Iran International
Forty days after Iran’s deadly January crackdown, senior officials repeated claims of foreign influence while some insiders—even from the hardline camp—offered sharply different explanations.
The fortieth day after a death carries special significance in Shiite tradition, often marking a moment of collective mourning and reflection.
Families of those killed in the January 8 and 9 crackdown marked the occasion this week with memorial ceremonies across the country, even as authorities maintained a heavy security presence.
On February 17, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Massoud Pezeshkian and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf repeated the government’s longstanding assertion that foreign forces played a decisive role in fueling the protests.
At the same time, officials acknowledged that some of those killed were “innocent,” drawing a distinction that appeared intended to preserve the official narrative while recognizing the scale of the bloodshed.
Yet beneath that public consensus, alternative interpretations are emerging—even from figures long associated with the system.
Hassan Beyadi, a hardliner and secretary-general of the Abadgaran (Developers) Party, which helped propel Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency in 2005, offered a starkly different assessment in an interview with Khabar Online.
“People came to the streets because their dignity was trampled by politicians,” Beyadi said, describing the unrest as a reaction to corruption, discrimination and violations of basic citizenship rights.
Only “essential changes in the structure of the system and its economic policies” could restore public trust, he added.
A more conservative but still revealing analysis came from Abbas Ghaemi, a director at the Social Analysis Center of Imam Sadeq University, an institution closely tied to the Islamic Republic’s political elite.
Ghaemi argued that many participants in the January protests had already been shaped by previous waves of unrest, including the 2009 Green Movement, the 2018 and 2019 economic protests and the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom uprising.
“We are facing a society that has tried many different ways without achieving results,” he said.
Ghaemi emphasized the need for dialogue between society and the political system, an idea that has surfaced periodically within establishment circles but has rarely translated into sustained engagement.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, who holds ultimate authority over state policy, has never granted a media interview during his more than three decades in power.
Analyses published in Iranian media since the crackdown point to broader structural concerns, with some commentators describing a society marked by declining trust, growing anger and widening distance between the state and its citizens.
Former government spokesman Ali Rabiei, writing in the reformist-leaning newspaper Etemad, warned against attempts to channel public anger into state-controlled expressions of mourning.
“Looking at the frosty streets of Iran in Winter 2026,” he wrote, “it is clear that turning angry protesters into mourning protesters and vice versa reflects the inefficiency of a policy that will lead to one crisis after another if the system remains unreformed.”
Such warnings suggest the state may be struggling to fully impose its narrative of the unrest, even within establishment circles.
German authorities said nearly 250,000 people attended the Munich rally, calling it the largest protest by Iranians in Europe to date. Organizers and local officials also reported large turnouts in Toronto and Los Angeles, each estimated at around 350,000, as well as 50,000 in London and 45,000 in Vancouver.
Speaking at the Munich event, Prince Reza Pahlavi addressed people inside Iran directly. “Know and see that you are not alone and that your voice has reached the world,” he said.
Messages sent to Iran International and widely shared on social media described what contributors called an unprecedented display of cohesion and discipline across continents.
Messages from inside Iran
One viewer wrote: “Salute to our honorable compatriots outside Iran. Seeing the beautiful images of unity, harmony, civility and order brought tears of joy to our eyes inside the country.”
Another message read: “We were tired and disappointed, but when we saw you in the gatherings abroad, we cried for all of us. Who can separate us from each other?”
A resident of Tehran wrote, “We bow our heads in respect to all our compatriots around the world. We saw your gatherings everywhere and wept.”
From Shiraz, a viewer addressed the authorities, writing: “Every bullet you fired at our young people united our hearts more. We are now united, aware and full of faith.”
Others described the rallies as a turning point after weeks of pressure at home. “Yesterday, after 37 days, for the first time we were not sad or hopeless. Everyone was talking about you, and there was excitement in their eyes,” one message said.
Several framed the demonstrations as evidence of a shared national purpose transcending borders. “It was proven that the power of love for Iran and Iranians does not fit within political and geographical boundaries,” one viewer wrote.
