Iran vows mass retaliation to attack, taunts Europe over US Greenland push

“Like North Korea, the Islamic Republic has been working to build an intranet, and it is scary. It will be blocking off Iran," said Neda Bolourchi, the executive director of the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans.

The Washington-based PAAIA works to amplify Iranian American voices and advocate for policy solutions on Capitol Hill.

Iran's internet blackout began on January 8 as the uprisings spread nationwide and security forces launched a sweeping crackdown.

At least 12,000 people were killed, most of them over January 8 and 9 according to medics and government sources who spoke to Iran International.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has since acknowledged that “several thousands” were killed, while doctors say most deaths occurred over just two days during what they describe as the most violent phase of repression in the Islamic Republic’s 47-year history.

With near-total internet and phone shutdowns in place, independent verification remains extremely difficult, and medical sources warn the true toll could be higher.

Where does the blackout stand now?

Bolourchi said the shutdown remains severe but not absolute, and that the small openings are not born of restraint but aim to support a bare minimum of business activity especially in the banking sector.

“We’re getting reports that landlines are sporadically available and that some of the throttling has been reduced,” she said.

A limited number of calls and messages are still getting out through platforms such as WhatsApp, though at dramatically reduced levels.

The Islamic Republic, she explained, cannot fully cut connectivity without paralyzing its own systems. Banks, hospitals and parts of the economy still depend on the internet to function, forcing authorities to allow just enough access to keep the state running while the broader population remains largely cut off.

Satellite internet, once a critical lifeline, has also come under heavy pressure. Bolourchi said authorities are using jamming equipment to disrupt Starlink connections while simultaneously confiscating receivers, which are visible and easy to locate.

She warned that possession of such tools has become increasingly dangerous, as the clerical establishment expands the use of severe charges traditionally reserved for enemies of the state.

The length of the blackout itself, Bolourchi said, points to something more permanent taking shape.

Unlike previous shutdowns that proved economically unsustainable after a few days, this current outage has persisted, suggesting the Islamic Republic has made significant progress in separating government infrastructure from public access.

That shift, she warned, could leave ordinary Iranians trapped inside a sealed digital ecosystem, unable to communicate freely with the outside world even after protests subside.

Bolourchi argued that the United States still has leverage if it chooses to use it, pointing to legislation already passed by Congress that was intended to fund internet circumvention tools for Iran, including support for satellite connectivity and VPNs.

Congress, she said, went further than requested by approving $15 million annually for these efforts.

“A lot could have been done over the past year that would be helping the people of Iran right now,” Bolourchi said, citing bureaucratic and funding delays. “Instead, we’re always in a reactive position.”

“This cannot go on forever because at some point I will have to say, ‘I don’t have any idea where this material is,’” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said.

“This cannot go on like this for a long time without me having to declare them in non-compliance.”

Grossi said he was exercising diplomatic restraint but stressed that Iran, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, does not have the option to pick and choose which obligations to meet.

Iran said in December last year it will not yield to international pressure to allow renewed inspections of nuclear sites hit by the United States in June.

Grossi also acknowledged parallel diplomatic efforts aimed at easing tensions between Iran and the United States, saying he hoped they would avert renewed military confrontation.

The IAEA has long sought answers from Iran over past nuclear activities and the whereabouts of undeclared nuclear material, issues Grossi has said cannot be resolved without access to relevant sites.

The investigation by UK-based investigative media outlet Neutral Point of View (NPOV), published on Tuesday, said the effort aimed to control how Iranian events were recorded on Wikipedia.

"This is what authoritarian information warfare looks like in 2026," NPOV said.

"The Islamic Republic isn’t just killing protesters. It’s erasing the evidence that they existed at all, it added.

Wikipedia edits and Iran’s rights record

NPOV said Wikipedia entries had been edited over a period years to sanitize Iran’s human rights record. The report cited a 2024 Times investigation that detailed key information about the 1988 mass executions were removed, including references to women and children killed extrajudicially and the involvement of senior officials in the death commissions.

Information about Iranian official Hamid Nouri’s 2022 life sentence in Sweden for war crimes had disappeared from Wikipedia, it added. References to the 2018 expulsion of two Iranian diplomats from Albania over their alleged involvement in a bomb plot against dissidents were also removed.

AI and downstream platforms

NPOV said the impact extended beyond Wikipedia because major platforms drew from Wikipedia content. The report said that when users queried AI systems such as ChatGPT about Iranian leaders or events, the systems often drew from Wikipedia articles that NPOV described as compromised.

NPOV said the narrative did not remain on Wikipedia and instead propagated into downstream products and services trained on or influenced by Wikipedia content, shaping what users saw across the broader information ecosystem.

Editing tactics and coordination

NPOV said the operation exploited Wikipedia’s consensus model through tactics including what it called “abrasive deletion,” in which small edits gradually eroded sections before larger removals were justified as trimming or the removal of trivial material.

