As details of the death toll for January’s protests continue to emerge, three students explain why they are resisting a return to normality
More than 45 days after a brutal January crackdown that left thousands of Iranian protesters dead, students across several universities are protesting again. As Iran’s new academic term began on Saturday, students in Tehran gathered on campus, chanting anti-government slogans, despite a heavy security presence and plainclothes officers stationed outside university gates.
The Guardian spoke to protesting students about why they were rallying despite the fact that thousands had been killed and tens of thousands arrested in the January demonstrations.
“Our classrooms are empty because the graveyards are full,” said Hossein*, 21, a student at the University of Tehran. “It’s for them – our friends, classmates and compatriots, who were gunned down in front of our eyes, that we decided to boycott the classes.”



weapons of mass destruction ass consent manufacturing excuse. they meaning to tell me more people died in iran rn than gaza.
i don’t believe a word from murderous us media or their nazi leadership.
The Guardian is british.
Also it’s owned by a non-profit trust. As peak as you can really get when it comes journalistic integrity structures.
Oh well that’s a relief. British newspaper. The people that called bin Laden a freedom fighter. Totally not a mouth piece for war in the middle east.
and manufacturing consent for a us invasion of iran, yes.
That’s a claim you’d need to provide evidence for. Really, really good evidence.
TheGuardian claimed to have seen video and pictures of Hamas raping women on October 7.
Those videos and pictures later turned out to not exist.
I would believe anything regarding foreign policy coming from a bloodthirsty brit.
This is The Guardian, a left leaning paper or left of centre at least.
Here’s a detailed article on The Guardian being couped by Zionists:
How The Guardian’s editor-in-chief caved to pro-Israel pressure.
It’s unfathomable to me how, after western media carrying 3 years of endless Zionist propaganda, there’s still any modicum of respect for them among progressives.
no, you are the one who has to stop inventing shit to invade countries in your fascist crusade.
I am doing nothing. You are claiming bullshit and don’t even know jackshit about the news outlets you’re making up shit about.
Also, I’m not even from the US.
you are literally inventing shit to justify another genocide. burden of proof rests on you.
we are very aware of the guardian’s propaganda AND us terror campaigns (that begin with exactly this sort of lie).
What did I invent, exactly?
Evidence or GTFO.
He’s from .ml, he won’t ever offer evidence, he’ll just continue to accuse you of all the worst things he can think of.
Removed by mod
What? You don’t believe “Hossein, 21”, they named him and everything! You want to see actual evidence! You can’t believe that I’m 2026 not a single person recorded a video of said massacres on their phone?
The Iranian government cut off internet and satellite connections nationwide during the massacres. And some videos did still manage to leak out.
That’s not how satellite connection works, though? The US smuggled 6000 starlink terminals into Iran.
Frequencies can be jammed, you know…
Not country-wide…
But in all the cities where it matters
You cannot frequency jam an entire city either bruv, the way they were preventing Starlink usage was by detecting emitted radio signals of that frequency and going in person to arrest the users and confiscate the equipment.
Okay… so you admit they were heavily censoring it?
The internet has been back for a while now, and there’s no chance nobody could have leaked anything. Israel cut off internet power and was actively bombing every neighborhood of Gaza and footage still got out.
Don’t be silly.
Footage did get out of Iran, you just haven’t looked for it because then you’d have to reconsider your belief in the mullah’s moral pedestal
Go ahead and share that footage.
I don’t believe the Iranian government is moral or good, I just know American imperialism and genocidal war is worse.
Again, go ahead and share that footage. I find it highly unlikely that the western media reporting obscene casualty numbers in the tens of thousands isn’t sharing any of that footage and instead just quoting a random first name, but I’m open to being wrong. Go ahead and share the footage you’ve seen that I haven’t been able to find…
Why would I put effort into finding videos that I’ve already seen, just to show you when you’re already sealioning?
You can be confidently wrong, I don’t care.
Because you’re a lying piece of shit…
The people that would benefit most of showing this footage are for some mysterious reason censoring it, and you’re so concerned about the supposed crimes the Iranian government committed that you’re unwilling to share this supposed evidence you’ve seen to spread awareness while you beat your war drum and encourage a war of total destruction on millions of people and incredible devastation on the whole region.
Really, you think I’m fucking bluffing? Then how do you explain this?
Or these articles from Amnesty International, Associated Press, BBC, and Independent?
Go ahead. What BS are you gonna come up with to try to justify this authoritarian brutality?
When/where did I do that? Point to the thing I said that fits that description.
You can’t, because I didn’t. That’s just a pathetic strawman, because you can’t handle the truth that you’re wrong.
It’s insane. Gaza is over two years of bombing turning it into a parking lot. Like, many people have been killed in Iran during the recent months. It’s just gross to report numbers that are not physically possible.
I saw one report that MORE than 80,000 in 2 days. The last time that many people died in such a short amount of time was when we dropped two nuclear weapons on Japan. Did Iran nuke itself? Like, how can anyone print that number?
Not to mention, the solution to this is apparently for the US and Israel to do exactly what Israel did to Gaza to Iran.
Where did you get that report? Most I saw was 30k over 3 weeks
To be clear. I wasn’t saying it was credible.
https://x.com/i/status/2014484450315293173
This was the one going around at the time I was talking about. I know there were articles at the time citing this as evidence as well. But, it looks like that’s been purged from most articles.
I know that number was spoken on Fox News as well at some point. But I’d have to dig for the clip. Just the usual, “some reports saying as high as 80,000” vague propaganda from a guest interview.
Ok but you said you saw a report and now you’re linking me a tweet
Can you link us the actual report?
I’m not sure why you are acting like I’m the one that said there was a valid verifiable report of this. My initial comment was literally talking about how people were lying about the numbers and saying it was “reported as 80,000”
This was the propaganda going around Twitter. A “report” can literally just be someone from inside Iran reporting on it. Which is exactly what that tweet was.
Maybe I worded my comment poorly? I was pointing to the absurdity of a number like 80,000 being taken seriously. And now for some reason you want a verified report of that? I’m so confused.
Instead of cherrypicking non-credible sources so you can point to the absurd numbers they claim, why don’t you check some credible sources to see what the actual numbers are?
For instance, from Amnesty International:
Why would you say
when no one printed it?
You’re using it to back up someone saying we can’t “trust the murderous media” but it’s just lies
Look dude. Just because you were not paying attention to articles at the time doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NewIran/s/mEVnnKEJ4w
This same shit was spreading around social media and many news outlets printed “some estimates inside Iran put the number at 80,000”.
It was bull shit and every single outlet that printed it has modified their reports since. I’m not sure why it’s so hard for you to believe that the media grabbed the largest number they could and ran with it for a day.
I’ve shown you where this number came from. It’s not “just a post on Twitter”. It was from inside the country during a total internet blackout. The media ate it up for a day because there was nothing else coming out of Iran at the time.
Why is this so hard to understand? What evidence are you looking for? Because it’s gonna be tweets or “way back machine” articles from Fox/NewsMax or Israeli newspapers. I’ll find them tonight if I have time. But you are just as capable of looking.
Yes, believe it or not, I made a comment about something that I literally saw happening in real time and didn’t bookmark. Fuck me right?
Reddit/NewIran
with source… just a post on twitter
If this claim is correct it’d indeed be easy to prove using the Internet Archive. If you’re watching NewsMax and telling us it’s proof we shouldn’t trust the press then… yeah
Looks to me like you’ve been duped by Khamenei’s alt account on twitter and concluded you should look away and go back to sleep