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Iran has formally rejected a U.S. media report claiming that as many as 30,000 people were killed during anti-government protests, labeling the allegations a "Hitler-style big lie."
In a statement on X, Iran’s Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Ismail Bekayi strongly refuted the claims, asserting that the figure was invented by "ill-intentioned parties" seeking to defraud the public through the media.
"Wasn’t this the number they planned to kill on the streets of Iran? But they failed," he wrote.
The report, published by Time magazine, cited unnamed senior officials from Iran’s Health Ministry, who alleged that government forces killed tens of thousands of demonstrators across the country on Jan. 8 and 9.
According to the report, the scale of deaths overwhelmed the state’s ability to process bodies, forcing authorities to use freight trucks in place of ambulances.
The report said that the internal government death toll had not previously been revealed. It far exceeds the 3,117 deaths reported by the Forensic Medicine Organization of the Iran Martyrs and Veterans Foundation, a state-linked body that reports to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Although the report acknowledged that it could not independently verify the death toll, it cited the testimony of health professionals and internal government sources.
Experts interviewed expressed cautious support for the scale of the figures while warning about limitations in extrapolating data under crisis conditions.
Demonstrations erupted on Dec. 28, 2025, when merchants at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar protested the collapsing local currency and deepening economic crisis, quickly spreading nationwide.
Iranian authorities accused the United States and Israel of fueling the unrest, claiming foreign interference in what they described as a coordinated effort to destabilize the country.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which has been tracking the protests, has independently confirmed 5,459 deaths and is investigating more than 17,000 additional cases.
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