Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

My government doesn’t fund Iran.

That's not a fair position, those people don't have the duty to make every wrong right. As an Iranian expat how much of your time and money did you invest in fixing Iran? Apparently there are 2 million Iranians in US and just over a million in Europe and a million more in the rest of the world. What did the 4 million strong Iranian diaspora did on that matter?

That's really an unfortunate statement. I see this talking point from pro-Netanyahu accounts, showing empty university campuses and I wonder if they are demanding right to kill more people under their control(since Iranians killed more people per day and Israel is mission out) or trying to smear the protesters(which I don't see how it make sense, you don't become hypocritical of you don't invest your time and money in every issue).

you are looking it differently, I disagree, I am one of those who supported Palestine.

Reason we are silent, because our governments already did what's needed from our side: heavily sanctioned the Iran, if I go and protest, what do I ask? To sanction Iran? They would laugh at me. Obviously, I am not going to protest and ask our government to go to war with Iran, which kills even more people.

Why is it different for Israel? Because our government supported it, we didn't sanction them, that was what we were asking for, while brutality was even higher than Iranian regime.

Not trying to downplay casualties, but just looking at relative numbers and methods, I don't see Iran bombing own people or killing 10% of its own population

Palestine : Dont send bombs. Send Aid. Lift blockade so Palestinians dont suffer.

Iran : Dont send bombs. Send Aid. Lift sanctions so Iranian people dont suffer.

Interested to hear your take regarding the same.

This created absolute hell in Syria, Libya and other nations. Democracy was certainly not delivered.

Are you calling for the US to bomb Iran? Or are you against that?

I'm not sure if you're making this argument in good faith, but just in case. The iranian government has no love for socialists/anarchists many of whom have been executed (especially in the years after the islamic revolution) or live in exile.

From what politically active iranian comrades told me (in exile), the social movement in Iran is very much alive and there is an underground left-wing scene (for example an anarchist/punk scene). Likewise, the Jin Jiyan Azadi movement following the execution of Mahsa Amini is very much on the left wing, inspired by Rojava's democratic confederalism.

From a western european perspective (eg. me), the dilemma is not the one you presented. Sure some fringe groups have campist [1] tendencies, but that's far from representing the Left as a whole (which has historical links with the anti-islamist left-wing in Iran). The dilemma would be: how to support a people's revolution without supporting our own western empires making the situation even worse? The most moderate/imperialist liberals have learnt the lessons from the Taliban's comeback in Afghanistan and the return of black slavery in Libya: we can do better than bomb a foreign people.

Still, the demonstrations here in France supporting the uprising in Iran (at least those who are not organized by the fascists trying to bring the Shah's son to the throne) pretty much have the same crowd as the pro-palestinian demonstrations. I'd be curious, apart from obvious propaganda, where you'd find the idea that left-wingers wouldn't support overthrowing a tyrannical government.

(cue history course about the history of secularism and why opposing islamophobia is not incompatible with opposing islamism or any theological tyranny)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campism

I think your optics are skewed as to what is seen as "the left" in US centric ways. In my east european part of the world the perspective isn't shaped by ethnicity at all (except when the organized right does anti immigration manifestations), but with disgust of what authoritarians do around the world. The world seems to be in a simmering stage, and the fact that we have our Serbian neighbors continuously protesting for more than a year, dampens ideals of being able to effect change through protests.

>It’s a shame that all those activist that would shred themselves for Palestine are absolutely quite about Iran

Did you consider if there are any differences between the two situations? The money I earn is not being seized to fund the Iranian regime. Government and other organizations in my country are not declaring a blank check in support of the Iranian government; they're not suggesting it's hate speech to merely question the Iranian government's actions and no one is being investigated, arrested, or deported for being skeptical of the Iranian government or it's violence.

Why would leftists (or anyone) be confused who the bad guy is here? Generally as a rule of thumb for international conflict you can count on the left to be on the side of the underdog, no matter how naive a view that may be in a given circumstance.

Sorry this is BS. I'm very left wing but nobody I know on the left has any time for murderers.

The left is very principled. We don't have this loyalty thing that the right has. Loyalty to the party line no matter how insane. We don't have leaders that tell us what to think.

