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After killing thousands across Iran in just days, Iran’s government is denying families the right to mourn by blocking burials and seizing bodies in its push stamp on the embers of unrest.
In Iranian and Islamic tradition, failing to bury the dead promptly—usually within 24 hours—is considered a profound violation of dignity. Yet many families say they have been deprived of dignified burial and mourning rituals.
The moves appear aimed at preventing public funerals or mourning which could become flashpoints of anger and dissent.
Families of the slain say they have been prevented from holding mourning ceremonies, denied timely burials and pressured into silence—deprived of what they describe as basic human closure.
An account on X writing under a pseudonym, wrote: “I finally got online. I will never forget the moment they shot a 15-year-old boy directly in the head with a Kalashnikov … or the silence the next day when they told his mother if she cried loudly, they wouldn’t give her the body.”
Some families report being notified of deaths only after secret burials had already taken place, or not being told burial locations at all.
Another X user, living in Canada, wrote on X that the family of a slain relative was denied a funeral: “They buried him at five in the morning themselves and threatened the family that if they gathered at the grave, they would dig up the body and take it away.”
One of the most widespread accusations against the government is the use of bodies as leverage. Families report being forced to pay sums of around $5,000 or sign written commitments in exchange for the release of remains.
One such victim was Armin Jashni-Nejad, a 23-year-old petrochemical worker from Mahshahr, who was shot to death by police on January 9.
Two days later, security officials told his family the body would only be released if they agreed to say he had been killed by “thugs.”
Ultimately, Armin was buried by security forces without his family present, after they were compelled to sign a written pledge.
Bardia, who recently left Iran after witnessing the massacre of protesters in Rasht, northern Iran, told Iran International that in some cases authorities demanded deposits as high as 30 billion rials (over $20,000) from families to prevent public funerals.
For most families living through the country's dire economic straits, the sums are impossible.
Further accounts by social media users citing local eyewitnesses describe families burying victims in private homes or gardens to prevent authorities from seizing the bodies.
These reports could not be immediately confirmed by Iran International.
Death toll
Iranian authorities have acknowledged only a fraction of the deaths but assert that of approximately 3,100 deaths, over 2,400 -- both ordinary citizens and security forces -- were caused by “terrorists”.
Iran International has reported at least 36,500 deaths, having reviewed "classified documents, field reports, and accounts from medical staff, witnesses, and victims’ families."
Witnesses report that many victims were shot in the head or chest. Gunshot wounds to the genital area have also reportedly been reported, which some observers say were inflicted deliberately.
At the same time, state television has aired the televised interrogations of ordinary citizens, portraying them as “misled,” “ignorant," or agents of foreign governments.
These broadcasts appear designed to reframe the killings as acts of national defense rather than the violent suppression of mass protests.
A flood of evidence
In the immediate aftermath of the deadliest mass killings, on January 8 and 9, near-total internet shutdowns and severe restrictions on phone communications obscured the scale of the carnage.
Several days later, the first videos began to emerge: black body bags piled into trailers, hundreds of corpses stacked together, or bodies laid out on the ground at Kahrizak forensic medicine compound in Tehran.
In these videos, families of the missing are forced to search among blood-soaked bodies—some partially unclothed—in the hope of finding their loved ones.
Increased access to the internet and social media—largely through the Psiphon conduit—has since enabled a wave of new testimonies and footage to surface. The images are harrowing.
In several of the bodies shown, signs of medical intervention are visible alongside fatal gunshot wounds to the forehead or chest, raising the possibility that some victims were shot after being taken to the hospital.
One of the most searing videos, published on Thursday, documents twelve minutes of a father searching among corpses on the outside pavement of the Kahrizak morgue.
Past the sea of bodies and families collapsing into wails after finding slain young loved ones, he weeps and groans uncontrollably.
"Death to Khamenei," the father whimpers again and again. He repeatedly calls out his son’s name throughout: “Sepehr, daddy’s Sepehr, where are you?”
The video ends with no sign that father and son were reunited.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem on Monday said the group considers threats by US President Donald Trump against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to be a threat against Hezbollah itself.
“Hezbollah is concerned with confronting Trump’s threat against Khamenei and considers it a threat against itself, and it has full authority to take whatever it deems appropriate to confront it,” Qassem said.
Qassem described Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the group’s supreme Islamic authority.
Referring to nationwide protests in Iran, Qassem accused the Islamic Republic's adversaries of seeking to undermine the country from within through economic pressure and by, he said, inserting “saboteurs” into demonstrations.
The United Arab Emirates said it would not allow its airspace, territory or territorial waters to be used for any hostile military action against Iran.
“The UAE confirms its commitment to not allowing its airspace, land or waters to be used in any hostile military actions against Iran,” Afra Al Hameli, director of strategic communications at the UAE foreign ministry, said in a post on X.
She added that the UAE would not provide any logistical support for such actions and said Abu Dhabi believed dialogue, de-escalation and respect for international law were the best way to address regional crises.
Iran cannot simply rewind to the weeks before the protests began. The crackdown hardened public anger, while an already overstretched economy and energy system lost what little room they had to absorb another shock.
On December 28, a strike by shopkeepers in Tehran’s markets ignited protests that rapidly spread far beyond their original setting. What followed was not a short-lived wave of unrest, but a nationwide rupture whose scale and consequences now make a return to the previous status quo virtually impossible.