“With seeing you, every moment was tears and emotion. We hope to celebrate our freedom soon on our own soil,” another message said.
Support extended beyond messages sent directly to Iran International. Similar posts circulated widely across social media platforms, echoing themes of unity, perseverance and anticipation of political change.
The scale of the February 14 rallies prompted criticism from state media, officials and pro-government online activists, who questioned attendance figures and accused organizers of exaggeration.
Responses ranged from attempts to downplay the gatherings to verbal attacks on participants abroad. Supporters inside Iran, however, portrayed the demonstrations as a morale boost amid continuing domestic restrictions.
“Your presence is a bridge of hope and solidarity that lights many hearts inside the country,” another Tehran resident wrote.
“The US president said in one of his recent remarks that for 47 years America has been unable to eliminate the Islamic Republic; he complained about it to his own people. For 47 years, America has not been able to eliminate the Islamic Republic. That is a good admission,” Khamenei said at a meeting with people from East Azarbaijan province on Tuesday.
“I say: You, too, will not be able to do this.”
His comments come days after Trump said regime change “would be the best thing that could happen.”
Khamenei also addressed remarks by the US president that the American military is the strongest in the world.
“The strongest army in the world may at times receive such a slap that it cannot rise,” he said.
“They keep saying we have sent an aircraft carrier toward Iran. Very well, an aircraft carrier is a dangerous device, but more dangerous than the carrier is the weapon that can send it to the bottom of the sea.”
His statements come amid heightened rhetoric between Tehran and Washington over military deployments and regional security and at the time a new round of negotiations mediated by Oman is underway in Geneva.
Talks with US
US threats and demands, Khamenei added, reflected an attempt to dominate Iran. “These statements by the US president, sometimes threatening, sometimes saying this must be done or that must not be done, mean they seek domination over the Iranian nation,” he said.
“Iran will not pledge allegiance to corrupt leaders currently in power in the United States.”
“They say let us negotiate about your nuclear energy, and the result of the negotiation should be that you do not have this energy,” he continued. “If a negotiation is to take place, and there is no place for negotiation, determining its result in advance is wrong and foolish.”
US presidents and some senators, he went on, were making an “absurd” demand by setting conditions before any dialogue.
January protest remarks
In the same speech, Khamenei said those killed during the January protests are mourned as martyrs.
“Blood was shed. We are grieving. I say we are in mourning for the blood that was shed,” he said, adding that not all of the dead fell into the same category.
Security forces responded to the latest nationwide protests with lethal force, mass arrests, and communication blackouts. At least 36,500 people killed in the recent wave of unrest, while authorities acknowledge a far lower figure of about 3,117.
Security forces, according to the Amnesty International, moved quickly after the killings to impose sweeping controls aimed at silencing survivors, intimidating families of victims and preventing documentation of what it described as unlawful mass killings carried out to crush what it called a popular uprising.
The measures included arbitrary mass arrests, enforced disappearances, bans on gatherings, night-time curfews, and a near-total internet blackout, alongside the deployment of heavily armed patrols across cities and inter-city roads, Amnesty International said.
Khamenei argued some were “corrupt elements and instigators,” while others were not involved in organizing the protests. He divided the dead into three groups, beginning with what he described as "defenders of security" – police, Basij and Guards members and those alongside them – calling them “among the greatest martyrs.”
He described a second group as bystanders. When turmoil breaks out in a city, he said, “innocent people walking toward their workplace or their homes are also killed,” adding that they too should be considered martyrs because their deaths occurred within “the enemy’s sedition.”
A third group, he said, consisted of those who had been misled. “They were deceived, inexperienced… they are also ours; they are our children,” he said, adding that some later wrote to him expressing regret. Officials, he said, were right to count those killed from this group as martyrs.
“Therefore, the circle of our fallen whom we count as martyrs is a wide one,” he added, excluding only what he called “the ringleaders and those who took money and weapons from the enemy.”
Khamenei concluded by offering prayers for mercy and forgiveness for those he described as misled participants, framing the uprising as an enemy-driven plot rather than a domestic protest movement.
