Iranian and Venezuelan opposition figures in a meeting in Washington DC urged the United States and its allies to act against what they described as an axis of repression between their two countries.
Iranian activist Masih Alinejad met with Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado in Washington, where the two discussed the situation in Iran and Venezuela and called for stronger international action.
“Today I am in Washington, DC. The capital of the free world,” Alinejad said. “I am here with one of the most courageous woman who is leading the democratic opposition movement in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado.”
The meeting comes amid one of the deadliest periods of deadly violence in Iran's history. Iranian authorities have responded to nationwide protests with a massacre, with at least 36,500 people killed by security forces from Jan 8-9.
Alinejad said the Venezuelan and Iranian struggles are linked, arguing that the governments of Nicolás Maduro and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei support one another.
“Maduro is not alone. Ali Khamenei is his ally,” Alinejad said. “Ali Khamenei and Revolutionary Guards invaded Venezuela.”
Machado said that cooperation between the heavily sanctioned authoritarian governments has been underway for years.
“The tyrannies we’re facing have been cooperating for many years, exchanging resources, information technology agents, weapons, weapons, certainly,” Machado said. “And now at the same time, we see our people getting up and committing themselves in an unprecedented citizen movement for freedom.”
Machado’s remarks come weeks after US forces captured Maduro in Caracas and flew him to New York, where he has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges.
She rejected criticism of such actions as foreign intervention.
The meeting also follows repeated warnings by US President Donald Trump that Washington would respond if Iranian authorities escalated violence against protesters — statements that activists say raised expectations among Iranians seeking international backing.
Alinejad said Iran is currently facing mass violence by state forces.
“Right now, Iranians are facing massacre,” she said. “Up to 20,000 people have been killed ... with empty hands, unarmed people cannot win."
Machado welcomed the US military intervention which captured Maduro this month, calling it a turning point. The attack killed 83 people, according to Venezuela's defense ministry.
“Finally, in Venezuela, we’re seeing President Trump making a tremendous important decision,” she said. “January 3rd, when President Trump brought Nicolas Maduro to justice.”
“Venezuela will be free and Iran will be free as well,” she added.
Shahpari was shot by security forces on January 8, 2026, during protests in Baharestan, Isfahan province, people familiar with the matter told Iran International.
The sources, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said security forces opened fire indiscriminately on protesters that night.
“They opened fire on everyone that night, men and women, young and old,” the source said.
Videos sent to Iran International show gunshots being heard as protesters chant “long live the King” in Baharestan on January 8.
Security forces shot Shahpari in the leg on Isar Street in Baharestan sometime between 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. local time, causing him to fall to the ground, a source said.
Wounded but alive, he was taken by ambulance to Al-Zahra Hospital in Isfahan.
“He was not dead when he was taken to hospital,” the source added.
For days afterward, Shahpari’s family searched hospitals across Isfahan. Authorities repeatedly told them he was wounded and alive but refused to say where he was, the source said.
“Then there was nothing. No answers.”
Three days later, the family’s search ended near Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery, Isfahan’s main burial ground.
With the cemetery morgue full, bodies were being kept in a storage warehouse used for fruit and vegetables near Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery, the source said.
“There was no space ... They had put the bodies in a warehouse. As far as the eye could see, there were bodies,” putting the total at a minimum of 500.
When the body was found, a gunshot wound was visible on the side of his head, which the source said was not present when he was taken to hospital.
The source said they believed it was a gunshot to execute him and that he had been operated upon on his abdomen without his family's knowledge and later stitched back up.
About 18 miles southeast of Baharestan, also in Isfahan province, in the provincial capital, another source told Iran International that at the height of protests, “several containers of bodies” were brought to Bagh-e Rezvan in the middle of the night and unloaded into warehouses.
According to the source, some of the bodies were still alive and semi-conscious.
Shahpari, 32, was originally from Izeh in Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran and belonged to the Bakhtiari Lur ethnic minority, but had moved to Isfahan in search of work.
To support himself, he worked nights as a building security guard and spent his days unloading cargo as a laborer.
“He was a freedom-seeker,” a source said. “He opposed religion and supported the monarchy.”
Shahpari was buried on January 18, 2026, in the village of Nashil-e Do near Izeh.
“He was buried wrapped in the lion and sun flag, just as he wished...just as we all do.”
In a joint statement, Iran’s Martyrs Foundation and the Legal Medicine Organization said 3,117 people were killed during the nationwide protests in January.
The number itself, however, is strikingly familiar.
The same figure – 3,117 – has appeared in multiple, otherwise unrelated official datasets over recent years, including public health statistics, economic reports, and earlier protest-related announcements.
Variants of the number, particularly 1,039 and its multiples, have also been cited repeatedly in COVID-19 infection and hospitalization figures released by state bodies.
Analysts say that while identical numbers can recur by chance, the repeated use of a non-rounded figure across different sectors and time periods is statistically unlikely.
The pattern has prompted questions about whether such figures reflect genuine record-keeping, administrative shortcuts, or the use of standardized numbers in situations where full data are unavailable or politically sensitive.
Independent human rights organizations and international media have consistently challenged official casualty figures following protest crackdowns.
Their estimates – based on eyewitness testimony, hospital documentation, verified video evidence, and reports of serious injuries and enforced disappearances—point to significantly higher death tolls than those acknowledged by authorities.
According to documents reviewed by Iran International, more than 36,500 Iranians were killed by security forces during the January 8-9 crackdown on nationwide protests, making it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history.
Official statements, by contrast, have offered little supporting detail. Names, locations, dates, and provincial breakdowns have not been released, limiting independent verification and intensifying criticism that casualty figures may be framed to downplay the scale of violence, particularly as international attention grows, including at the UN Human Rights Council.
The reappearance of 3,117 has reinforced long-standing skepticism over the reliability of official statistics in moments of crisis—when numbers carry political weight well beyond their face value.
