Letter from Tehran: A Local Journalist Tells the Story of a Massacre

A reporter working in one of Tehran’s media outlets describes what she saw during the mass killings by government forces on January 8 and 9, 2026. The Middle East Forum has withheld her name as she has already been interrogated several times by intelligence agents.

This is Tehran, January 8, 2026, a few hours before sunset. Almost all the shops and cafés in the city have closed. Some cars were playing revolutionary songs and protest rap music. The slogans included: “The Islamic Republic must say goodbye… They are not a government; they are a terrorist group that has taken over a country and stripped Iran and the region of peace and stability.” In a historic turnaround, all over Iran the people were shouting exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi’s name, demanding his return.

Everyone knew that the Islamic Republic kills ruthlessly. They had seen its record of brutal killings and unjust executions again and again in earlier protests—in 2022, in November 2019, in January 2018, in the 2009 protests, and many times before. But people were saying there was no other choice left: Either we are killed, or we live for decades under the tyranny, violence, and plunder of the Islamic Republic. The second option had become so unbearable that a wave of suicides among ordinary working people had begun.

On the streets, heavily armed repression forces were standing guard. Among them were plainclothes agents—armed but without military uniforms. Their role is to blend in among protesters in ordinary clothing, identify them, and arrest them. The city’s lights had been turned off, and visibility was poor. I do not know for what purpose they had done this, but the level of fear and terror in the city was immense. People were walking together, chanting slogans such as “Death to the dictator,” “Pahlavi will return” and “Death to the Islamic Republic.” Journalists had been warned that the repression forces had received shoot-to-kill orders and were told not to go out into the streets.

As soon as the chanting grew louder, the sound of continuous gunfire began. Protesters attacked the repression forces with stones and chunks of brick, and to block the pursuit by armed motorcyclists, and to slow their movement, they set fires in the streets.

The motorcyclists, however, sped along sidewalks and drove against traffic on Enghelab Street [a major thoroughfare in central Tehran], firing at every pedestrian they encountered. Gradually, protesters also set fires on the sidewalks. The shooting intensified. It felt as if a foreign enemy had invaded the city.

The repression forces were firing ruthlessly and without the slightest restraint—at elderly people who could not run, at small children, at the wounded, at a food delivery motorcyclist, at a grandfather standing with his grandchild in front of a newspaper kiosk, at anyone who happened to be within reach. When anyone protested, they were told: “You should not have come out into the street.”

In alleyways and side streets, motorcyclists were racing around and shooting at people who were trying to flee. If someone opened the door of their home to people running for their lives, the forces would storm the house from doors and walls and fire toward its windows.

Plainclothes agents dragged anyone they could grab, beating them and pulling them toward black vans. Inside these vans were stripped of seats to cram in as many detainees as possible. They accepted no explanations. One man showed them bags of medicine from a pharmacy, but they still arrested him violently, his face and head covered in blood.

At the same time, many people who had posted protest content on Instagram or other social media were tracked down at their home or workplace and arrested. That same afternoon, the authorities cut off the internet nationwide. Even SMS and phone calls became impossible. No one could call to check on family members or friends. Everyone was plunged into absolute and terrifying uncertainty. The city was dark and communications were severed. Even if you were attacked by criminals, you could not call the police.

Repression forces marked the doors of homes with red X’s and left notices saying: “You have been identified and are under investigation.” They told building managers to hand over the names of those who had chanted slogans.

The atmosphere was indescribably frightening, and the sound of gunfire and machine guns did not stop. Some agents were carrying heavy military weapons such as machine guns. Spent live-ammunition casings were scattered everywhere on the streets. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. The crackdown was so brutal that in the following days you could easily see pools of blood on the sidewalks and blood splattered on city walls. But photographing or filming it was not easy, because at any moment a plainclothes agent could grab you from a corner and arrest you.

To pursue people through the streets and between cars, they had placed repression forces inside ambulances. This is the same tactic the Islamic Republic has used outside Iran—transporting weapons to its militias under the cover of aid workers and Red Crescent personnel.

Iranians have known these tricks for years. Fire trucks were standing alongside the riot police. Whenever protesters lit small fires in the streets to block pursuit by armed agents and protect unarmed civilians, the firefighters quickly extinguished them, reopening the way for the armed forces to chase people down.

Now the government has put two or three of those burned fire trucks and ambulances on display in Enghelab Square [central Tehran], across from the University of Tehran, to claim that protesters attacked emergency responders. This is a familiar deception—the same one it uses abroad to legitimize its militia terrorists and push propaganda.

To impose its own narrative, the Iranian government not only shut down the nationwide internet but also forced newspapers and media outlets to publish online content—even without internet access. At the same time, it sent protest “news” to media outlets directly from security agencies and ordered them to publish it word for word.

In addition, a special room with internet access was set up inside the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. In the presence of security agents, a group of journalists from foreign media operating in Iran, English-speaking journalists, and journalists close to the government were summoned and instructed to send dictated texts presenting the government’s version of events to international media as “on-the-ground” reporting from Iran.

At the same time, Abbas Araghchi, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister, invited foreign ambassadors in Iran and delivered the same fabricated narrative, telling them that a “street war between terrorists and government forces” had broken out—seeking to justify the mass killing of innocent civilians by the state.

The Islamic Republic’s propaganda did not stop there. Pro-government Iranian journalists working in foreign media outlets used brief and unstable internet connections inside Iran to message domestic journalists, asking them to confirm the government’s narrative so it could be cited and published abroad, embedding the Iranian government’s version of events in global media.

During the 2022 protests, when they shot at the Pirfalak family, killing their 9-year-old child Kian with a military-grade bullet, they claimed it was a terrorist attack. But the Pirfalak family refused to accept this narrative and stood against it, saying government agents had fired on their car. Nevertheless, the government executed a protester named Mojahid Korkor as the supposed “terrorist” and “killer” of Kian.

The families of several protesters killed in the recent demonstrations told me that the government demanded they pay for the bullets used to kill their loved ones, or else the body would not be returned. Families who could not afford these exorbitant sums and resisted were told to sign a document falsely stating that the murdered protester had been a member of the Islamic Republic’s forces or the Basij militia.

One family told me: “Because of poverty, we agreed. But they put a paper in front of me listing the names of four detained protesters and said they were terrorists and the murderers of our child, and that we must demand their execution.” After seeing the names and the lie, the family refused to sign. The agents responded: “We won’t give you the body.” The family replied: “Keep the body for yourselves.”

Now journalists affiliated with the Iranian government are trying to entrench this narrative in global media to pave the way for the execution of large numbers of detained protesters in Iran under the label of “terrorists.” This is the crime of media outlets and journalists who have become instruments of the Islamic Republic’s propaganda.