Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity in suppressing nationwide protests in January while two US strikes on civilian sites in February amounted to war crimes, the UN fact-finding mission on Iran told the Human Rights Council on Monday.
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said the Islamic Republic’s response to protests that began in December 2025 amounted to a widespread and systematic attack on civilians involving unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and severe restrictions on freedom of expression.
“The Iranian Government’s repression of the recent protests has led the Mission to find Iran responsible for gross human rights violations,” mission chair Sara Hossain told the council in Geneva, saying many amounted to crimes against humanity, including murder, imprisonment, torture and other inhumane acts.
The mission said the crackdown marked a significant escalation from previous patterns of repression, citing the scale of killings and violence, internet shutdowns, mass arrests and the use of the death penalty. It said it could not independently verify the overall toll but believed the number of people killed and injured was likely far higher than the government’s figures of 3,038 deaths and 25,000 injuries.
Classified government documents, field reports and accounts from medical workers, witnesses and victims’ families reviewed by Iran International’s Editorial Board showed that more than 36,500 people were killed by security forces on January 8 and 9 alone.
However, independent verification has been impossible amid communications restrictions and government pressure.
The unrest began on December 28 with protests over worsening economic conditions before spreading nationwide and turning into a broader challenge to the Islamic Republic.
In her Monday speech, Hossain said Iranians were now confronting both continued domestic repression and the large-scale US-Israeli military campaign that began on February 28.
She said Iranian authorities had also used the war to intensify persecution of protesters, describing the conflict as “a pretext for and accelerator of repression.”
Iran rejected the mission’s findings about its own conduct. Ambassador Ali Bahreini argued that economic pressure against Iran, combined with what Tehran describes as foreign manipulation and militarization of domestic unrest, amounted to crimes against humanity and accused the mission of ignoring those issues.
US war crime
The mission then turned to two US strikes carried out on the opening day of the war.
The United States and Israel launched attacks across Iran on February 28 in an operation Washington said was intended to severely weaken Iran’s military and prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon. President Donald Trump said at the outset that US forces would destroy Iran’s missile industry and navy, while Tehran denies seeking nuclear weapons. The attacks triggered Iranian retaliation against Israel and US-linked targets across the region.
Against that wider military campaign, the mission examined a US strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, Hormozgan Province.
Hossain said two cruise missiles hit the school, killing 157 people, including 123 boys and girls, according to sources the mission considered credible. She described it as a readily identifiable civilian building and said investigators found reasonable grounds to believe the strike amounted to the war crime of making a civilian object the object of an attack.
The school was adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval complex, but investigators found no evidence that the building itself was being used for military purposes. The mission said the United States had failed to update information about the school in its targeting databases or adequately establish that it was a military objective, conduct it said amounted to more than mere negligence.
The mission reached a separate war-crimes finding over a US strike on a sports center in a residential area of Lamerd, Fars Province. Local authorities said 22 people — 10 women and 12 men — were killed. Investigators concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe the strike constituted an indiscriminate attack resulting in civilian deaths or damage to civilian property.
Hossain said repeated airstrikes and threats of further attacks continued to endanger civilians, destroy homes and livelihoods and disrupt access to education and healthcare. She called on all sides to conduct independent investigations into alleged violations of international humanitarian law, specifically urging Washington to investigate the two strikes and provide accountability and reparations where warranted.
Washington’s reaction
Washington rejected the conclusions. The Pentagon said its own investigation remained underway and that it had nothing further to announce, while White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly dismissed the Human Rights Council’s work and said Iran was the only party in the conflict to have committed war crimes.
US officials have maintained that American military operations comply with the law of armed conflict.
US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz also said Trump was expected to challenge the findings when he addresses the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, saying the president would continue to “call out the ridiculous.”
The network operated in Fariman in northeastern Iran. Sadegh Maloul, a local figure with a background in cultural and media activities connected to the Basij and Revolutionary Guards, coordinated teams that filmed protesters, according to the sources.
Images gathered by the network were sent to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organization in Fariman and Mashhad and used to identify people who had taken part in demonstrations and add evidence to security cases against them, the sources said.
