How many deaths in Iran? Experts say toll is high but hidden in secrecy

Images of piles of body bags and videos of government agents in Iran firing indiscriminately on protesters opposed to the country’s repressive regime have left experts and world leaders alike struggling to investigate just how many people the ayatollah’s forces have killed in recent weeks.

Reports vary widely. Officials in Tehran have reported over 3,000 deaths, including government troops killed by protesters. President Donald Trump on Feb. 20 shared an estimate of over 32,000.

Uncovering the true number of deaths, experts say, will be difficult given the supreme leader’s stranglehold on information in Iran. But the figure is likely many times higher than Ayatollah Ali Khamenei admits, the experts say.

"I would put the minimum estimates to be 5,000 plus," Mai Soto, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on Iran, said in an interview with ABC Australia. Soto noted 5,000 dead is a "conservative" or "the minimum" estimate. Other credible estimates, she said, indicate as many as 20,000.

Protests began at the end of December over inflation and turned into demonstrations against the nation’s repressive government. Islamic Revolutionary Guard troops, state police and other government agents responded fiercely on Jan. 8 and 9, firing at close range using guns loaded with metal pellets on protesters and since then the government has threatened capital punishment for people involved. 

Questions around the exact death toll come as Trump signals he’s ready to strike Iran militarily if the regime continues its repression of protesters. Trump in June he ordered U.S. forces to bomb three of Iran's major nuclear complexes in an effort to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.

"It’s certainly been on a massive scale," Elise Auerbach, an Iran specialist at Amnesty International, told USA TODAY of the death toll. "The government obviously does not want the world to know the magnitude of repression, they want to control the narrative."

'They've lived in hell,' Trump says of protesters

President Trump on Feb. 20 shared some of the greatest estimates of the number of people killed by the Iranian regime.

"It’s a very, very sad situation. But 32,000 people were killed over a relatively short period of time,” said Trump during a press briefing at the White House on Friday. "I feel very badly for the people of Iran. They've lived in hell."

Trump did not elaborate on the source of the 32,000 people killed. USA TODAY has reached out to the White House for comment.

How many does Iran say have been killed?

The ayatollah’s regime has said over 3,000 people were killed, according to a statement from the government’s Martyrs Foundation shared on Iranian state media.

According to the Iranian government statement reported on by Al-Jazeera, 3,117 people were killed during the crackdown. The figure includes government security forces allegedly killed by protesters. 

Experts say the ayatollah’s official numbers are not reliable.

"They did not want the world to know," Auerbach said, noting an internet blackout the Iranian government imposed amid its crackdown. "But there were pictures one hospital after another with piles and piles of body bags." 

Thousands of deaths under investigation

Other sources have concluded that the number of people killed by the Iranian regime likely exceeds the country’s official figure and could be as much as several times greater.

"There has been so many casualties," Soto said. "I have seen so many videos of security forces opening fire on unarmed civilians." 

The U.N. official again noted the difficulty of ascertaining a clear picture of what’s happening on the ground in the country. She said estimates were based on reports by medical staff in Iran who managed to use Elon Musk's satellite internet service Starlink to bypass the internet blackout.

According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a group that focuses on reporting repressions in Iran, over 6,000 have been confirmed dead and over 17,000 deaths are under investigation. 

Among the 6,126 HRANA confirmed deaths are 5,777 protesters, 86 minors, 214 government agents and 49 non-protester civilians. 

Contributing by Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy