The numbers vary from just 3,000, according to the Tehran regime, to more than 32,000 as reported by President Donald Trump.
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Images of piles of body bags and videos of government officials firing indiscriminately at protesters opposing Iran’s repressive regime have left experts and world leaders alike struggling to determine how many people the Ayatollah’s forces have killed in recent weeks.
The reports are wide-ranging. Authorities in Tehran have reported more than 3,000 deaths, including government soldiers killed by protesters. On February 20, President Donald Trump announced an estimate of more than 32,000 people.
Experts say it will be difficult to determine the true death toll given the supreme leader’s control over intelligence inside Iran. But experts say that number is likely many times higher than Khamenei admits.
“The lowest estimate would be more than 5,000,” Mai Soto, the UN special rapporteur on Iran, said in an interview with ABC Australia. Soto said the 5,000 death toll is a “conservative” or “minimal” estimate. Other reliable estimates put the number as high as 20,000, she said.
The protests began in late December over inflation and turned into demonstrations against the country’s repressive government. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, state police and other government agents fought back violently on January 8 and 9, using guns loaded with metal bullets to fire at demonstrators at close range, and the government has since threatened those involved with the death penalty.
Questions have arisen over the exact death toll as President Trump has indicated he is prepared to launch a military attack on Iran if his administration continues to crack down on protesters. In June, President Trump ordered the US military to bomb three major Iranian nuclear facilities in an effort to eradicate Iran’s nuclear program.
Elise Auerbach, an Iran expert at Amnesty International, told USA TODAY of the death toll: “It’s certainly large.” “The government clearly doesn’t want the world to know the extent of the repression. It wants to control the narrative.”
President Trump says of protesters: ‘They’ve been living in hell’
President Trump on February 20 released some of the largest estimates of the number of people killed by the Iranian regime.
“It’s a very sad situation, but 32,000 people were killed in a relatively short period of time,” President Trump said at a White House press conference on Friday. “I feel so bad for the Iranian people. They have lived a hellish life.”
President Trump did not elaborate on the source of the 32,000 deaths. USA TODAY has reached out to the White House for comment.
How many people has Iran said were killed?
The Ayatollah regime said more than 3,000 people had been killed, according to a statement from the Government Martyrs Foundation shared in Iranian state media.
According to an Iranian government statement reported by Al Jazeera, 3,117 people were killed during the crackdown. This figure also includes government security forces said to have been killed by protesters.
Experts say the Ayatollah’s official figures are not reliable.
“They didn’t want the world to know,” Auerbach said, pointing to the internet shutdown imposed by the Iranian government amid the crackdown. “But pictures of hospitals piled up with body bags kept appearing.”
Thousands of deaths under investigation
Other sources conclude that the number of people killed by the Iranian regime exceeds the country’s official figures and could be several times higher.
“There were a lot of casualties,” Soto said. “I have seen many videos of security forces opening fire on unarmed civilians.”
UN officials once again pointed out the difficulty of getting a clear picture of what is happening on the ground in the country. He said the estimate was based on reports from Iranian medical staff who were able to use Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service to circumvent internet blackouts.
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which focuses on reporting on the crackdown in Iran, more than 6,000 people have been confirmed dead, and more than 17,000 deaths are under investigation.
The 6,126 deaths confirmed by HRANA include 5,777 protesters, 86 minors, 214 government employees, and 49 civilians who did not participate in the protests.
Contributed by Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