Iran International’s investigation indicates that the process contributed to the arrest of 23 people.
Maloul has been identified as the head of the Basij Artists Center in Fariman and had previously collaborated with the IRGC’s public relations department.
Local media material reviewed by Iran International identifies him with the Fariman Basij Artists Center, while biographical information attributed to him described him as an “honorary reporter” cooperating with the IRGC’s public relations department.
These records link Maloul’s cultural and media activities to organizations affiliated with the Basij and IRGC.
From culture to surveillance
At the Basij Artists Center, Maloul organized members to produce cultural and media content aligned with the Islamic Republic’s messaging.
In late 2024 or early 2025, he called on young people he described as “soft-war officers” to produce films on subjects including Basij security activities, hijab and online activity.
The center’s performance and training programs also brought it into contact with teenagers and young adults interested in art and filmmaking.
During the January protests, the teams coordinated by Maloul recorded demonstrators, according to sources familiar with the operation.
The footage was subsequently transferred to IRGC intelligence offices in Fariman and Mashhad, where it was used to identify demonstrators and add evidence to security cases against them.
Iran International could not independently determine how many people took part in the filming teams or whether everyone involved in the cultural organizations knew how the material would later be used.
Crackdown across Razavi Khorasan
The operation unfolded during a wider crackdown across Razavi Khorasan, where protests spread to at least 20 counties in January.
Mashhad, the provincial capital, was a major center of protests, while Fariman also saw demonstrations and arrests.
Iran International has previously reported that security forces used live fire against protesters in several parts of Mashhad and restricted internet access and communications in areas where demonstrations were taking place.
The Fariman case indicates how surveillance may extend beyond formal security agencies into local cultural and media networks.
New role after protests
Several months after the January protests, Maloul became head of the Sadaqat charitable center.
His new role indicates that he continued to hold positions within organizations connected to the Islamic Republic’s institutional network after the crackdown.
The Fariman case offers a glimpse into a less visible part of Iran’s protest-control machinery: not only the forces deployed in the streets, but local networks capable of recording demonstrators, identifying them and passing information to security agencies after the crowds disperse.
The judiciary's news agency, Mizan, identified him as Hossein Pedaran and said he had been convicted of espionage and intelligence cooperation with Israel and sentenced to death, with the sentence upheld by the Supreme Court. He had been arrested in Isfahan on charges related to the war.
Mizan published a long account of what it described as Pedaran's confessions. According to that account, he first messaged the CIA offering to cooperate and received no reply, then contacted Mossad and was answered days later by an officer who introduced himself as "Ben" using a Dutch WhatsApp number.
The agency said he sent encrypted reports on military facilities and on staff who worked at them, including personal details and their spouses' phone numbers, used numerous SIM cards registered to others, and was given a remote-control device capable of taking hidden photographs.
It said he was paid in euros collected from a magnetic box behind a guardrail near a Tehran bridge and, on another occasion, from a coffee shop bathroom, and that a notebook on missile subjects marked "highly confidential" was found at his home.
Mizan said Pedaran had cut contact before the war and tried to reach Mossad again by Telegram once it began, and was arrested. It said he had a lawyer, that a forensic examination found no impairment of his judgment, and that the court held his information had contributed to strikes in which personnel were killed or wounded.
None of these claims can be independently verified, and Mizan did not provide any evidence for the allegations.
Iran's espionage cases are heard by Revolutionary Courts, which operate without public scrutiny of the evidence, and the state routinely broadcasts and publishes confessions that defendants and their families have later said were obtained through torture, prolonged solitary confinement and threats against relatives.
Rights organizations have documented the pattern for years, and have recorded cases in which people detained during protests were subsequently charged with working for Israel.
Iran has executed at least a dozen people on espionage or Mossad-collaboration charges since the June 2025 war with Israel, according to human rights groups, and the pace has increased since the recent war began in February.
Those executed this year include Ali Ardestani in January, Mehdi Farid, a former employee of the atomic energy organization, in April, and Omid Behzad and Pouria Safvat in August. Iran Human Rights recorded at least 1,639 executions in the country in 2025, the highest annual total since 1989.