Yes I think Israel is very bad for what they're still doing in Gaza. Yes I think the Palestinian people deserve their own country. And really theirs, not that stupid resort Trump wants to make of it (where there seems to be no place for Palestinians except maybe as humble servants for the rich tourists)

But NO, I have no time for the mullahs and their security services and not for hamas either for that matter. Nor for the Taliban. They are monsters too. They are not our allies in any way and I'm hoping that Iran will become free. I even have nothing against Israelis, just their government/army

We measure people by our principles. Not by whatever side of some narratives they happen to be on. And there is no 'side' anyway. On the left we're more like an unorganized collection of people whose opinions happen to align.

I don't even support the party I vote for on every topic. I don't have loyalty, if I'm aligned with a group or party it's never unconditional. It's more that my own values currently align with theirs.

The problem with Iran is, protesting here on the streets is a bit pointless. With the gaza situation it puts pressure on our governments to sanction Israel. Like stopping doing business with them.

Protesting against the Iranian massacre won't do anything. Our governments already do no business there. The only thing it might accomplish is pissing the Iranian regime off but they won't give a crap what we think. There have been protests but yeah what can we do really?

I don't want to be called "leftist" because I don't want to belong to any tribe. But I do embrace a lot of the humanist ideals of the so called "progressives" and I think they might have some moral ground in here. But feel free to call me whatever you want.

In my perspective, the oppression in Iran is different from what is going on in Gaza. It is more like what happens in Belarus, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Turkey and Myanmar: it is an authoritarian government killing and oppressing their own people. I am not American but if the American government wants to kill innocent people in Minneapolis that is an American problem that the Americans should solve, because I respect the US sovereignty.

OTOH, I am ok with western interference in Gaza because Zionism is a racist project from one ethnicity against other, it is the racist government of a racist people committing genocide against another ethnicity. It isn't an internal issue of a sovereign state as much as apartheid wasn't an internal affair of the South African regime.

What is striking is that the death toll in Iran from a couple of weeks of demonstrations is half as much as what Gaza suffered in 2 years of a devastating war. Even taking into account the difference in population this is shocking.

Well done to my fellow Hners for trying to gaslight op that the 2 are not comparable, when everyone here knows what is really behind this anomaly.

You have all my sympathy. Even Israelis understand the difference between the regime and the people of Iran. From a practical point of view how do feel the West should respond? Would you welcome American airstrikes? What do you feel about the looming possibility of another conflict with Israel?

And the US liberal party did similar attacks on the Palestinian people so it's consistent.

EDIT: Sorry... that is too strong... "state aligned influence media". Note that the headline might be true, or it might not, but that source is quite glowy.

US may not have autocrats, but it does have ruthless enforcers of "law and order" with access to advanced weapons. Its probably safe to say thst whatever the stated reason is for the 2nd amendment, it is going to be difficult or impossible to meet its objective if needed.

In the end they decided it was worth the risk and I guess they were right, because China survived that period without any rotation of elites and became more prosperous and powerful as a result, avoiding all the chaos of the former Soviet countries

but yeah, compared to what Israelis do in Gaza or Iran, even whole Beijing numbers are negligible considering China population

Sure you will get some nay-sayers who say 'a life is a life', if moral particles existed, they might be correct.

But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much.

What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence?

Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran Human Rights said the death toll could be higher than 20,000, based on evidence reviewed by his organization.

The official name of Iran is "The Islamic Republic of Iran" and it is a country ruled by sharia law. Countries ruled by Sharia are already totalitarian states.

It was probably the headline article for a couple of hours on the site. I don't remember extended coverage either so I looked it up.

There is also the issue of not being easy to confirm anything out of Iran right now, which is certainly concerning.

There are, IMO, very grave and very serious double standards at play here because I don't think we're going to see any of those.

As for the numbers:

  Interior Ministry reports say security forces confronted demonstrators in more than 400 cities and towns, with more than 4,000 clash locations reported nationwide

As to the how, the article suggests some deaths immediately occurred in crowds - firing, dispersing, funneling, crush injuries, etc. leading to many intakes to hospitals and treatment tents etc ... followed by execution of the injured.

It's grim stuff.

Some years past the waves of the Rwanda massacres saw almost a million people killed in bursts across 100 days, mostly with machetes and hand guns.

The numbers reported here are absolutely feasible, the reporting is certainly questionable; bad things happened, but was it at the claimed scale?

The museum of the city has a paper with the order that every soldier would have to kill 400 people, by sword. Of course they were already captured but there were about 1 million people in that city. The city is still perfectly leveled after 800 years. Only a couple of buildings were left standing.

