Iran: Do massacres of citizens work?

After two weeks of silence about the mass slaughter of Iranian protesters on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9, the partial restoration of internet services in the country is allowing the first plausible estimates of how bad it was to reach international media.

It was very bad.

Even the lowest estimate, issued by the regime itself, says that 3,117 people were killed. The highest estimate is “above 36,500” dead, which may be true but comes from Iran International, a generally accurate but clearly opposition-linked satellite TV channel based in London.

The most plausible estimates run from 22,000 to 30,304 killings in two days, mainly based on reports of hospital admissions, mortuaries and mass gravesites before the internet was fully shut down. Indeed, many executions were carried out in hospitals, targeting protesters already being treated there for shotgun wounds to the eyes or groin.

Whatever the real number, it was mass murder on a scale far exceeding any previous occasions when the regime felt threatened by popular protests (3,400 deaths in 1981-82, 1,000-plus killed in 1988, 72 deaths in 2009, 300-1,500 killed in 2019 and 551 deaths in the 2022-2023 protests). This is a whole different scale, and the past is no guide to the future.

There are 92 million people in Iran, but the protests took place all over the country (400 cities and towns). The deaths were so numerous that almost everybody will know somebody who knows somebody else who had a friend or family member killed, injured or jailed by the regime this month. The country is irreversibly changed by this.

Hitherto the regime had genuine support from a large minority of devout Shia Muslim believers, and many more people just wanted to be left in peace. Henceforward the regime will effectively be an occupation force that rules only by terror — but such regimes can last a long time if they are ruthless enough.

Consider the very different fates of Syria and Egypt in the Arab Spring of 2011 to 2013. The long-ruling dictators of the two countries both faced non-violent pro-democracy movements, and the Egyptians actually overthrew then-president Hosni Mubarak. There was a free election but they elected an Islamist government, whereupon the army seized power.

Non-violent supporters of the elected government mobilized again, but army and police snipers shot 2,400 protesters dead in two squares in central Cairo and the protests stopped. Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s regime, always supported by the United States, remains in power today.

In Syria, by contrast, the ruling Assad family started shooting the non-violent protesters right away in 2011, unleashing a civil war that lasted 13 years, devastating the entire country and driving half the population into exile.

It even looked like Bashar al-Assad had won for a while, but he relied on Russian support as much as Sissi does on U.S. backing. When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his “three-day” invasion of Ukraine four years ago, the war soaked up all Russia’s attention and resources, and Assad’s regime just withered on the vine.

In late 2024 he was overthrown in a week by a small militia led by a former member of Islamic State, Ahmed al-Sharaa. He insists that he will run Syria as a democratic state that is tolerant of all religions, and we should all wish him well, of course. However, I would not bet the farm on it — nor on a successful democratic revolution in Iran.

Yes, Iran is not an Arab country and Shia fanatics are different from Sunni fanatics, but their recent histories have run on parallel tracks for most of the past century. Even if the non-violent protests in Iran this week had not been drowned in blood, the odds were always against a happy ending to their protests against Iran’s entrenched religious dictatorship.

And into all this now steps U.S. President Donald Trump. (All journalists are now contractually obliged to mention his name at least once in every story they file, whatever the topic.) He tells the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that “another beautiful armada (is) floating beautifully toward Iran right now,” and threatens a second direct U.S. attack on the country.

It’s all about staying in the limelight, but not with the goal of helping the Iranian protesters whom he told via Truth Social on Jan. 13 to “keep protesting — take over your institutions! … help is on its way.” There was no practical way for the U.S. military to help them either then or now, of course, and besides the great slaughter in Iran had already happened in the previous week.

It’s all ancient history for Trump anyway. This week’s threats are about forcing Iran to “Come to the table and negotiate a fair and equitable deal” on its nuclear weapons program.

You know, the one he claimed to have destroyed last June.

Ignore it. It’s probably just more empty bluster, and you couldn’t affect the outcome anyway.

Gwynne Dyer’s new book is Intervention Earth: Life-Saving Ideas from the World’s Climate Engineers.