In the Islamic Republic of Iran, More Than 36,500 Protesters Killed

“I met Murder on the way/He had a mask like Khamenei.”

The numbers of protesters murdered in Iran by their own government keeps rising, and now we know that at least 30,000 have been murdered by their own government. Iran International, which has a history of accurate reporting from sources inside Iran, says that the number killed since the beginning of the protests is 36,500.More on these numbers can be found here: “Iran may have slaughtered 30,000 protesters in 48-hour intense crackdown – report,” by Jacob Laznik and Miriam Sela-Eitam, Jerusalem Post, January 25, 2026:

As many as 30,000 people may have been killed across Iran during a two-day crackdown on January 8 and 9, TIME reported on Sunday, citing two senior Health Ministry officials and a separate compilation of hospital data shared with the publication. The figures have not been independently verified and far exceed numbers publicly cited by authorities.

The number, if true, would massively increase the death toll from previously believed estimates. Days after the alleged massacre, Iran International estimated around 12,000 deaths from the two-day period.

The officials said the scale of killing overwhelmed the capacity to handle the dead, exhausting body bag stocks, and prompting the use of eighteen-wheeled trailers to move bodies. TIME reported that security forces used rooftop snipers and trucks mounted with heavy machine guns after authorities cut communications. An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps official warned on state television that anyone entering the streets should not complain if a bullet hit them, according to the report.

A hospital-based count shared with TIME listed 30,304 deaths as of Friday, January 9, said Dr. Amir Parasta, a German-Iranian ophthalmologist who compiled the data. “We are getting closer to reality,” he said, while adding that the tally likely excludes cases from military hospitals and unreachable areas. Public health specialists quoted by TIME cautioned against over-extrapolating from hospital records but said the internal figures point to mass killing over a short period.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei slammed the estimated death counts in a Sunday evening X/Twitter post, calling them “truly vicious” lies.

“A Hitler-style BIG LIE: isn’t this the number they planned to kill in the streets of Iran?!” Baqaei wrote. “They failed, though, and now they’re trying to FAKE it in the media. Truly vicious!”…

“The 30,000 verified deaths are almost certainly an underestimate,” Columbia University researcher Les Roberts told TIME, noting that crisis mortality counts often omit victims who never reach hospitals or are buried outside official channels….

The latest figure on the total number of protesters killed, compiled by Iran International on the basis of “new documentation and eyewitness accounts from medical staff and families of the deceased,” is 36,500. By the time you read this, that number is likely to have risen to close to 40,000.

And that number gives new meaning to the line “where forty thousand met their death/incapable of shibboleth.”

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