This combo of pictures show President Donald Trump, left, addressing a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, March 4, 2025, and a handout of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attending a ceremony in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

The UN Human Rights Council decided on Friday (January 23, 2026) to deepen its scrutiny of Iran over its crackdown on protests that left thousands dead, including children, amid demands it end its “brutal repression”.

The 47-member body voiced alarm about “the unprecedented scale of the violent crackdown on peaceful protests by security forces” in Iran.

With 25 votes in favour, seven opposed and the rest abstaining, it decided to extend and broaden the mandate of independent investigators gathering evidence towards ensuring accountability for rights violations in the country.

“A climate of fear and systematic impunity cannot be tolerated,” Iceland’s ambassador Einar Gunnarsson said as he presented the text to the council before the vote. “Victims and survivors deserve truth, justice and accountability.”

Stressing the need for “accountability”, the adopted text extends the mandate of a special rapporteur on Iran for another year.

It also extended for two years the work of a separate fact-finding mission set up in November 2022, following Iran’s crackdown on a wave of protests sparked by the death in custody of an Iranian Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini.

The resolution empowers the investigative body to probe “allegations of recent and ongoing serious human rights violations and abuses, and crimes perpetrated in relation to the protests”.

The vote came at the end of an urgent session of the rights council, requested by Britain, Germany, Iceland, Moldova, and North Macedonia, but harshly criticised by Iran.

‘Accountability’

In his opening remarks to the council, UN rights chief Volker Turk described how security forces used “live ammunition” against protesters, decrying that “thousands” had been killed, including children.

“I call on the Iranian authorities to reconsider, to pull back, and to end their brutal repression, including summary trials and disproportionate sentences,” he said.

“I call for the immediate release of all those arbitrarily detained by the Iranian authorities, and I call for a complete moratorium on the death penalty.”

His comments were broadly echoed during the rights council special session.

“There must be accountability for the dire events of the past weeks, and justice must be done for all those who were killed, injured or detained only for exercising their human rights and for voicing legitimate demands,” the European Union representative Michele Cervone d’Urso told the gathering.

Iranian ambassador Ali Bahreini however slammed Friday’s (January 23) meeting as “posturing” and “a pressure tool against Iran”. His colleague Somayeh Karimdoost described the resolution as “a thoroughly unbalanced biased and politically motivated text”.

A number of countries also came to Iran’s defence, accusing the council of being “politicised” and showing “double standards”.

Cuban ambassador Rodolfo Benitez slammed the session as an “act of supreme cynicism”, while China’s ambassador Jia Guide said Beijing “opposed interference in other countries’ internal affairs on the pretext of human rights”.

‘Chilling’

Mr. Turk’s office and NGOs tracking the toll from the crackdown on the biggest protests in Iran in years have said their task has been impeded by a now two-week internet shutdown.

Giving their first official toll from the protests, Iranian authorities on Wednesday (January 21) said 3,117 people had been killed since the massive demonstrations erupted late December.

But the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency on Friday (January 23) put the number of deaths at more than 5,000, warning the confirmed figures were likely to be far lower than the actual toll.

Another NGO, Norway-based Iran Human Rights, has warned the final toll risks reaching the scale of 25,000.

The protests have now largely halted, but while “the killing in the streets of Iran may have subsided… the brutality continues”, Mr. Turk warned.

He decried the “chilling development” in which Iran’s judiciary chief this week said there would be no leniency for the thousands detained.

“I am deeply concerned by contradictory statements from the Iranian authorities about whether those detained in connection with the protests may be executed,” Mr. Turk said.

He pointed out that Iran “remains among the top executioner states in the world”, with at least 1,500 people reportedly executed there last year.

Published – January 24, 2026 03:15 am IST

Islamic Revolutionary Guards Commander General Mohammad Pakpour. File
| Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Nationwide protests challenging Iran’s theocracy reached the two-week mark on Sunday (January 11, 2026), as the death toll in violence surrounding the demonstrations reached at least 116 people killed, activists said.

With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. But the death toll in the protests has grown to at least 116 and over 2,600 others detained, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. The agency has been accurate in multiple rounds of previous unrest in Iran.