The report said editors used “source reliability” disputes as another mechanism. On the “2017–2018 Iranian protests” page, NPOV said editor Mhhossein deleted paragraphs describing conditions inside Iran after the protests ended, citing disputes over whether dissident outlet Iran News Wire was reliable.

NPOV said coordinated groups acted as voting blocs on article Talk Pages, while “authorship dominance” allowed a small number of editors to maintain control over most of an article’s text by reverting challenges.

The report said a Wikipedia arbitration case documented editors citing state-linked outlets including irdiplomacy.ir. It also said the so-called “Gang of 40” controlled more than 90% of dozens of articles.

Key editors named in the report

NPOV said two editors exemplified the campaign.

It said Mhhossein had acted as a gatekeeper on historical coverage, citing his editing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's page and other Iran-related topics. NPOV said Mhhossein edited 2,228 pages over more than 11,000 edits.

NPOV said Iskandar323 continued editing sensitive Iran-related atrocity content, including the 1988 mass executions, as recently as Jan. 18. The report said Wikipedia was running a site-ban process against him following years of systematic narrative manipulation, and it detailed his editing history across thousands of pages.

Live battleground: 2025–2026 protest page

NPOV said Wikipedia’s “2025–2026 Iranian protests” article had drawn on more than 400 sources and remained relatively distributed at the time of writing. However, it said the Talk Page showed pressure in real time, including disputes over language and whether opposition figures such as Reza Pahlavi should be included.

NPOV highlighted a newly created account, SwedishDutch, which disputed casualty figures and challenged the reliability of outlets including The Sunday Times and Iran International, before the account was deleted hours later.

“I know it’s over,” Bolouri said, referring to the Islamic Republic. “I’m not afraid to say this openly, because I believe the regime will be a different regime.”

Bolouri, a 40-year-old Iranian Canadian, traveled to Iran in late December to visit family and was in Mashhad as protests erupted on January 8.

What she witnessed, she said, was unlike anything she had seen during earlier protest waves.

“It was the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen,” Bolouri said. “The crowd was so huge that I couldn’t even get to the front line.”

She described Vekilabad Boulevard, one of Mashhad’s largest and most prominent central avenues, filled shoulder to shoulder with demonstrators chanting slogans against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and calling for the return of Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s deposed Shah.

The scale of the turnout initially made her feel safe, she said, despite the city’s reputation as a conservative stronghold and its symbolic closeness to Khamenei’s power base.

That sense of safety quickly evaporated as security forces moved in. Live gunfire and tear gas intensified as protesters pushed forward, with the gas becoming so thick it left people disoriented and unable to see.

She recalled being helped away by strangers after losing her vision and struggling to breathe amid the chaos.

What struck her most, she said, was the bravery of younger protesters who repeatedly surged toward security forces even as shots rang out.

“I am a brave person, but they are on a next-level brave,” she said. “Aren’t they afraid of their lives?”

As night fell, Iran’s internet was cut, severing communication and access to the outside world. Bolouri said she realized her messages were no longer sending and feared her parents would be unable to reach her.

“It’s a different city now,” she recalled telling her family once she was back home.

She described streets stripped of traffic signs and surveillance cameras, pulled down by protesters to block motorcycle units and avoid identification. Fires burned at sites linked to the security apparatus, including banks associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The damage, she said, was deliberate and defensive rather than random.

One moment, she said, stayed with her. An ambulance drove toward the crowd—the only vehicle moving against the flow. At first, she thought it was responding to a medical emergency.

“I was like, why is it coming this way?” Bolouri said. “Why wouldn’t it go around? The other streets were still open for cars.”

She soon realized that ambulances were being used to transport security forces. “That’s when it made sense,” she said.

Although she did not personally witness fatalities, Bolouri said she saw multiple injured protesters being carried away as gunfire flashed through clouds of tear gas.

She later learned from relatives that the violence intensified the following night.

Her uncle, who remained in Mashhad, told her that from early evening until nearly midnight, the sound of continuous gunfire echoed through residential neighborhoods.

“They were crying at home,” she said, describing how older family members panicked simply from the noise, aware that something terrible was unfolding outside.

Bolouri’s flight out of Iran was canceled, but she managed to leave via a domestic route to Istanbul. Her family believed she might not survive if she stayed another night.

Now back in Canada, she says the experience has left her unexpectedly hopeful. Comparing the protests she witnessed in Iran with rallies abroad, Bolouri said what stood out inside the country was unity and certainty.

“In Iran, there was no hesitation,” she said. “Everybody was on the same page.”

Despite the violence and mass killings, she believes the uprising marked a turning point.

The scale of participation, the open calls for regime change, and the willingness of protesters to face live fire convinced her that this movement had gone beyond anything she had previously witnessed.

Bolouri said she would normally avoid speaking publicly about her experience, out of concern for being able to return to Iran, but decided to speak out because she firmly believes the Islamic Republic is finished.

“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.”