1,000 kilometers to reach a border area where he could access the internet.

Amid the mourning, signs of defiance emerged. Rather than chanting traditional Islamic phrases, some mourners clapped and ululated, as if escorting a bride or groom.

Others raised photographs of the dead and shouted slogans including: “Death to Khamenei,” “This is the year of bloodshed, Khamenei will be toppled,” and “I will kill the one who killed my brother.”

“This regime is dying. Essentially it’s fighting, it’s killing again, but it is also dying," said Petraeus, a retired four-star Army general who now runs the Middle East business of US private equity firm KKR.

“I think it signals enormous questions about the regime's ability to sustain the situation,” he said, arguing Tehran is under more pressure now than at almost any point since the Iran-Iraq war.

Speaking to host Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, Petraeus painted a stark picture of the clerical establishment facing simultaneous existential challenges at home and abroad.

“Iran is essentially defenseless at this point,” Petraeus said, referring to the destruction of air and ballistic missile defense systems early in a June conflict with Israel and the United States.

The veteran commander, who led the so-called "surge" of US forces aimed at defeating an insurgency at the height of the US war in Iraq, said the scale of violence used against demonstrators reflects fear rather than control by Iran's leaders.

While he acknowledged the Islamic Republic may be able to suppress unrest in the short term, he warned that flooding cities and towns with security forces may not buy authorities a lasting reprieve from popular anger.

“This regime has lost legitimacy. The problem is it hasn’t lost the capability to kill.”

His assessment comes as Iran grapples with sustained nationwide unrest that began on December 28 among electronics and cellphone merchants at Tehran’s bazaar and quickly escalated into a nationwide uprising against the Islamic Republic.

At least 12,000 people were killed in just two days, according to medics and Iranian officials speaking to Iran International.

With the Iranian currency cratering, inflation climbing and purchasing power collapsing, Petraeus said Iran no longer has the financial tools it once used to calm the streets.

“At this time, there's not much Iran can do about it. They have very little capacity."

Asked about Trump's mooted pledge to intervene militarily to defend protestors, Petraeus stopped short of assessing the efficacy of any US attack but said the move would be well received and not bolster the leadership.

“I think we could take action against the regime and it would be applauded … not be a rallying cry for them.”

As observed by numerous scholars of revolution, opposition forces are almost never in a strong position to defeat a regime’s armed forces. Revolutions occur when, for whatever reason, those armed forces stop suppressing the opposition.

This can happen for different reasons. One is that personnel within the armed forces simply refuse to carry out orders to suppress the opposition, as occurred in the democratic revolutions in much of Eastern Europe in 1989 and in subsequent “color revolutions” elsewhere.

The Islamic Republic’s armed forces, however, have so far proven quite willing to suppress Iranian citizens.

Another possibility is that the regime is more frightened of its armed forces than of its opponents, and therefore does not allow them to act forcefully for fear that they might seize power after suppressing the opposition.

This is what happened in Iran in 1979. But while Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was unwilling to use force effectively against his opponents, the Islamic Republic has shown no such hesitation.

Yet another scenario is that a split develops within the ranks of an authoritarian regime’s armed forces, with significant elements defecting to the opposition.

A defection by a key commander can quickly cascade, as occurred over just a few days in the Philippines in 1986. When such a defection occurs, the remaining security forces are confronted not merely with suppressing unarmed civilians, but with fighting armed men like themselves—a prospect they often wish to avoid.

This has not yet occurred in Iran, but in my view it remains the likeliest path to bringing down the Islamic Republic.

What would it take for this to happen? Most probably, it would require officers to feel confident that their institution would survive the regime’s downfall and remain intact under a new political order.

The commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are less likely to feel such confidence than Iran’s regular armed forces. But even if elements of the regular military were willing to defect to the opposition, they would likely still have to fight the IRGC—unless the latter collapsed when faced with the prospect of confronting the regular army.

These are the fraught calculations confronting those within Iran’s armed forces who share the population’s opposition to the regime.

The Trump administration might be able to affect this calculus through attacks that degrade the IRGC, but not Iran’s regular armed forces.

