It will be difficult to know the exact number of deaths at the hands of the forces of order of the Islamic Republic of Iran due to yet another wave of demonstrations against the ayatollahs’ regime.
Tehran can be as effective at repressing a population of more than 90 million people as it is at hiding information.
Amnesty International says that the Government cut off the Internet on January 8th and that the same happened with telecommunications services.
For the Human Rights organization, it is a deliberate act to ensure that the international community is unaware of the extent of the atrocities committed in recent weeks, especially since January.
Massou Salari divided his life between France and Iran for as long as he could. French-Iranian journalist, also writes. He published “As Nostalgias do Futuro,” in French, in 2024. CNN Portugal says that the government of the ayatollahs has already proven that it is a bloodthirsty regime.
“The regime represses with blood. There is no information coming out of Iran, but the repression is cruel. There is talk of thousands of deaths, but there is no official information on the matter.”
Massou has followed the repression by Iranian forces on a population fed up with living in economic hardship, but also increasingly less able to tolerate the lack of expression imposed by the Shiite Islamist regime in 1979.
He hasn’t been to Iran for some time, especially because, the last time he went there, he was stuck at the border. Authorities alleged a problem with the passport. But perhaps the various articles signed by him and the pieces that were shown on a television channel influenced the decision. You never know in Tehran.
Violence on a scale never seen before
Salari tells CNN Portugal that episodes of violence are being recorded that have not been seen in the entire history of the Islamic Republic.
“And the regime has never been so weakened, whether in terms of the economy or in terms of its supporters. There are fewer and fewer forces to repress riots and demonstrations,” he explains.
The journalist and poet says that, even so, “people continue to demonstrate in Tehran and other cities,” even though regime forces “enter people’s homes to obtain information.”
Salari is part of a diaspora of Iranians and their descendants who left Iran with the fall of the Iranian Pahlavi dynasty, with the Islamic Revolution.
There are more than four million, many with dual nationality, from France to Germany, including Switzerland and the United States.
The Iranian community, which is ethnically and culturally diverse, shares information, most of the time in Persian or Farsi, and remains updated through information channels in the official language, which broadcast from countries such as the United Kingdom or the United States. There are several radio stations, widely circulated digital pages and, of course, social networks, which escape the totalitarian control of the authorities.
Massoud Salari explains that it is this community, spread across several Western countries, that has been shaking the regime from within.
There are those who want the Pahlavi dynasty to return to power, which means that Iran would no longer be an Islamic Republic and would once again be governed by the figure of the Shah. It remains to be seen whether this is what the more than 90 million Iranians want, or whether they prefer another alternative, between a more open Islamic Republic or a secular state, closer to the liberal democracies of the West.
