What is happening in Iran
This page is a plain-English summary of the 2025–2026 protests and the state massacres that have followed. It is updated as new information is verified. Sources are linked at the foot of the page.
The protests
Public anger that had built through years of economic collapse, repression and rage at the regime's foreign adventures broke into the open on 28 December 2025, beginning in Tehran and spreading across the country within days. By the new year, protests had been recorded in over a hundred cities.
The crackdown — 8 and 9 January 2026
On 9 January, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered the Supreme National Security Council to "crush the protests by any means necessary". Security forces were given orders to "shoot to kill and to show no mercy". Iran International, citing sources inside the Iranian presidency and IRGC, reports that at least 12,000 Iranians were killed on those two days alone.
A near-total internet blackout was imposed from 8 January. Foreign Shiite militias were imported — Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Pakistani Liwa Zainabiyoun and the Afghan Liwa Fatemiyoun — because the regime did not trust its own police to fire on civilians on the necessary scale.
The death toll
HRANA verified
7,007 deaths individually verified by name, place and date, including 236 minors. Reported in the Crimson Winter dossier, 23 February 2026. A further 11,744 cases remain under review.
The Guardian / medics' network
More than 30,000, based on a network of over 80 medical professionals across 12 provinces who estimate fewer than 10% of deaths are being officially registered.
Time / hospital records
More than 30,304 protest-related deaths registered in civilian hospitals for 8 and 9 January alone, verified by at least two medical sources per organisation (Dr Amir Parasta).
Iran International / leaked docs
36,500+ killed, citing the Intelligence Organization of the IRGC's own internal report dated 24 January 2026.
Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi
Cited ~50,000 dead, including approximately 15,000 in Tehran, drawing on activists, political prisoners and medical authorities inside Iran (Sunday Times, 24 January 2026).
UN Special Rapporteur
The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran has said the civilian death toll may surpass 20,000 and that the killings may constitute crimes against humanity warranting an ICC referral.
What was done
- Shoot to kill orders from Khamenei and the Supreme National Security Council. Snipers on rooftops; live ammunition into crowds; DShK heavy machine guns turned on civilians in Karaj.
- "Finishing off" the wounded in hospitals. Security forces raided Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ilam and Sina Hospital in Tehran, executing patients in their beds.
- Targeting eyes, faces, genitals with pellet guns to permanently disable protesters — the same tactic used in 2022.
- Suspected use of chemical weapons against crowds. Reports of unknown substances being injected into detainees, linked to deaths in custody.
- Sexual violence in custody, including against minors. Reports that women's bodies have been returned to families with wombs removed to conceal the evidence.
- Mass graves and concealment. Bodies piled in refrigerated trucks, dumped from bulldozers, buried in unmarked sites far from home. Families charged for the bullets that killed their children.
- Executions of detainees, often broadcast with forced confessions. Three brothers in Shahinshahr. A teenage wrestler, Saleh Mohammadi. A conscript who refused to fire on civilians.
- An underground "Red Lion and Sun" network of Iranian medics has emerged to treat the wounded outside the regime's hospitals.
Why proscribe the IRGC?
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not a normal army. It is the regime's ideological enforcer at home and its terror franchise abroad — and its reach now extends into our own streets. Sir Keir Starmer has committed to proscribing it. We are pushing Parliament to deliver.
What the IRGC is
A parallel military answerable to the Supreme Leader. It controls a vast economic empire, runs the regime's missile and drone programmes, and directs the Quds Force, the Basij paramilitary, and a network of proxies across the region.
Who they arm and fund
The IRGC's Quds Force is the central conduit for Iran's armed proxies. It funds, arms and trains Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, Kataib Hezbollah and other militias in Iraq and Syria, and the Assad regime. The 7 October atrocities in Israel, the Houthi strikes on Red Sea shipping, and the rocket attacks on US and British troops in the region share the same paymaster.
What they do inside Iran
The IRGC and Basij are the boots on the ground that kill protesters, beat women in the street, raid homes, torture detainees, and run the courts that hand down executions for "waging war against God".
What they do in Britain
The Metropolitan Police and MI5 have publicly disclosed multiple IRGC-linked plots on UK soil. The threats against the Iran International newsroom in London forced a British media organisation to relocate. Iranian dissidents in Yorkshire are intimidated by regime networks here, today.