In other words, for the regular military to risk turning against the regime, it would have to believe both that it could defeat the IRGC and its Basij allies, and that it would itself survive the fall of the Islamic Republic.

Alternatively, some kind of deal would have to be made with IRGC commanders, assuring them of integration into a new regime’s armed forces.

On its face, of course, such an idea is utterly repugnant.

There is also the hope that rank-and-file members of the regime’s armed forces might refuse orders to fire on demonstrators and instead turn their weapons against their commanders and the regime. This, however, does not appear likely.

That being the case, the only viable path to bringing down the regime may be some form of accommodation with key elements of its armed forces.

The Trump administration’s transactional approach to foreign policy might make it more open to attempting this. But America’s authoritarian Arab allies may be even more fearful of a democratic Iran than of a weakened Islamic Republic. The mere existence of a democratic Iran could inspire democratic movements in Arab countries—something their rulers are keen to avoid.

Conservative Israeli governments, too, have long taken a dim view of democratic movements in Muslim countries, which they do not expect to be as accommodating as certain authoritarian Arab governments that have signed the Abraham Accords.

Israel and Iran’s Arab neighbors, in particular, can therefore be expected to lobby the Trump administration about the dangers and unpredictability of political change in Iran.

Unfortunately, all this suggests that without key defections from within Iran’s armed forces—or efforts by the United States or other outside powers to encourage them—the Islamic Republic is more likely than not to remain in power.

The best hope for Iran’s democratic opposition is to secure an accommodation with key elements of the armed forces that would trigger the kind of security-force defections seen in successful democratic revolutions elsewhere.

This is far easier said than done. But where it has happened, it has often come suddenly and unexpectedly.

I sincerely hope this will happen in Iran.

Street protests which burst forth on Dec. 28 citing economic grievances quickly morphed into calls for the downfall of the nearly 50-year-old theocracy.

Authorities deployed deadly force to largely quell the unrest in the bloodiest crackdown on demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Accounts of the violence which unfolded on Iran's streets at its height on Jan. 8-10 were related to Iran International on Monday and shed light on killing which authorities have acknowledged claimed the lives of thousands but according to medics and government officials total at least 12,000, according to Iran International.

Karaj: wounded protestors shot in Taleghani Square

In Karaj, west of Tehran in north-central Iran, an eyewitness said security forces fired directly at protesters during demonstrations on Jan. 9 in Taleghani Square, killing and wounding a number of people.

The witness said forces deliberately shot dead some wounded protesters and blocked others from reaching hospitals.

Gorgan and Shahin Shahr: snipers on rooftops

In Gorgan, in northeastern Iran, an eyewitness said security forces fired at protesters from the rooftop of Panj Azar Hospital on Jan. 9, adding that a 15-year-old girl was directly targeted and killed.

Separate eyewitness accounts from Shahin Shahr, in Isfahan province in central Iran, said armed forces fired at protesters from the rooftops of public buildings, including a haberdashery bazaar, the education department building, the municipality and the Negarestan building on the nights of Jan. 8 and Jan. 9.

Qazvin: hospitals filled with bodies and wounded

In Qazvin, in northwest Iran, an eyewitness said more than 1,000 people were killed in the city over three nights of protests from Jan. 8 to Jan. 10.

The witness said hospitals were filled with bodies and wounded people within two hours of direct gunfire by security forces on the evening of Jan. 8, adding that the blood on the floors of some medical centers lapped up to exit doors.

Behbahan: eye injuries, machine gun deployment

At least 40 people, and possibly up to 50, suffered eye injuries, a medical worker in Behbahan, in Khuzestan province in southwest Iran, told Iran Iran International. Use of buckshot which has blinded protestors has been reported in previous waves of deadly violence.

The source said vehicles equipped with machine guns were stationed in the city and fired at people on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9.

Hashtgerd: young child shot on sight

In Hashtgerd, west of Tehran in Alborz province, police fired on a family accompanied by a young child on Friday, Jan. 9, a local source told Iran International.

According to the source, a six- or seven-year-old child was seriously injured and suffered heavy bleeding after being hit in the leg by pellets.

The child’s mother said the family was not chanting slogans while leaving their home, but police opened fire as soon as they saw them, according to the source.

