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, according to documents reviewed by Iran International's Editorial Board.
With tens of thousands killed and society still reeling, the Islamic Republic has turned to sport to project normalcy as matches return, but players’ muted celebrations and empty stadiums show how little of the script still holds.
Iran’s state broadcaster has reached a point where control no longer translates into attention, exposing how years of manipulation, omission and distrust have hollowed out its authority and left a system that still fills airtime but is no longer watched.
Iran’s near-total internet blackout since January 8 did not only shut down social media but collapsed the country’s last channels to the outside world, isolating families and sharply limiting what evidence of the crackdown could escape.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered state media and security bodies to adopt a militarized approach toward controlling information, according to a new report by media freedom advocacy group DeFFI.
Emory University has dismissed Fatemeh Ardeshir Larijani, the daughter of the US-sanctioned security chief of the Islamic Republic, the university confirmed to Iran International on Saturday, following growing calls for her removal.
After unprecedented mass killings of protestors whose full scope lies concealed behind Iran's internet iron curtain, the Washington-based pro-Israel think tank JINSA urges Donald Trump to seize the moment to destroy the mutual foe of Israel and the United States.
Tehran’s increasingly combative official statements suggest its leaders may be taking US military deployments more seriously than Washington’s signals of diplomacy.
US conservative commentator Mark Levin told Iran International on Thursday that Iran has effectively become a “concentration camp” amid a deadly crackdown on protests, urging the United States to act to help topple the Islamic Republic.
Iranian security forces deployed unknown chemical substances amid deadly crackdowns on protestors in several cities earlier this month, eyewitnesses told Iran International, causing severe breathing problems and burning pain.
US officials told Iraqi leaders Washington would starve Baghdad of oil revenue if it kept up economic links with Iran and would suspend ties if politicians deemed close to Iran became ministers, Reuters reported on Friday citing sources.
The US Treasury on Friday slapped new sanctions on ships and their owners it accuses of enriching the Iranian state and fueling its repression following mass killings of protestors earlier this month.
One year after US President Donald Trump returned to the White House and revived the "maximum pressure" sanctions on Iran from his first term, available data show the country’s energy exports remain largely intact.
A wounded Iranian protester played dead inside a plastic body bag for three days to hide from security forces and heard what he believed to be fellow protestors being summarily executed, a rights group reported on Thursday.
Russia likely views Iran’s mass anti-regime protests with deep unease, but may ultimately adapt just as it did in Syria to preserve influence whether the Islamic Republic survives or a new political order emerges.
Tehran may have crushed street unrest with brute force, but it has no comparable solution for an economy gripped by surging inflation and collapsing incomes.
The protests that erupted across Iran in January 2026 may have appeared sudden to outside observers but inside the country, they were anything but.
Iranians calling Iran International’s phone-in said security forces killed and removed bodies; some reported families pressured into quiet burials and Arabic-speaking forces on the streets, as the crackdown pushed protests to window chants and fueled calls for foreign backing.
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
I am writing this from Tehran after three days of trying to find a way to send it: things may get a lot worse before they get any better.
There is a cruel ritual in Iranian opposition politics: some voices abroad constantly interrogate the “purity” of activists inside—why they did not speak more sharply or endorse maximalist slogans, why survival itself looks insufficiently heroic.
