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The accounts and materials focus on January 8 and 9, when anti-government protests were taking place across Iran and large crowds took to the streets in several cities in Alborz, a province bordering the capital. Security forces responded with live fire in several areas, according to witnesses.

Verified footage, eyewitness testimony and information gathered from several cities across the province describe security operations inside medical facilities, bodies left in streets and the removal of corpses in municipal garbage trucks.

Iran International could not independently corroborate every account or casualty figure because of communications restrictions and the lack of unrestricted access. The details in this report are therefore based on testimony and information from local sources.

Cultural sites turned into firing posts

In Fardis, a city west of the capital, a public library was converted into an ammunition store and staging point, while schools and mosques were used as gathering places for armed personnel, residents said.

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Security forces were deployed at a traffic police building adjacent to the city's main cinema, using tear gas, stun grenades and live ammunition against protesters, according to testimonies.

On the evening of January 9, shooters took positions on the cinema roof and surrounding buildings and opened fire on crowds below, multiple sources said.

Forces began firing in bursts around 10 p.m. without appearing to select individual targets, one resident said, describing elderly men in the streets who had been struck by live ammunition or pellets.

Bodies were kept inside the cinema for two days before being removed, several others said. Security personnel also forced residents to delete footage they had recorded.

Gunfire from government buildings

Similar patterns emerged elsewhere in Alborz, where security forces fired from or near government and police buildings.

In Hashtgerd, a city about 70 kilometers west of the capital, forces used Kalashnikov and G3 rifles as well as DShK heavy machine guns. Some of the shooting came from an area containing the local governor's office and police headquarters, local sources said.

Twelve-year-old Sana Tosangi was killed by direct gunfire on January 9 after two bullets struck her in the back and head near government buildings, people familiar with her death said. Shooters were also positioned on the governor's office and a nearby shopping center.

In Meshkin Dasht, special police units used loudspeakers to tell residents that conditions were calm before opening fire after people emerged from their homes.

In Eshtehard, gunfire was reported near a police station and governor's office. A truck carrying bodies was later taken to a largely abandoned cemetery as the number of dead increased, local sources said.

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In another part of Alborz, cranes were used to destroy access points to alleys, making it harder to move between the main road, residential streets and medical facilities.

Clinics raided, bodies found bound

Medical facilities in Fardis also came under security control.

The morgue at one clinic quickly reached capacity, while security forces entered another medical facility and detained staff members and wounded protesters. Witnesses said security forces shot some wounded protesters inside the clinic.

Security personnel also took jewelry and personal belongings from wounded or dead women, several people who described events at the facilities said.

“The basement of the clinic was full of bodies,” one resident told Iran International.

Another clinic refused to admit some wounded people, information gathered by Iran International showed.

Iran International's verification team used visual and audio analysis and matched architectural features across submitted footage to identify the dental section of another clinic as the location where some of the images were recorded.

The footage shows bodies inside the medical facility, including several people whose hands and feet were bound. Three people identified by sources as members of the same family were among the dead visible in the footage.

Bodies removed in garbage trucks

Bodies were also left in streets after the shooting, according to testimony from the area.

Plainclothes personnel traveling in vehicles without license plates left bodies in pairs at alley entrances and forced passing drivers at gunpoint to transport corpses, several residents said.

One said that when people contacted the municipality about bodies in the streets, an employee responded by comparing the corpses to garbage.

The testimony and verified footage reviewed by Iran International describe the use of civilian and government infrastructure across Alborz during the January crackdown, from cultural venues and administrative buildings to medical facilities, while restrictions on independent access continue to hinder a full accounting of the deaths.

Mohammad Reza Kan’ani, head of the Environmental Protection Department in the northern province of Mazandaran, said Thursday that the Caspian’s water level was declining by around 10 to 20 centimeters annually, attributing much of the decline to rising temperatures, climate change and increased evaporation.

The Caspian’s water temperature had risen by about 1.5 degrees over the past two decades while evaporation had increased by an estimated 10% to 15%, he added.

