A 53-year-old Iranian man was shot dead with what live ammunition while taking out his household trash, as videos and witness accounts point to a pattern of security forces firing on bystanders during unrest last month.
Behzad Nikyar, also known as Behzad Kimasi Selkhori, was killed on the evening of January 9 in the city of Qazvin, according to relatives who spoke to Iran International.
They said he was not taking part in protests and had walked a few meters from his home to leave a garbage bag at the end of his alley when he was struck.
The bullet entered one side of his body and exited the other as he was returning home, relatives said.
A video said to have been filmed the following morning shows blood stains along an alley in the Khaghani area of Qazvin, which family members say trace the path Nikyar tried to crawl back to his front door. He later died of his injuries. He was the father of one daughter, according to those accounts.
Nikyar’s death comes amid a wave of social media videos and testimonies alleging that security forces opened fire on pedestrians on January 8, 9 and 10, including people described by witnesses as not participating in demonstrations.
One video from Tehran’s Sattarkhan district, recorded by a building’s surveillance camera and circulated online, appears to show three people walking along a sidewalk when two armed men on a motorcycle stop ahead of them and fire in their direction without visible warning.
In Mashhad, a man was shot in the neck on the evening of January 9 while buying groceries about 50 meters from security forces, according to a witness account sent to Iran International.
In the northern city of Rasht, a resident said his elderly mother was hit by multiple pellet rounds in the head and legs after leaving a pharmacy at dusk that day. Another report described a pregnant woman shot outside a pharmacy in Isfahan.
Separately, a 16-year-old boy, Kasra Vafapour, was killed by a gunshot wound to the heart on January 9, according to citizen reports, which said he had gone out to buy medicine for his younger sister.
Residents from several cities, including Neyshabur, Borujerd and Sari, have said that security forces fired pellet rounds “indiscriminately” at passersby in recent weeks.
At least 36,500 people have been killed during the national uprising. Tens of thousands more have been reported injured or detained.
Students at several Iranian universities held a third consecutive day of protests on Monday, chanting against Ali Khamenei. At Amir Kabir, Tehran and Alzahra universities, students set fire to the flag of the Islamic Republic. At some of these universities, including Tehran University, Basij forces attacked students.
The image – a Basij-aligned student climbing up to pull down a stuffed animal – spread quickly online. More than a campus scuffle, it suggested a phrase that began on social media is now being contested in the physical arena of protest and counter-mobilization.
From meme to material symbol
The nickname Rat-Ali gained traction during the June war with Israel, when Khamenei largely disappeared from public view and state media aired only prerecorded video messages. Reports that he had taken shelter in fortified underground facilities during military escalation and later unrest fueled the metaphor.
In Persian, “moush” connotes hiding and evasion. By pairing it with the Supreme Leader’s name, critics flip the state’s image of firm leadership.
On Monday, that inversion took tangible form. The rat was not only an online meme but an object displayed and physically removed.
Political satire often loses force when ignored. Authority can neutralize insult through indifference. The decision by a Basiji student to climb the tree and take down the toy had the opposite effect: it signaled that the symbol was perceived as threatening enough to confront.
Precedent in protest language
Iran’s protest culture has repeatedly transformed ridicule into durable shorthand. After the 2020 US drone strike that killed IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, some Iranians referred to him as “cutlet,” a darkly comic reference to the condition of his remains. The term proved difficult to suppress despite official efforts to preserve Soleimani’s image as a national icon.
However, Moush-Ali carries sharper political implications because it targets the apex of the system. Khamenei’s authority rests not only on constitutional powers but also on cultivated distance – a blend of religious stature and institutional control.
Mockery compresses that distance. A rat hanging from a tree reduces a figure positioned as untouchable into a repeatable visual punchline.
Authoritarian systems rely in part on aura – an impression of inevitability and psychological dominance. When that aura becomes vulnerable to parody, the cost of reaction rises. Suppression can amplify visibility; indifference can appear weak.
The scene at Sharif involved a toy, a tree and a handful of students. Yet the rapid spread of the image suggested a broader recalibration of political language.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, spoke before the council in Geneva as most delegates remained seated, despite calls from campaigners urging democratic governments to walk out.
For many Iranians, the moment underscored what they see as a stark reality: while families continue to mourn the thousands killed in the protests, representatives of the same government accused of carrying out the violence were again granted an international platform at the world’s leading human rights body.
“Several UN Human Rights bodies have found that the Islamic Republic is committing crimes against humanity. The regime’s perpetrators should be punished rather than given a platform,” Brandon Silver, director of policy and projects at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, told Iran International.
Walkout campaign falls short
In the days leading up to the session, human rights advocates and Iranian activists urged democratic governments to leave the chamber during the speech.
In an interview conducted before Gharibabadi was set to speak, UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer called on governments to refuse participation, warning that granting Tehran a podium would send a devastating message to victims and their families.
“You cannot grant a false badge of international legitimacy to a regime that just murdered tens of thousands of its people,” Neuer told Eye for Iran, adding, “Shame on the UN for inviting the murderers who try to wound and kill innocent people.”
A global petition supporting the walkout effort gathered more than 360,000 signatures. But video from Monday’s session showed that most delegations remained in place as the Iranian official delivered his remarks.
Tehran’s narrative
During his speech, Gharibabadi dismissed reports of large-scale killings and instead accused the United States and Israel of orchestrating unrest inside Iran.
He claimed “enemies of Iran” had diverted economic protests into “riots and chaos,” alleging that demonstrators committed “Daesh-like atrocities,” while asserting official figures showed 3,117 total deaths — far below estimates reported by rights groups.
He further accused supporters of the protest movement abroad of spreading “fabricated casualty figures,” while insisting Iran itself was a defender of human rights.
The claims closely mirrored messaging that has circulated across state media and official channels since the crackdown.
A recent joint investigation by Iran International and The Free Press documented what it described as a coordinated international information campaign launched alongside the repression, blaming the domestic uprising on foreign conspiracies and amplifying those narratives through media personalities and social media networks.
Diplomacy over grief
For families of victims, the speech stood in sharp contrast to testimonies emerging from inside Iran.
One father told Eye for Iran that his 17-year-old son, wounded during demonstrations, was later killed inside a hospital while doctors were attempting to save him — one of many accounts shared by families seeking international recognition and accountability.
Activists say allowing such narratives to be delivered at the Human Rights Council risks amplifying disputed claims while survivors continue to demand justice.
Politics over principles
Later the same day in Geneva, Gharibabadi also appeared at the UN Conference on Disarmament, where images captured him greeting and shaking hands with UN Secretary-General António Guterres following the session.
For critics, the optics reinforced what they see as a rapid return to diplomatic normalcy despite the recent crackdown.
“The UN either stands for something or it doesn’t,” Hillel Neuer told Eye for Iran, arguing that international institutions cannot claim to defend human rights while granting legitimacy to officials accused of mass repression.
For many Iranians watching from inside the country and across the diaspora, the sequence—a speech at the Human Rights Council followed by diplomatic handshakes—symbolized the uneasy coexistence of international diplomacy and unresolved domestic trauma.
