Iran says two-thirds of protest deaths are 'martyrs,' blames terrorist groups

Iran's head of the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, Ahmad Mousavi, has claimed that two thirds of the killed are classified as martyrs, blaming armed and terrorist groups for the bloodshed. According to Tasnim news agency of Iran, the state will organise the funeral of the deaths on Wednesday.

According to reports from the Tasnim News agency, Mousavi said that civilians from various sectors of life were killed using military and hunting weapons as well as knives, axes, blades, and other brutal methods. Some of them were reportedly burnt alive, beheaded and suffocated to complicate identification, requiring detailed forensic work. Mousavi claimed that security forces and civilians made up two-thirds of the deaths by the “terrorists”, a claim denied by the rights group. Top security officials, such as Ali Larijani, appeared on IRIB TV to accuse demonstrators of using methods "very similar to what ISIS does," including burning people alive and throat-slashing.

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According to Iranian state media IRIB, the violence is part of a foreign-backed "terrorist war", while rights groups claim that the violence was a state-sponsored crackdown against protestors. An Iranian intelligence group has announced the seizure of guns, ammunition, and over 200 kilograms of explosives from foreign-backed cells, most of which were manufactured in the US. The death toll also varies, according to government estimates as of January 13 approximately 2,000 people have been killed. But according to HRANA (Human Rights Activists News Agency), a US-based rights group 2,571 deaths were recorded.

The Iranian government has slammed the interventionist rhetoric of the United States. Notably, Iran is among the last bastions in the Middle East that oppose the US empire, its petrodollar dominance, and does not follow the IMF discipline. For which it has been repeatedly embargoed, repeatedly bombed, threatened with coup, and many of its security officials have been assassinated again and again.

According to The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) that publishes the Iran Update, the protests have been relatively declining since January 8. It has managed to record 14 protests across six provinces on January 12, compared to the 156 protests across 27 provinces on January 8.