Nearly a month later, estimates point to at least 36,500 people killed in clashes and crackdowns across more than 400 cities and 4,000 separate sites of confrontation. The magnitude marks a turning point in the country’s modern history.
Even before the protests began, Iran was already under severe strain: an economy caught in persistent inflation, an energy system stretched beyond capacity, environmental stress that had begun to affect daily life, and security structures weakened by external shocks and internal attrition.
The events that unfolded after December 28 did not create these pressures. They exposed them, intensified them, and fused them into a single, compounding crisis.
What the data now show is not simply escalation, but irreversibility.
An economy with no cushion left
Long before markets closed and strikes spread, Iran’s economy had entered a phase of chronic instability.
Official figures put unemployment at just over seven percent, but nearly 40 percent of the unemployed were university graduates, a mismatch that had been widening for years. The national currency continued to lose value, the Tehran stock exchange spent most days in decline, and liquidity pressures rippled through the private sector.
Inflation was no longer episodic. Point-to-point inflation rose from about 39 percent in early spring to nearly 53 percent by late autumn.
Even households traditionally considered middle-income were cutting back on basic goods. Reports of installment-based purchases for food items, including fruit and nuts, had become routine.
Fiscal policy offered little relief. The government’s proposed budget projected wage increases of 20 percent, well below the officially acknowledged inflation rate.
Lawmakers rejected the bill outright, citing unrealistic revenue assumptions and a growing gap between costs and household incomes. Similar gaps in previous budgets had already pushed salaried workers and pensioners further into precarity.
The banking sector added another layer of fragility. One major private bank formally acknowledged insolvency weeks before the protests began.
Across the system, only a small number of banks met international capital adequacy standards, while several large institutions showed negative ratios. Credit expansion continued largely through money printing, reinforcing inflation rather than growth.
When markets shut down after December 28, they did so without reserves. A month of disrupted commerce has left many businesses with no buffer at all, while reports of burned commercial districts and threatened asset seizures have compounded losses.
Even under optimistic assumptions, restoring activity would require vast public spending. The resources to do so are no longer visible.
Energy and limits of revenue
Energy has long been treated as Iran’s most reliable economic lever. That assumption has eroded.
Oil exports never fully recovered from earlier sanctions, and recent enforcement efforts further narrowed room for maneuver.
Other energy sales once described as insulated – particularly gas and electricity exports to neighboring countries – have also come under pressure.
At the same time, domestic shortages intensified.
Power plants turned to heavy fuel oil, worsening air pollution, while export volumes were quietly reduced to meet internal demand.
The contradiction became structural: exporting energy reduced domestic stability, while keeping energy at home limited revenue.
These constraints matter because energy income underpins much of public spending, including security outlays. Budget plans approved in December to bolster military capabilities for the next Iranian year depend heavily on oil-backed revenues, funding streams that are increasingly uncertain.
Without a stable energy surplus, neither fiscal recovery nor political containment looks financially viable.
Environmental stress
Environmental pressures have moved from background concern to immediate risk. Official estimates attribute around 58,000 deaths annually to air pollution. Water scarcity has become acute enough that authorities have publicly acknowledged difficulties supplying drinking water to the capital, with rainfall described as the only short-term relief.
Agriculture, which consumes over 90 percent of national water use and employs nearly a fifth of the workforce, cannot be restructured quickly without triggering new social shocks.
Modernization would require investments that current budgets cannot support.
Security erosion
Alongside these pressures, the security apparatus has shown visible strain. Equipment losses during recent regional conflicts, the deaths of senior commanders, and repeated cyber breaches exposing sensitive databases have weakened internal cohesion.
Reports circulating online suggest disciplinary measures against personnel who refused to participate in lethal crackdowns, adding to signs of internal fracture.
Externally, Iran has lost key regional partners, while negotiations with Western powers remain stalled and unpredictable.
Diplomatic defections abroad, including asylum requests by senior officials, point to diminishing confidence within the system itself.
After December 28
What distinguishes the period since December 28 is not only the scale of violence, but its social reach.
If the current death toll is even roughly accurate, millions of people are now directly connected to loss – families, relatives, neighbors – creating a reservoir of anger that cannot be neutralized through force alone.
Inside the country, prolonged internet disruptions have obscured events, but not halted them. Outside, large diaspora communities have mobilized in parallel, amplifying pressure and attention.
Taken together, the figures sketch a stark conclusion. The crises that existed before December 28 were severe but fragmented. The response to the protests fused them into a single, systemic break. Reversing that break would require resources, legitimacy, and internal cohesion that no longer appear to exist.
The numbers, more than the slogans, explain why there is no going back.
Iran’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva, Ali Bahreini, said Tehran is prepared for “any scenario,” including the possibility of an attack, amid heightened tensions with the United States.
“The United States is unpredictable, so we are prepared for any scenario, including any possible aggression,” Bahreini said, according to state media.
Bahreini said informal messages have been exchanged between Iran’s foreign minister and US envoy Steve Witkoff, but said it would be difficult to describe those contacts as negotiations.
The remarks came after Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei rejected reports that Tehran had sent a message to Witkoff seeking to delay possible US military action, saying such reports were false.