Kan’ani warned that continued retreat of the shoreline could have serious consequences for coastal infrastructure, local economies and ecosystems dependent on the Caspian, including wetlands.

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About 25% of the Caspian’s water comes from precipitation and 75% from rivers, Kanani said, with the Volga – which flows through Russia into the northern Caspian – accounting for the overwhelming majority of river inflow.

Shina Ansari, head of Iran’s Department of Environment, gave an even broader measure of the retreat this week, saying the Caspian’s level had fallen by around two to 2.5 meters over the past decade.

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She described the decline as one of the region’s most serious environmental challenges and said reduced river inflows, alongside climate change, were contributing to the crisis.

Without cooperation among the five Caspian littoral states – Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – the consequences could extend to ports, coastal communities and the wider ecosystem, Ansari warned.

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Falling waters meet a renewed legal dispute

The environmental warnings come as the Caspian has returned to the center of political debate in Iran over the government’s effort to ratify the 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea.

Hossein-Ali Haji-Deligani, deputy chairman of parliament’s Article 90 Committee, criticized what he called the government’s rush to approve the convention, saying this week that it could effectively reduce Iran’s share from 20% to between 3.5% and 5%.

That claim requires important qualification.

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The 2018 convention does not assign Iran – or any of the five littoral states – a fixed percentage of the Caspian or its seabed. Instead, it establishes territorial waters and fishing zones while leaving seabed boundaries to be negotiated between neighboring states.

Iran’s southern seabed boundaries with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan therefore remain unresolved.

The frequently cited figure of 20% was a post-Soviet Iranian negotiating position based on dividing the Caspian equally among its five littoral states, rather than a previously established treaty entitlement.

Nor did the earlier Iran-Soviet treaties formally grant Iran 50% of the Caspian. Agreements concluded in 1921 and 1940 established a bilateral Iran-Soviet legal regime, including equal navigation rights and exclusive arrangements between the two countries, but did not divide the sea or its seabed into equal territorial halves.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, four former Soviet republics emerged as independent Caspian states. Russia subsequently reached agreements with several of them to divide northern seabed resources along modified median lines, while Iran resisted that approach and pushed for an equal 20% division if the seabed was to be partitioned.

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Iran ultimately signed the five-state legal-status convention in 2018, but the agreement deliberately left the final division of seabed sectors unresolved. Tehran also stressed at the time that the method for drawing baselines – an important issue because Iran’s concave southern coastline can disadvantage it in maritime delimitation – remained to be negotiated.

The current ratification debate therefore does not amount to a parliamentary vote assigning Iran a specific percentage of the Caspian. The more consequential question is whether Tehran should fully commit to the five-state framework before its own seabed boundaries and the baseline methodology have been settled.

Pollution adds to pressure on a shrinking sea

The falling water level is only one of several environmental threats facing the Caspian.

Iranian environmental officials have also warned of mounting pollution, shrinking fish stocks and destruction of coastal habitats.

Touraj Sadeghi, head of marine ecosystem protection at the Gilan provincial environmental department, told ISNA that untreated municipal and industrial sewage, waste dumping, petroleum leaks, excessive agricultural fertilizers and pesticides, and illegal fishing were among the main sources of environmental degradation.

Many cities along Iran’s Caspian coast still lack adequate municipal wastewater treatment systems, he said, while rivers carry thousands of tons of domestic, industrial and oil-related pollution into the sea each year.

Such pollution reduces water quality, damages natural habitats and contributes to deaths among fish and bird populations, Sadeghi said.

The Caspian supports distinctive wildlife including sturgeon, Caspian seals and migratory birds, but Iranian officials warn that the combination of pollution, habitat degradation and a rapidly retreating shoreline is increasingly threatening the resilience of the ecosystem.

Davoud Rangi, vice chair of the chamber’s Import Management Committee, said Iran receives around 400 to 500 ships carrying essential goods each year, making any attempt to replace maritime imports with overland transport impractical.

“Mobilizing this number of trucks is far-fetched for us, and even if they were mobilized, transportation costs would rise sharply,” Rangi told Eghtesad News on Thursday.