Iranian state TV is reporting on security force casualties while portraying control over the nation, without discussing dead demonstrators, whom it increasingly refers to as “terrorists”.

However, it also acknowledged protests went on into Sunday morning, with demonstrations in Tehran and in the holy city of Mashhad to the northeast.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has signalled a coming clampdown, despite U.S. warnings. Tehran escalated its threats on Saturday, with the Iran’s attorney general, Mohammad Movahedi Azad, warning that anyone taking part in protests will be considered an “enemy of God,” a death-penalty charge.

The statement carried by Iranian state television said even those who “helped rioters” would face the charge.

“Prosecutors must carefully and without delay, by issuing indictments, prepare the grounds for the trial and decisive confrontation with those who, by betraying the nation and creating insecurity, seek foreign domination over the country,” the statement read. “Proceedings must be conducted without leniency, compassion or indulgence.”

U.S. President Donald Trump offered support for the protesters, saying on social media that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, reporting citing anonymous U.S. officials, said on Saturday night that Mr. Trump had been given military options for a strike on Iran, but hadn’t made a final decision.

The State Department separately warned: “Do not play games with President Trump. When he says he’ll do something, he means it.”

Saturday marked the start of the work week in Iran, but many schools and universities reportedly held online classes, Iranian state TV reported. Internal Iranian government websites are believed to be functioning.

State TV repeatedly played a driving, martial orchestral arrangement from the “Epic of Khorramshahr” by Iranian composer Majid Entezami, while showing pro-government demonstrations.

The song, aired repeatedly during the 12-day war launched by Israel, honours Iran’s 1982 liberation of the city of Khorramshahr during the Iran-Iraq war. It has been used in videos of protesting women cutting away their hair to protest the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini as well.

It also repeatedly aired video of purported protesters shooting at security forces with firearms.

In one online video verified by The Associated Press, protesters demonstrated Friday in northern Tehran’s Saadat Abad area, with what appeared to be thousands on the street.

“Death to Khamenei!” a man chanted.

The semiofficial Fars news agency, believed to be close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and one of the few media outlets able to publish to the outside world, released surveillance camera footage of what it said came from demonstrations in Isfahan.

In it, a protester appeared to fire a long gun, while others set fires and threw gasoline bombs at what appeared to be a government compound.

The Young Journalists’ Club, associated with state TV, reported that protesters killed three members of the Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force in the city of Gachsaran.

It also reported a security official was stabbed to death in Hamadan province, a police officer killed in the port city of Bandar Abbas and another in Gilan, as well as one person slain in Mashhad.

The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, also close to the Guard, claimed authorities detained nearly 200 people belonging to what it described as “operational terrorist teams.” It alleged those arrested had weapons including firearms, grenades and gasoline bombs.

State television also aired footage of a funeral service attended by hundreds in Qom, a Shiite seminary city just south of Tehran.

Iran’s theocracy cut off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls on Thursday, though it allowed some state-owned and semiofficial media to publish. Qatar’s state-funded Al Jazeera news network reported live from Iran, but they appeared to be the only major foreign outlet able to work.

Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who called for protests Thursday and Friday, asked in his latest message for demonstrators to take to the streets Saturday and Sunday. He urged protesters to carry Iran’s old lion-and-sun flag and other national symbols used during the time of the shah to “claim public spaces as your own.” Pahlavi’s support of and from Israel has drawn criticism in the past — particularly after the 12-day war. Demonstrators have shouted in support of the shah in some protests, but it isn’t clear whether that’s support for Pahlavi himself or a desire to return to a time before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Online video purported to show protests ongoing Saturday night as well.

The demonstrations began Dec 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear programme. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.

Airlines have cancelled some flights into Iran over the demonstrations. Austrian Airlines said on Saturday it had decided to suspend its flights to Iran “as a precautionary measure” through Monday. Turkish Airlines earlier announced the cancellation of 17 flights to three cities in Iran.

Meanwhile, concern is growing that the internet shutdown will allow Iran’s security forces to go on a bloody crackdown, as they have in other rounds of demonstrations. Ali Rahmani, the son of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi who is imprisoned in Iran, noted that security forces killed hundreds in a 2019 protest “so we can only fear the worst.”