Shahroud: protestor shot through the heart

A 31-year-old protester identified as Matin Montazerzohur was killed after being shot by security forces on the evening of Jan. 8 during protests in the city of Shahroud, in northeastern Iran, local sources told Iran International.

Eyewitnesses said he had travelled from Gorgan to Shahroud with friends to take part in the protests and remained in contact with his family until around 8 p.m.

Hours later, his friends informed his family that he had been shot.

The source said the bullet struck him in the chest and ripped through his heart.

His body was returned to his family after four days, on Jan. 12, and transferred to Gorgan. He was buried the following day without a ceremony. Sources said he was self-employed, worked in bodybuilding and had planned to migrate to Turkey.

Isfahan: summonses and pressure on striking shopkeepers

In Isfahan, in central Iran, local sources told Iran International said the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit summoned shopkeepers who joined strikes and blocked the bank accounts of some of them.

A Telegram-based chatbot run by Iran International allows users to submit short messages that may be aired on television, defying the blackout.

The chatbot was launched in late December, shortly before protests spread across Iranian cities and was meant to collect photos, videos and testimonials from people inside Iran. Now the information is flowing in the other direction.

Before the shutdown, the network said it was receiving more than 10 messages a minute from users inside Iran, many of them sending videos and first-hand accounts of protests and arrests.

The tool was a key means of relaying events inside Iran to the outside world, as foreign media continue to face tight restrictions on reporting from the country and the internet shutdown which began on January 8 largely cut off that flow of information.

A tool repurposed

With most global websites blocked, social media unavailable and SMS messaging down, many people inside Iran have little or no access to the internet. Some can still make international phone calls, but the connections are unstable and expensive.

People outside Iran are mostly unable to call into the country at all.

As a result, families abroad have begun using the chatbot to send short personal messages, hoping their relatives inside the country will see them on the satellite broadcasts which are one of the few means of getting information from outside.

The network displays a QR code during live programs. Viewers outside Iran can scan it or use the Telegram handle @intlmedia_bot to submit messages, some of which are then shown on air.

Since the shutdown began, the chatbot has received more than 60,000 messages, according to the broadcaster.

How the system works

The network said it has long relied on staff to review and verify user-submitted material, but introduced automated tools to help manage the growing volume of messages.

Mahdi Tajik, an editorial lead at Iran International, said the system does not store personal data, an issue that many users worry about during periods of unrest.

Tajik said the idea of using the chatbot to relay family messages emerged after the internet shutdown cut off millions of Iranians abroad from their relatives.

“Within a day, hundreds of messages came in,” he said. “Many people were worried about their families. Many spoke about hope and about freedom being near.”

Some users inside Iran who managed to briefly connect to the internet told the network that seeing the messages had given them comfort, he added.

'My dear husband ...'

Many of the notes are addressed clearly to specific people, often including names, cities and family details.

“My dear husband, Shabnam and I are fine. I hope you are well in Behbahan,” one message read.

Another said: “Marjan from New Zealand ... I hope you are okay. I found no way to reach you. I hope you see this message.”

A third listed several names: “Hello to Parvin, Giti, Fereshteh, Farzaneh, Houshang, Mohsen, Alireza. I am worried about you all. I hope for our beloved Iran and to see you again. Mohammad, Canada.”

Another woman wrote: “Sister Leila, my beautiful Helia and Helena. I love you so much. I am very worried about you and miss you. Take care of yourselves and our whole family. Parinaz from San Diego.”

Editors say many of the notes come from people whose spouses, parents or children are inside Iran with no way to communicate.

The messages often focus on reassuring loved ones rather than grim news events.

Pressure on access

Satellite television remains one of the few ways information can still enter Iran. Authorities, however, have sought to limit access in some areas, including by seizing satellite dishes, according to people familiar with the situation.

At the same time, Iranians abroad have taken to the streets in cities across Europe, North America and Australia to show support for protesters at home, holding rallies and vigils and calling for international pressure on Tehran.

The messages sent through the chatbot do not allow two-way communication, and there is no guarantee they will be seen by their intended recipients.

Still, for families separated by borders and the internet shutdown, they offer one of the few remaining ways to penetrate the current digital iron curtain.