Mongols were very well coordinated. Iranian crowd control has had 45 years and several insurrections to train.

Quite a lot of detail in the nyt article https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/world/middleeast/iran-how...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre 400-1500 civilian deaths by 50 British soldiers armed with bolt action rifles (tried to get machine guns on site but thankfully couldn't)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Severloh Possibly single handedly killed an hard to estimate count of US soldier, but possibly in the hundreds (he had people supplying him ammunitions).

Crowds are just easy to thin with repeating firearms and a good supply of ammo...

> Did the protestors get boxed in somehow?

That did also happen.[2]

> And across so many locations, that seems to require a crazy amount of coordination to kill so many in so little time.

The IRGC's primary purpose is to protect the regime, I'm sure they would have plans in place for suppressing protests.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Revolutionary_Guard_Co...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basij

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/01/25/ira...

No different from any other military operation to be honest. I'm not sure why you're incredulous about the death toll when a military is ordered to shoot to kill.

The article says "36,500 killed in 400 cities". That's 91 people per city.

iran site:theguardian.com

There is a narrative that has been floating around and it seems like a Russian psyop designed to sow discord (not accusing you of being a bot personally), “the lefties are friends with Iran and don’t complain about their attrocities”, which is objectively false.

Indeed if you look at independent aggregators the latest article on Iran is more “left leaning” reported: https://ground.news/article/at-least-6-126-people-killed-in-...

In fact, we believe - quite rightly - that if the US had conditioned military assistance to Israel on appropriate care for civilians, then the awful tragedy that unfolded in Gaza could have been averted. Similar levers for changing the behaviour of Iran do not exist.

Protesting in your country against an enemy country that has been subjected already to all kinds of sanctions and military attacks makes little sense.

People protest to affect political change in their own countries. For example, that's why Americans now protest against ICE and not against the secret police in Turkmenistan. In my country, the government recently signed a secret arms deal with Israel to sell it weapons. Weapons that are then used to maim children. I don't like that. Major politicians have said that Israel should be "thanked" for what it's doing in Gaza. I don't like that either. Hence, why I protest. If the Sionazi regime in Israel was isolated in the same way as the Islamic regime in Iran or the Taliban regime in Afghanistan people would protest less because there would be less political change to affect.

Fourteen arrested after protest at Iranian embassy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y3g8glgxvo

Protester climbs on to balcony of Iranian embassy in London: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy09yvd57x2o

Silent protestors gather in solidarity with Iran: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4g1me23x7o

Protests serve to force your government to take action. i honestly at this point don't see what could mine to to stop this. Given the sanctions are not working, the only option to change Iran is maybe a direct intervention like Syria. And that sure worked great.

With Iran, there's not a whole bunch of similar material, the death count estimates vary greatly from source to source, and we've got an untrustworthy president beating a war drum which probably makes people a bit more skeptical.. Atrocity propaganda to persuade a democracy to enter a war is something attentive people will be familiar with; incubator babies being tossed on the floor, dissidents being fed feet first into industrial grinders, people remember these stories preceding other wars and remember that evidence for the claims never materialized. Then there's the whole geopolitical angle where the Trump administration in fact supports Israel and Iran happens to be one of Israel's most powerful regional opponents. There are plenty of reasons to temper feelings of certainty.

Yes, but not the kind delivered in an American/Israeli bomb.

Or there is pressure and discontent, but simply not enough to topple the regime as it needs way more than 50% support for a internal regime change.

I have childhood memories of such a succesful change in eastern germany. Most people had enough for a long time, but they knew the sovjet tanks would come if they revolted. After it seemed the sovjets were busy on their own and won't come but rather did democratic reforms themself, but the GDR refused and stayed stalinistic - then the people went to the streets. And at some point those in power just gave up. Not really a consciouss choice, but they were visibly insecure and confused, so weak and fell. (But it was a close call, some wanted to bring out the machine guns as well)

The iranian mullahs were insecure, but they choose the violent path of dominance.

Not the same situation, as they did not rely on a foreign power like in GDR, but it seems they lost majority support a long time ago, but have a loyal enough religious base to use the weapons.