“They are fighting, and losing their lives, against a dictatorial regime,” Mr. Rahmani said.

Published – January 11, 2026 09:10 am IST

Iran’s economy is facing high inflation and other challenges, partly due to U.S. sanctions, U.S. ‍Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday (January 8, 2026), underscoring Washington’s concerns about Tehran cracking down violently on anti-regime protests.

“The Iranian economy ‌is on the ropes,” Mr. Bessent told the Economic Club of Minnesota, underscoring President Donald Trump’s warning to Tehran to avoid harming protesters.

“It’s a very precarious moment. He does not want them to harm more of the protesters. This is a tense moment,” the U.S. Treasury secretary said, referring to Mr. Trump’s threat to hit Tehran if it began killing protesters.

– Reuters

Iran has been rocked this week by protests that started in Tehran and have spread to other cities, with at least six people killed in clashes with security forces.

Official media has largely played down the protests but videos have flooded social media, many of which are difficult to authenticate, or have even been manipulated.

Here is a recap of what we know and what analysts think it all means.

What’s going on?

The protests began on Sunday in Tehran, where some shopkeepers went on strike over high prices and economic stagnation.

Iran’s economy has been battered by years of crushing international sanctions over its nuclear programme, with raging inflation and a collapsing currency.

By Tuesday, student protests erupted at universities in the capital Tehran and the central cities of Isfahan and Yazd. Some merchants in the capital’s bazaar joined in.

Demonstrations have now affected 20 areas, mostly towns in the west of the country, according to an AFP tally of official and local Iranian media reports.

In the southern city of Fasa, dozens of people protested outside a government building, lobbing projectiles and seeking to tear down its gate, according to videos posted on Wednesday, whose location AFP verified.

Slogans heard at protests now include “Death to the dictator” and “Woman, Life, Freedom”, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) says, citing verified videos and reports. AFP was not immediately able to authenticate these soundbites.

The same chants were used in mass demonstrations after the September 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian-Kurdish woman arrested for allegedly breaching the country’s dress code for women.

But authorities stamped out the 2022-2023 protests, using mass arrests and executions as part of its levers of repression, rights activists say. The system in charge since the 1979 revolution stayed in place.

What’s the context?

“The protesters are very clear in their slogans — they are not looking for reform,” said US-Iranian human rights lawyer Gissou Nia, of the Atlantic Council.

They come as “the Islamic republic is dealing with a range of pressures, not only internally but also externally”, she said.

Regional arch-foe Israel and the United States in June pounded Iranian nuclear sites and killed top military brass during a 12-day war.

On Monday, US President Donald Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida that if Tehran rebuilt its nuclear facilities, the United States would “knock them down.”

Trump said on Friday the United States was “locked and loaded” to respond if Iran killed protesters.

Iran has also been weakened following major blows dealt to its regional allies, including in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

Some Iranians hold long-standing resentment that Tehran has given too much financial or military support to its regional proxies, such as Lebanese movement Hezbollah, during economic hardship at home.

Iran International, a television channel based outside Iran that is critical of the authorities, has reported that recent protest slogans included “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran.”

How have authorities reacted?

Protesters and security forces clashed in several Iranian cities on Thursday, with six reported killed, the first deaths since the unrest escalated.

Schools, banks and public institutions were closed on Wednesday for a public holiday, with officials saying this was due to the cold weather and to save energy.

But authorities have also recognised the grievances as legitimate, and announced a series of measures, including replacing the central bank governor.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist, said on Thursday that he and his government would “end up in hell”, in the religious sense, if they failed to address economic hardship.

“The government knows that merchants are the lifeblood, the beating heart of Iran’s economy, and therefore it is obliged to take measures to address, at least partially, the big issues,” French-Iranian sociologist Azadeh Kian told AFP.

But supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, has yet to speak publicly on the matter.

How big is it?

Opposition abroad have welcomed the new protests.

Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s ousted shah, on X hailed 2026 as “the definitive moment for change”, while the National Council of Resistance in Iran said Iranians wanted to “free themselves from the scourge of religious tyranny”.

