What is unfolding in Iran is no longer political repression or civil unrest. It is a systematic massacre, an ongoing crime against humanity.
Even the regime’s own reluctant admission acknowledges roughly 36,500 killed. Iranian witnesses, medical data, and field reports point to a far higher number: more than 50,000 dead, with the toll still rising amid internet blackouts and state terror.
This violence is neither spontaneous nor defensive.
Tehran’s dictator, Ali Khamenei, is faithfully following the doctrine of the Islamic Republic’s first tyrant, Ruhollah Khomeini – power preserved through blood. Just as mass executions cemented the regime in the 1980s, mass killing has once again become its tool of survival.
New evidence reveals a chilling pattern: summary executions without trial, minutes-long sham courts, shoot-to-kill orders, execution shots fired at wounded protesters, and direct interference by security forces inside hospitals.
A surgeon who treated victims on January 8 and 9 told The Guardian that hospitals became “worse than any war zone,” overrun with patients shot in the chest, abdomen, head, and neck, often multiple times, often from behind as they tried to flee.
A state policy of killing
At the same time, thousands have disappeared. Lawyers have been barred from registering cases. Families have not been told where detainees are being held.
Bodies are delivered to forensic centers without explanation of who transferred them. Credible reports suggest prisoners were executed and then falsely counted as protest casualties, deepening the horror.
Yet in the midst of darkness, the Iranian people have spoken with clarity. Across cities, prisons, and silenced networks, one name was chanted: King Reza Pahlavi. This was not nostalgia, but recognition.
Today, he stands as the only unifying national figure, the symbol of a democratic transition, and the voice capable of representing a people whose communications have been deliberately severed.
Outside Iran, global protests have become lifelines. As the regime weaponizes internet shutdowns, granting even traders just minutes of monitored access, Iranians abroad and allies worldwide have stepped in to bear witness.
When a nation is forced into silence, the world has a moral obligation to speak.
Let there be no illusion about what happened: This was not “crowd control.”
It was an execution. People who had surrendered were gunned down. The wounded were finished off. Some were burned alive. Some were buried alive. The goal was simple: kill more, blindly, without limit.
When people write their demands in blood, it means every peaceful door has been slammed shut. In such circumstances, calls for decisive international action, including the credible threat of force against the Islamic Republic, are not extremism.
They are patriotism aligned with humanity. Silence is complicity. Hesitation is betrayal.
History is watching, and it will not forget.
The writer is a journalist and former US- based Persian language news editor and anchor who works in the legal field and writes on Iran’s political and social issues, including women’s rights and religious minorities, particularly the Baha’i community.