And yes, military and police who have family members on the streets will defect at some point and it seems that also happened in Iran, just not enough.

german here. Thanks for invading nazi germany and killing hitler. was very very nice. Thanks again

It depends a lot on how much power the people have. The more advanced and diverse an economy and the more qualified and educated the population are the more power they have. On one extreme you have countries like Angola with an economy consisting virtually only out of exporting oil. These countries only need a few qualified engineers for their resource extraction which they pay well and everyone else is entirely replaceable. That leads to extreme inequality between the leading political class that absorbs all the money and pays the military with it. As long as they pay and treat the military well enough they can just suppress the rest of the country. If people act up they can literally just kill everyone part of the rebellion. The political class, the military and the rest are just entirely disjunct classes of people with different incentives. The family of the militaries profit enough from the system to not excert pressure on their family member working for the military. It's the hand that feeds them.

On the other end you have countries with highly developed, specialized economies and a population that is educated enough to understand at least a few things about politics. There ordinary people have extensive training and work experience. You cannot just replace them. They can protest and go on strike and if you start killing everyone the economy will quickly start crashing down. Just pulling a few cogs out of the massively complex machine will stop it from working. And at that point it's not just a problem for the working population but also for the owning class and the pressure will propagate all the way up through the hierarchy. Also people can just leave. They have the economic means to and their qualifications mean that other countries have an interest in attracting already qualified people without having to pay for their education and traning first. That's what happened to east Germany and why they built the wall.

There are some methods of social control that can help to control a population beyond that. The key ingredient is surveillance, mutual control and seeding distrust. One person alone can never challenge the system. People need to organize. You can try to find the organizers via surveillance quick enough and get rid of them before they get dangerous. Also if a significant portion of the population is secretly informing the government people might be to afraid to organize as they distrust each other. That's how the Stasi worked in East Germany. For an extreme case of that see the Inminban[1] system in North Korea where people are bundled into groups where all surveil each other and report any dissident behavior. Failing to do so will lead to collective punishment for the whole group. It's a really perverse system that plays people against each other and their own interest aligning the incentives for the individual with the government rather than their class.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inminban

The end of the regime was brought about by an incursion into the Vietnamese border town of Ba Chúc, resulting in the massacre of more than 3000 civilians. Vietnam invaded, toppled the Khmer Rouge and brought an end to the executions although civil war would continue for much of the next decade.

For these actions Vietnam was extensively sanctioned[1]. The parallels with ongoing conflicts today are hard to ignore.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Crimes_against_hum...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_W...

The notion of some well-defined "people" is a fiction that ruling powers use to keep humanity's innate tribalistic tendencies pointed outward at their adversaries.

The truth is that the powers-that-be consider themselves to be above "the people", and will dispose of you as soon as you become inconvenient.

It’s generally not very hard to incite violence across groups in the Middle East, especially when you consider how bad the outcome might be for the losing side. Case in point, the Alawites who lost control of Syria and are now persecuted by the new government.

Other state institutions have also received differing figures from other security bodies. However, given the scale of the killings, deliberate concealment, and what appears to be intentional disorder in the registration and transfer of bodies – along with pressure on families and, in some cases, the quiet burial of victims – it appears that even the security agencies themselves do not yet know the precise final death toll.

In a report presented on Wednesday, January 21, to the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee seen by Iran International, the number of those killed was listed as at least 27,500.

According to sources within Iran’s Interior Ministry who spoke to Iran International on condition of anonymity, a consolidation of figures received from provincial security councils by Tuesday, January 20, showed the death toll had exceeded 30,000.

Two informed sources from the Supreme National Security Council also told Iran International that in two recent reports by the IRGC Intelligence Organization, dated January 22 and January 24, the number of those killed was listed as more than 33,000 and more than 36,500 respectively.

> [...] newly obtained classified documents, field reports, and accounts from medical staff, witnesses, and victims’ families.

Machiavelli in Discourses on Livy says you are inviting an overthrow of your government by doing this.

The mercenaries can flip sides if the opposite faction pays them and offers them better terms... or maybe the mercs just flip.

Hard to say how true this is.

> That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

There is a long history of major world events like this being discussed on Hacker News and it is accepted as on topic. There is also a long history of people who haven't read the guidelines asking what they have to do with tech.

https://reason.com/2026/01/23/the-trump-administration-plans...

The US shipped the carrier battle group in the region out to support the Venezuela operations, and is deporting asylum seekers back to their deaths this week.

Nobody in the US has any idea what is happening in Iran. Judging by the weird, not very HN like threads on this post, sounds like we are going to.

The irony is that now those who are still alive in Iran might remember this and update their notion of US trustworthiness accordingly.

However, it also says:

> "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it." [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html