But Kian said today’s protests were not as large-scale as previous demonstrations sparked by economic grievances, including those of 2019. They were sparked by a petrol hike, spreading to around 100 cities and towns, and left hundreds dead, according to rights groups.

“I very much doubt the current rallies could bring down or overthrow the regime,” she said.

Arash Azizi, a postdoctoral associate and lecturer at Yale University, said the demonstrations however remained “the most serious wave of protests since 2023”.

“It is clear that with ever declining standards of living and growing discontent, [the government] will have to face periodic protests,” he said.

Published – January 03, 2026 06:06 am IST

Widening demonstrations sparked by Iran’s ailing economy spread Thursday (January 1, 2026) into the Islamic Republic’s rural provinces, with at least seven people being killed in the first fatalities reported among security forces and protesters, authorities said.

The deaths may mark the start of a heavier-handed response by Iran’s theocracy over the demonstrations, which have slowed in the capital, Tehran, but expanded elsewhere. The fatalities, one on Wednesday and five on Thursday, occurred in three cities predominantly home to Iran’s Lur ethnic group.

The protests have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the demonstrations have yet to be countrywide and have not been as intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.

The most-intense violence appeared to strike Azna, a city in Iran’s Lorestan province, some 300 kilometers (185 miles) southwest of Tehran. There, online videos purported to show objects in the street ablaze and gunfire echoing as people shouted: “Shameless! Shameless!” The semiofficial Fars news agency reported three people had been killed. Other media, including pro-reform outlets, cited Fars for the report while state-run media did not fully acknowledge the violence there or elsewhere. It wasn’t clear why there wasn’t more reporting over the unrest, but journalists had faced arrest over their reporting in 2022.

In Lordegan, a city in Iran’s Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, online videos showed demonstrators gathered on a street, with the sound of gunfire in the background. The footage matched known features of Lordegan, some 470 kilometers (290 miles) south of Tehran.

Fars, citing an anonymous official, said two people had been killed during the protests Thursday.

The Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran said two people had been killed there, identifying the dead as demonstrators. It also shared a still image of what appeared to be an Iranian police officer, wearing body armor and wielding a shotgun.

In 2019, the area around Lordegan saw widespread protests and demonstrators reportedly damaged government buildings after a report said people there had been infected with HIV by contaminated needles used at a local health care clinic.

‘Protests due to economic pressures’ A separate demonstration Wednesday night reportedly led to the 21-year-old volunteer in the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard’s Basij force.

The state-run IRNA news agency reported on the Guard member’s death but did not elaborate. An Iranian news agency called the Student News Network, which is believed to be close to the Basij, directly blamed demonstrators for the Guard member’s death, citing comments from Saeed Pourali, a deputy governor in Lorestan province.

The Guard member “was martyred … at the hands of rioters during protests in this city in defense of public order,” he reportedly said. Another 13 Basij members and police officers suffered injuries, he added.

“The protests that have occurred are due to economic pressures, inflation and currency fluctuations, and are an expression of livelihood concerns,” Pourali said. “The voices of citizens must be heard carefully and tactfully, but people must not allow their demands to be strained by profit-seeking individuals.” The protests took place in the city of Kouhdasht, over 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Tehran. Local prosecutor Kazem Nazari said 20 people had been arrested after the protests and that calm had returned to the city, the judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported.

Currency fall sparks protests Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters. However, Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial currency has rapidly depreciated, with $1 now costing some 1.4 million rials.

Meanwhile, state television separately reported on the arrests of seven people, including five it described as monarchists and two others it said had linked to European-based groups. State TV also said another operation saw security forces confiscate 100 smuggled pistols, without elaborating.

Iran’s theocracy had declared Wednesday a public holiday across much of the country, citing cold weather, likely as a bid to get people out of the capital for a long weekend. The Iranian weekend is Thursday and Friday, while Saturday marks Imam Ali’s birthday, another holiday for many.

The protests, taking root in economic issues, have heard demonstrators chant against Iran’s theocracy as well. The country’s leaders are still reeling after Israel launched a 12-day war against the country in June. The U.S. also bombed Iranian nuclear sites during the war.

Iran has said it is no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. However, those talks have yet to happen as U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its atomic program.

Published – January 02, 2026 05:40 am IST