ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian authorities used lethal force on an ‘unprecedented’ scale to suppress nationwide protests in January, a United Nations fact-finding mission said Thursday, describing the crackdown as “beyond a simple continuation of familiar patterns.”
The crackdown across Iran’s 31 provinces “resulted in at least three and a half times the injuries and five and a half times the deaths as the repression” of the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, the mission said in its report, adding that it represented “a marked escalation in the use of lethal force and mass arrests.”
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran submitted the report to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council on Thursday.
Amnesty International said Wednesday that it had confirmed 377 deaths during the 2022 protests. The rights watchdog has also accused Iranian authorities of committing crimes against humanity during the crackdown on the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, which were triggered by the death of Kurdish woman, Zhina (Mahsa) Amini, in an Iranian prison.
Protests erupted across Iran in late December 2025, beginning at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over worsening economic conditions before quickly spreading to cities across the country. Demonstrators later broadened their demands to include political grievances, while authorities responded with widespread arrests and a violent crackdown that continued into mid-January.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said in February that it had recorded 6,782 deaths, mostly protesters, and more than 50,000 arrests.
Iranian authorities have put the death toll at 3,036 and said around 25,000 people were injured. The UN fact-finding mission disputed those figures, saying it had “strong grounds to believe that the true figures” were “significantly higher” than those reported by the government.
Citing witness accounts, the report said that in one incident security forces used tear gas to corner protesters in Karaj, west of Tehran, “before shooting at them.”
“A healthcare worker described treating protesters injured after tear gas canisters were fired directly at their faces at close range,” it added.
The report also said at least 58 people have been executed on “security-related charges” since January, including 14 on espionage charges.
Based on reports by the Oslo-based Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, the majority of the executions have been associated with the January protests.
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