He said Iranian authorities should not count on land corridors as a substitute for the country’s southern ports because neighboring states could restrict border traffic at short notice and the routes lack the capacity to handle the necessary volume of goods.

Neighboring governments could close a border “with a single order,” he said, adding that the justification would not necessarily have to be political or military and could instead involve quarantine or veterinary restrictions of the kind Iran has faced before.

Rangi said land routes through countries such as Turkey or Pakistan might accommodate around one million tons of cargo annually, but could not come close to replacing Iran’s maritime trade.

“At a small scale, perhaps one million tons of cargo a year could be brought in through Turkey or Pakistan, but 23 million tons, or even half of that, is simply inconceivable,” he said.

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The warning comes as Iran’s southern ports remain under pressure from the war. IRGC attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz have escalated regional tensions in recent weeks, while the United States intensified economic pressure on Tehran through a maritime blockade.

The outlook for negotiations between Tehran and Washington over reopening the Strait of Hormuz remains uncertain, with concerns also growing over a possible expansion of the regional conflict.

Negotiations seen as only viable way out

Rangi said negotiations and a reduction in military tensions were the only practical route to lifting the blockade and restoring the regular flow of essential goods into Iran.

Attempting to rely instead on overland corridors would impose heavy losses on importers, he said, because of both limited capacity and sharply higher transportation costs.

The blockade is also complicating Iranian exports, particularly containerized trade.

Rangi said vessels carrying bulk commodities could more easily be allowed to pass, while container ships pose a greater problem because individual containers cannot practically be separated from the rest of a ship’s cargo.

“We are extremely vulnerable on the southern route, in Bandar Abbas and Chabahar, but along the northern and western corridors the situation is much better for exports than for imports,” he said.

Iran’s economy has already come under mounting pressure in recent months from the continuing conflict, tighter sanctions and a sharp decline in the value of the rial.

Surging inflation and falling purchasing power have further strained household finances, making essential goods increasingly difficult to afford for a large part of the population.

The petrol was scheduled to go on sale from early Thursday at 872,000 rials ($0.47) per liter, Ahmad Salarifar, the manager of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company in Kerman, said.

The suspension, he said, followed a conversation between the provincial governor and national officials and was ordered so that a program on fuel consumption management and anti-smuggling measures could be examined further. Petrol will continue to be sold at existing rates until further notice, Salarifar said.

Monthly salaries for many Iranians are commonly put at around 200 million to 250 million rials ($108 to $134). Filling a typical 50-liter tank at the proposed price of 872,000 rials per litre would have cost 43.6 million rials ($23), a sum equivalent to roughly one-fifth of a monthly wage at the upper end of that range and more than 17 times the cost at the current 50,000-rial ($0.027) station-card rate.

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Iran introduced a three-tier petrol pricing system in December 2025. Private cars initially received 60 litres at 15,000 rials ($0.008) and 100 litres at 30,000 rials ($0.016) each month, with any extra volume charged at 50,000 rials on a station card. The second subsidised tranche was later cut, leaving a total national quota of 110 litres while the two lower prices remained unchanged.

Plan halted hours before launch

Provincial authorities have not said how long the review will last or whether the higher price will be introduced later.

The suspension came only hours after Ali Asghar Zakeri-Harandi, the deputy governor of Kerman for civil affairs, announced that 204 filling stations in the province were ready to sell petrol at the “full refinery cost” rate.

The plan, he said, would take effect from early Thursday under national decisions by the country’s fuel headquarters. Neither the Oil Ministry nor the government has published details of the decision or how the 872,000-rial figure was calculated.

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Higher rate far exceeds current charges

The Kerman announcement came less than a month after government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said the government had no plan to change petrol prices. She repeated on July 28 that no final decision had been taken on the station-card rate and that any change would be announced officially.

A manager of a filling station in Kerman told Iran International that the provincial oil distribution office called stations on Wednesday evening to say the higher-priced petrol would start from early Thursday at selected sites.

A second call later the same night said the plan had been cancelled following talks with the regional oil company. The manager said the reversal was linked to concern over possible public reaction, adding that security forces normally present in the province had been redeployed elsewhere and that the higher price was still expected to be introduced soon.

