Tehran, Jan 16 (.) As Iran battles a near-total communications blackout and one of the harshest waves of state crackdowns since the 1979 Islamic revolution, three people living in different cities have given accounts of the sheer brutality of the repression by security personnel that has left cities shocked, bloody, grieving, and engulfed in fear.
Three political activists — two based in Tehran and one in Isfahan — shared voice messages recorded between January 13 and 15 via encrypted applications with Iran International, telling their stories.
A journalist, a business owner and an engineer, all veterans of earlier protest waves, said the demonstrations that peaked on the night of January 8, far exceeded anything they had previously seen.
Each stressed that their impressions were drawn not only from what they personally witnessed, but from conversations with friends, relatives, employees, and colleagues across multiple cities and towns.
However, all three concurred on one unanimous conclusion – that the demonstrations on the evening of January 8 dwarfed any other round of protests they had seen or heard of, with one claiming that crowds that took to the streets nationwide numbered in millions.
A European diplomat, citing intelligence shared with Iran International, said at least 1.5 million people took to the streets in Tehran alone on January 8.
He said the turnout had dipped the following night as security forces flooded the streets and opened fire on gathering protesters, conducting a full-fledged massacre. Even so, he estimated that up to half a million stormed the capital on Friday.
With foreign embassies confined to Tehran, it is hard to verify the numbers independently due to the net blockade, though the diplomat said intelligence assessments pointed to at least five million participants nationwide over the two days.
What distinguished that Thursday night, witnesses said, was coordination. Protests had been building for more than a week when exiled prince Reza Pahlavi called for synchronized demonstrations at 8 pm on January 8-9.
The call did not ignite the unrest, they said, but rather bolstered it, giving it focus and momentum.
Security forces were initially caught off guard by the sheer scale of the numbers, though things changed quickly on the following evening.
After a speech by supreme leader Ali Khamenei on Friday morning portrayed the demonstrators as “terrorists”, and the unrest taking place as “foreign-backed subversion”, streets were flooded with armed personnel well before nightfall.
“It was a massacre,” the engineer said. “Unprecedented in modern Iranian history.” The business owner added: “Everyone knows someone who was killed, injured or is missing.”
Iran International reported this week that at least 12,000 people were killed in the crackdown, citing figures leaked from Iran’s presidential office and the Supreme National Security Council.
While Tehran has rejected the number and it is not substantiated independently due to the inability of conducting any third-person assessment, the scale of the killings that took place had rattled and eaten away at the conscience of even members of the state.
The repression has continued beyond the protests, as residents in several cities said that a kind of informal curfew had been put in place, with anyone outside after dark risking detention.
Thousands are believed to be under detention, as security forces reportedly took to using old social media posts, and called on people to protest, shop closures, offers of medical help — to identify and detain people now that the internet is down.
“They’re knocking on doors,” the journalist said, “especially of those who posted just before January eight.”
Even those who stayed home have been summoned. Students who merely expressed sympathy online have been charged, witnesses said.
Despite official claims, all three rejected Tehran’s branding of demonstrators as “terrorists,” but rather as ordinary Iranians who were down in the dumps financially, due to being crushed by years of economic decline. “It’s been all downhill,” the business owner said. “People see no future.”
Messages from abroad amplified turnout. US President Donald Trump urged Iranians to keep protesting, saying “help is on the way.” Those statements, witnesses said, spread rapidly through private networks.
What followed after was an eerie silence. “It’s been a cull, not just of bodies, but of souls,” the business owner said. The engineer described pervasive grief: “The city smells of death.”
None of the three supports foreign military intervention, yet all said many Iranians now openly wish for it, seeing no internal path forward. “It’s the prevailing sentiment,” the journalist said.
“For now,” the business owner said, “people are too sick to even look ahead.”
. . PRS