Ilya Abbasi

________ December 2025 Protest Background (This background has been prepared based on the initial information at the start of the protests and will be updated at the earliest opportunity.) On December 28, 2025, merchants in Tehran s Grand Bazaar went on strike to protest the country s deteriorating economic conditions. Protests were sparked by the rapid depreciation of the Iranian rial to the U.S. dollar which reached a record low of 1.4 million rial to dollar by late December. High inflation, reaching 42% by December, further deepened Iranians economic frustrations. By December 30, protests had spread to half of Iran s provinces, including Alborz, Khuzestan, Fars, Hamedan, Kermanshah, Khorasan Razavi, West Azerbaijan, Hormozgan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Markazi, Isfahan, Zanjan, and Yazd. In addition to labor strikes, Iranians also held street gatherings and marches, and convened rallies at universities and outside government offices. During the first week, protest slogans largely focused on economic grievances and government corruption, but by the second week, evolved into anti-regime chants targeting the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Republic itself. Chants of Death to Khamenei were recorded in several cities including Tehran, Arak, Urmia, Qom, and Zahedan, as well as death to the dictator , we don t want an Islamic Republic , and calls for a return of the Pahlavi dynasty: Pahlavi will return , and long live the Shah . While economic hardships initially triggered the protests, protest demands increasingly evinced calls for an end to the theocratic government altogether. The first protester s death was recorded on December 31st, 2025 in Kuhdasht in Lorestan Province. In the first days of January, the US president, Donald J. Trump made statements including on social media, in support of protesters and warned Iran about potential US retaliation, if they shoot protesters.* On January 6, 2026, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, then Head of the Judiciary, stated during the 14th Session of the Imam Ali Law Enforcement Headquarters that special branches had been established to ensure the swift and decisive prosecution of protesters cases. He announced that experienced judges had been assigned to handle these cases through direct and field-based oversight. Accusing foreign countries of directly supporting the protesters, Ejei claimed that detainees could no longer argue that they had been misled, and emphasized that, unlike in previous years, no leniency would be shown toward defendants in these cases. On the same day, during a meeting of the High Council of the Judiciary, Ejei also ordered the acceleration of proceedings against those accused in connection with the protests, stating: At the prosecutor s office stage, we should not keep clear-cut cases waiting unnecessarily; the courts should act likewise. From this very moment, one or more branches should be specifically assigned to the recent unrest cases. There must be no delay or negligence; it should not be the case that a verdict for an agitator who committed additional crimes during the unrest is issued six months later. Such an approach would lack a deterrent effect. On January 8, the 12th day of protests, Iranian authorities instated a nationwide internet blackout. By this time, protests had spread to at least 22, a majority, of Iran s provinces, half of which are minority regions, including Kurdistan and Khuzestan which experienced some of the largest protests outside of Tehran. According to the Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA), protests had taken place in at least 585 locations across 186 cities in all of Iran s 31 provinces by the 15th day. Image and footage of scores of bodies in a makeshift morgue in Kahrizak Forensic Medical Center in Tehran surfaced online amid the blackout around January 10. Testimonies obtained by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center (ABC) described a chaotic environment at Kahrizak, with vehicles unloading piles of corpses, and people forced to identify their loved ones among the body bags strewn on the ground. ABC documented the first protester death on January 1st. ABC has received testimonies from several provinces, including Mashad, Tehran, Yazd, Kurdistan describing protesters shot in the heart, throat, or head, suggesting the security forces were shooting-to-kill. Eyewitnesses also described security forces' use of machine guns at protest sites, underscoring the indiscriminate and arbitrary nature of the shootings. It is difficult to ascertain the exact number of protesters killed due to the ongoing blackout as of this writing on January 16, 2026, but preliminary estimates indicate a high death toll, at minimum in the several hundred, but potentially in the thousands. Initial government statements varied at the onset of the protests, with President Masoud Pezeshkian instructing the Minister of the Interior to engage in dialogue with the protesters representatives to address their legitimate demand