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Sudden fuel price increases have triggered major unrest in the past. In November 2019, an overnight rise of 50 percent on the subsidized quota and up to 300 percent on volumes above it sparked protests across more than 100 cities. Rights groups documented hundreds of deaths in the subsequent crackdown, and a near-total internet shutdown was imposed for several days.

Provincial officials have not clarified whether the Kerman plan was a local pilot or part of a wider national test. Its abrupt suspension before launch has left unanswered questions about the legal basis, the method used to set the price, and the government’s longer-term approach to reducing fuel subsidies.

The figure is based on individual closure cases reported separately by state media and rights groups.

The closures were reported in at least 17 cities, including Tehran, Mashhad, Yazd, Kerman, Ardabil and Birjand, and affected cafés and restaurants, women's gyms, shops and a cultural center.

In just three weeks, the number of closures has already reached about 22% of the 191 cases HRANA documented over the entire previous Iranian calendar year.

Cafés, shops and gyms targeted

Among the latest cases, an optician in Qaen was sealed on Wednesday after authorities said customers and employees had failed to comply with compulsory hijab rules.

The Yin Yang café in Khomein was sealed over what authorities described as "improper hijab" and Instagram content, while a women's clothing store called Shabnam Maison in Kerman was also shut.

A café-restaurant in Tehran's Velenjak district was sealed a day earlier. Authorities in Ardabil also closed three coffee shops and arrested 16 people in connection with the businesses.

Hossein Salari, Ardabil's deputy prosecutor, said inspections of cafés would increase and authorities would act against shops selling clothing that he described as contrary to Islamic law or harmful to "public chastity."

Three cafés in Mashhad, Bojnourd and Birjand were sealed on August 10. Authorities also shut the Zhovan café in Minudasht on August 9 and the Arghavan café-bookstore in Mashhad on August 5.

The enforcement has extended beyond cafés. Two sports clubs in Borujerd were sealed by judicial order on August 4, while authorities shut a Shahr-e Ketab bookstore in Babol the same day.

Four women's sports clubs were also sealed in Yazd, while authorities in Abadeh shut five businesses and arrested a café operator.

In Dezful, the local prosecutor announced the closure of 15 cafés and hookah lounges on July 23.

Enforcement rises sharply in Mashhad

Authorities have used terms including failure to observe compulsory hijab, "violations of norms," failure to observe "Islamic standards," and promotion of indecency to explain the closures.

Some businesses have also faced other accusations. Authorities in Ardabil cited alleged gambling and promotion of corruption among the reasons for closing three cafés.

One café in Mashhad was cited for issues including failing to list matcha on its price list and selling cakes and desserts without required health certification. Police described the alleged violations at four women's gyms in Yazd only as "disciplinary offenses."

Official figures from Mashhad point to a sharp rise in closures.

Mohsen Sayadi, the city's head of trade inspection and supervision, said authorities sealed 104 businesses during the first four months of the current Iranian year, which began on March 21, compared with five during the same period a year earlier - an increase of about twentyfold.

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Pressure extends to social media

The enforcement has also extended online.

HRANA said that between July 11 and August 1, authorities sealed at least 23 businesses, blocked or seized at least 72 social media pages and accounts, and required the operators of 21 pages to publish statements pledging compliance.

Those affected included bloggers, content creators, athletes, artists, fashion and beauty workers, online businesses, travel agencies and cafés.

HRANA also reported that authorities had identified and removed 56 Instagram pages in Qazvin and deleted 3,258 pieces of content from social media pages belonging to 32 businesses in Rasht.

Businesses face wider pressure

The closures come as businesses are also struggling with falling purchasing power and broader economic pressure.

Iranian authorities have previously sealed businesses that joined strikes, supported anti-government protests or did not enforce compulsory hijab, including during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests and demonstrations earlier this year.

Many Iranian women have increasingly appeared in public without the mandatory headscarf since 2022, while authorities have continued to use business closures and action against social media accounts to enforce compulsory hijab rules.