Allies have already moved
The European Union proscribed the IRGC in January 2026. Ukraine followed within days. The United States has long sanctioned its commanders. Britain is now the outlier among major Western democracies — and the longer that gap stays open, the harder it is to defend.
What proscription would mean
Membership of, or support for, the IRGC would become a criminal offence under the Terrorism Act 2000. Funds would be frozen. Recruiters and propagandists could be charged. The regime's networks in the UK would lose their cover.
Impact on Britain
This is not a foreign story we watch at a distance. The Islamic Republic's reach extends into our cities, our newsrooms, our seaborne trade, our armed forces and our diaspora. Britons — Iranian and otherwise — are paying for it now.
Plots, kidnaps and assassinations on UK soil
MI5 and the Metropolitan Police have publicly disclosed at least twenty IRGC-linked plots against people living in Britain since 2022, including assassination, kidnap and intimidation attempts. The Director General of MI5 has named Iran as one of the three most significant state-based threats to the UK.
A British newsroom forced to relocate
In 2023, threats from the IRGC to staff and their families forced Iran International — a London-based, UK-regulated broadcaster — to move its operations out of the country. The UK government described the threats as a direct attack on press freedom on British soil.
Intimidation of the diaspora in our cities
Iranian journalists, lawyers, students and protesters in Yorkshire, London and elsewhere are surveilled, harassed and threatened by regime networks operating in the UK. Family members inside Iran are arrested as leverage.
Iranian drones killing Ukrainians
Shahed-136 attack drones, designed and manufactured by the IRGC's aerospace arm, are launched at Ukrainian cities every night. British weapons, British soldiers and British money are part of the response to a war Iran is helping prosecute.
Attacks on British forces and shipping
IRGC-backed militias in Iraq and Syria have repeatedly fired rockets and drones at bases hosting British personnel. The Houthis — funded, armed and trained by the IRGC — have attacked over a hundred merchant vessels in the Red Sea, disrupting British trade and forcing Royal Navy deployments.
Sanctions evasion through UK structures
The IRGC's economic empire has long used British company structures, professional services and property to launder sanctioned funds. Proscription would make handling its money in the UK a terrorism offence — closing doors the existing sanctions regime has not.
The cost of inaction
Every month Parliament delays proscription, the IRGC continues to murder Iranians, plot in Britain, kill Ukrainians and attack British and allied forces. The case for proscription is not symbolic. It is a question of British safety and the credibility of British law.
British dual nationals taken hostage
The regime has repeatedly seized British-Iranian dual nationals on fabricated charges — Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe held for six years, Anoosheh Ashoori for five, Morad Tahbaz still in and out of Evin — and bargained for their release with cash, prisoner swaps and political concessions. The practice has not stopped.
What proscription would change
Belonging to, recruiting for, raising funds for or wearing the symbols of the IRGC would become criminal offences under the Terrorism Act 2000. UK courts could prosecute. UK banks would have to act. The regime's networks here would lose their legal cover overnight.
Britain's response so far
The European Union and Ukraine have designated the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. The United Kingdom has imposed targeted sanctions on Iranian officials and security forces but has not yet proscribed the IRGC. Sir Keir Starmer committed to proscription in opposition and has reaffirmed it since. Parliament must now deliver.
Ask your MP to deliver on the pledge Ask your councillors to act
Sources
Sources are openly cited so you can read for yourself. We do not rely on a single outlet; every figure on this page is corroborated across at least two independent sources.
- Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA), The Crimson Winter, 23 February 2026.
- The Guardian — Tess McClure and Deepa Parent, "Disappeared bodies, mass burials and '30,000 dead': what is the truth of Iran's death toll?", 27 January 2026.
- Time — Karl Vick, Kay Armin Serjoie and others, 12 and 25 January 2026.
- The New York Times — "How Iran Crushed a Citizen Uprising With Lethal Force", 25 January 2026.
- Iran International — multiple investigations, January–February 2026.
- The Wall Street Journal — "Iranian Protesters Recount the 'War Zone' That Left Thousands Dead", 22 February 2026.
- UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights — statements of the Special Rapporteur on Iran, January–February 2026.
- Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Commission of Jurists — joint and individual condemnations, January 2026.
- Wikipedia article: 2026 Iran massacres (includes full reference list).
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We are activists, not journalists. Where we have been imprecise we will correct. If you have first-hand information from inside Iran — and consent for it to be public — we will check it carefully before publishing.