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!یاد آر

پایگاه داده                                                                                                                                                                                     یکشنبه ۵ بهمن ١۴٠۴ - ۲۵ ژانویه ۲۰۲٦

On 28 December 2025, Tehran’s bazaar merchants went on strike in protest against the rising price of the US dollar and the severe instability of the economic situation. Within a few days, university students held gatherings in continuation of the bazaar protests. Merchants in several other cities also joined them. The protests quickly spread to the streets of cities across the country and took on a national scale.

On 6 January, seven Kurdish political parties issued a call for a nationwide general strike on Thursday, 8 January. Shortly thereafter, on the same day, Reza Pahlavi called for nationwide protest gatherings on 8 and 9 January. During these days, Iran witnessed its largest protest gatherings.

Although these strikes and protests began with economic and sectoral demands, they quickly centred on calls for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, expressed through various slogans. On the evening of Thursday, 8 January, the Islamic Republic completely shut down internet and telephone services across Iran. As a result, communication among protesters and with the outside world was severed, and reporting on events was significantly disrupted.

Although from the outset of the protests security forces attempted to suppress the demonstrations through various means, including killing protesters, the scale and brutality of the killings reached a horrific level from 8 January onwards. While estimates by human rights organisations and news media place the number of those killed between 2,000 and 20,000, what is certain is that the Islamic Republic carried out the most extensive killing of its opponents within a short period of time.

Credible reports indicate that nearly all lethal means and techniques were used in the massacre of protesters: from knives and air guns to machine guns, automatic weapons, and heavy machine guns. Documents and evidence have also emerged showing that security forces killed wounded protesters in hospitals or abducted them from hospitals and transferred them to unknown locations. Countless individuals have gone missing, and many bodies remain unidentified in morgues or forensic medical centres. Some unverified reports indicate that the bodies of those killed were buried in mass graves in certain areas.