Iran’s Uprising Goes Dark Under Bullets and Blackouts
Giorgia Valente reports from the edge of an information blackout, where Iran’s latest uprising is being met with sweeping force: gunfire in the streets, arrests, executions, and days of near-total internet shutdown that leave families and the outside world guessing what is happening, and how many are dying.
London-based researcher Potkin Azarmehr, an Iranian senior fellow with an investigative project on terrorism, told The Media Line that the crackdown has erased the boundary between protest and daily life. “When there’s a gathering on the street, they will shoot at anyone who is on the street. … You could be a target.” He described tactics meant to maximize fear, including cutting electricity: “They’re even switching off the electricity so the district goes completely dark. … They’re just murdering people to create this atmosphere of fear.”
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Images that surfaced briefly before the blackout suggest a pattern of deliberate maiming, with severe injuries that point to targeting protesters’ eyes. Verified casualty counts remain out of reach, but estimates climb into the thousands, with some claims exceeding 20,000. Azarmehr said the prolonged shutdown signals scale: “It’s because of the horrific numbers.” He cited a report from Tehran describing bodies counted into the thousands at a cemetery.
Jeiran, a former Iranian university professor, and her husband, Babak, an Iranian pediatrician, activist, and journalist, said hospital accounts include “around 600 people with eye injuries” in a single day at Farabi Hospital. Cut off since January 8, Jeiran described the daily dread of missing a “good morning” message from her mother.
They call this moment existential. “This is not a protest; it is a revolution,” they said, warning of a brutal price. With executions feared to resume and outside verification collapsing, Valente’s full report captures the human cost of a country forced into silence.
