Iran shut off the internet and blocked communications, trying to keep the world in the dark about the deadly wave of violence it used to crush antigovernment protests. Now as rights groups investigate, they say they are uncovering evidence that the death toll is far higher than they originally thought, with some projecting it will top 10,000.
Initial estimates of the toll from the crackdown had put the number of deaths at a few thousand, a tally that made it
Iran shut off the internet and blocked communications, trying to keep the world in the dark about the deadly wave of violence it used to crush antigovernment protests. Now as rights groups investigate, they say they are uncovering evidence that the death toll is far higher than they originally thought, with some projecting it will top 10,000.
Initial estimates of the toll from the crackdown had put the number of deaths at a few thousand, a tally that made it the regime’s deadliest assault on dissenters in decades. As human rights activists have reviewed witness accounts, field investigations, hospital records, videos and photos, they say the reality appears to be far worse.
Even at the lower end of estimates the crackdown would rank as one of the most violent deployments of state power against protesters, rights groups say, exceeding the toll of China’s 1989 move to clear Tiananmen Square of demonstrators.
“There is no doubt that the Islamic Republic has committed one of the largest mass killings of protesters of our time,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the head of the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights.
The rising number of deaths could have geopolitical significance, with the U.S. moving military assets including an aircraft carrier to the Middle East to be available for a possible strike on Iran. President Trump held off attacking Iran earlier this month, saying the country had stopped killing protesters, but said recently, “we’re watching them very closely.”
Iranian authorities have acknowledged more than 3,100 fatalities, blaming them on rioters and terrorists they say infiltrated the protests. Most of the victims were pro-government forces or innocent bystanders, they said.
Human Rights Activists in Iran, a U.S.-based nonprofit, is one of the leading organizations documenting the fatalities. The group said Sunday it had confirmed and cross-checked the deaths of more than 5,500 protesters, and that it had another 17,000 under investigation based on evidence including photographs of bodies and testimony from its network of trained human rights documentarians inside Iran.
Skylar Thompson, the group’s deputy director, said the number of confirmed deaths reflects individuals the group has identified by name and the rough location of where they died.
“It’s definitely an absolute minimum,” Thompson said. “The number will rise.”
Another organization called Hengaw, which focuses on the rights of Iran’s Kurdish minority, said it has confirmed the deaths of 3,000 protesters and civilians and 500 security forces.
Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran Human Rights said the death toll could be higher than 20,000, based on evidence reviewed by his organization. But he also said that the continuing communications restrictions and threats to relatives of the dead are making it difficult for his group to verify the identity of individual victims.
The antigovernment rallies that started in late December over economic grievances quickly grew into calls for the downfall of the theocratic regime that has ruled in Iran for nearly half a century. Iran’s leaders, some of whom were initially open to dialogue, brought the hammer down on the evening of Jan. 8, imposing an internet blackout and deploying heavy force. The intense violence continued the following day.
Details of the killings—and the anger they have unleashed—are gradually trickling out of the country as more Iranians share evidence and recount their experiences to friends, relatives and activists abroad.
A woman who was in the city of Mashhad during the crackdown said her brother-in-law saw 300 to 400 bodies in a morgue when he went to look for a friend just after the peak of the violence. People at the morgue were enraged and shouted “Death to Khamenei,” Iran’s supreme leader, even as government officials threatened them, she said.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group, has focused its research on Mashhad, Isfahan and a dozen of smaller towns. Based on interviews with witnesses, it estimates that around 7,000 people died during protests in those localities, including more than 2,000 in Mashhad alone, according to Hadi Ghaemi, the group’s director.
“The death toll has gone way beyond our worst scenario,” he said of the overall count. “It is clearly beyond 10,000.”
Right groups point to evidence they collected that includes footage of large numbers of bodies kept in makeshift morgues in cities around the country, from Tehran to Khorramabad, in central Iran, to the Kurdish city of Kermanshah. The videos show people mourning or searching for their loved ones in a sea of black body bags.
In many cases, Iranians say it has taken them days to identify the bodies of relatives among the vast number of people transferred to morgues. Communications blockages have also made it hard to learn about their fates.
One Iranian activist said she didn’t learn about the death of a cousin and his friend until she was able to connect with her family days after the two were wounded at a protest in Isfahan.
After the activist managed to reach relatives again three days later, she learned that nine other family members had been killed or wounded.
Her cousin, who had been shot, died at home in Isfahan, afraid he would be arrested at the hospital if he sought treatment there. Many others suffered similar fates, according to a medical practitioner in Tehran and several protesters.
Riot police were present in large numbers and used tear gas to disperse the demonstrations. But most of the killings were carried out by the regime’s most ideologically driven elements: the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the volunteer Basij militia, said witnesses, relatives of victims, Iran experts and human rights groups. They deployed in large numbers on Jan. 8 and 9, armed with semiautomatic rifles and other lethal weapons.
“It’s clear that after the police retreated, the IRGC had permission to use military-grade weapons,” said Saeid Golkar, associate professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an expert on Iran’s security services who analyzed footage of the protests.
The January killings are the deadliest episode of political repression in Iran since at least the 1980s, when the country’s rulers killed several thousand people as they consolidated power following the 1979 revolution.
Around 550 people were killed during the Women, Life, Freedom mass protests that followed the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in 2022, according to Iran Human Rights, after she was arrested for allegedly wearing an improper veil. Dozens died during the 2009 protest triggered by that year’s contested presidential elections.
Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com, Margherita Stancati at margherita.stancati@wsj.com and Feliz Solomon at feliz.solomon@wsj.com
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