Iranian state TV issues first official death toll from recent protests, saying 3,117 were killed

Iran­ian state TV on Wednes­day is­sued the first of­fi­cial death toll from re­cent protests, say­ing 3,117 peo­ple were killed, while the for­eign min­is­ter is­sued the most di­rect threat yet against the Unit­ed States af­ter Tehran’s bloody crack­down, warn­ing the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic will be “fir­ing back with every­thing we have if we come un­der re­newed at­tack.”

State tele­vi­sion car­ried state­ments by the In­te­ri­or Min­istry and the Mar­tyrs Foun­da­tion, an of­fi­cial body pro­vid­ing ser­vices to fam­i­lies of those killed in wars, stat­ing the toll and say­ing 2,427 of the dead in the demon­stra­tions that be­gan Dec. 28 were civil­ians and se­cu­ri­ty forces. It did not elab­o­rate on the rest.

The U.S.-based Hu­man Rights Ac­tivists News Agency said the death toll was at least 4,560. The agency has been ac­cu­rate through­out the years on demon­stra­tions and un­rest in Iran, re­ly­ing on a net­work of ac­tivists in­side the coun­try that con­firms all re­port­ed fa­tal­i­ties. The As­so­ci­at­ed Press has been un­able to in­de­pen­dent­ly as­sess the death toll.

The com­ments by For­eign Min­is­ter Ab­bas Araghchi, who saw his in­vi­ta­tion to the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum in Davos re­scind­ed over the killings, came as a U.S. air­craft car­ri­er group moved west to­ward the Mid­dle East from Asia. U.S. fight­er jets and oth­er equip­ment ap­peared to be mov­ing in the Mideast af­ter a ma­jor U.S. mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment in the Caribbean saw troops seize Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

Araghchi makes threat in col­umn

Araghchi made the threat in an opin­ion ar­ti­cle pub­lished by The Wall Street Jour­nal. The for­eign min­is­ter con­tend­ed “the vi­o­lent phase of the un­rest last­ed less than 72 hours” and sought again to blame armed demon­stra­tors for the vi­o­lence. Videos that made it out of Iran de­spite an in­ter­net shut­down ap­pear to show se­cu­ri­ty forces re­peat­ed­ly us­ing live fire to tar­get ap­par­ent­ly un­armed pro­test­ers, some­thing un­ad­dressed by Araghchi.

“Un­like the re­straint Iran showed in June 2025, our pow­er­ful armed forces have no qualms about fir­ing back with every­thing we have if we come un­der re­newed at­tack,” Araghchi wrote, re­fer­ring to the 12-day war launched by Is­rael on Iran in June. “This isn’t a threat, but a re­al­i­ty I feel I need to con­vey ex­plic­it­ly, be­cause as a diplo­mat and a vet­er­an, I ab­hor war.”

He added: “An all-out con­fronta­tion will cer­tain­ly be fe­ro­cious and drag on far, far longer than the fan­ta­sy time­lines that Is­rael and its prox­ies are try­ing to ped­dle to the White House. It will cer­tain­ly en­gulf the wider re­gion and have an im­pact on or­di­nary peo­ple around the globe.”

Araghchi’s com­ments like­ly re­fer to Iran’s short- and medi­um-range mis­siles. The Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic re­lied on bal­lis­tic mis­siles to tar­get Is­rael in the war and left its stock­pile of the short­er-range mis­siles un­used, some­thing that could be fired to tar­get U.S. bases and in­ter­ests in the Per­sian Gulf. Al­ready, there have been some re­stric­tions on U.S. diplo­mats trav­el­ing to bases in Kuwait and Qatar.

Mideast na­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly diplo­mats from Gulf Arab coun­tries, had lob­bied U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump not to at­tack Iran af­ter he threat­ened to act in re­sponse to the killing of demon­stra­tors. Last week, Iran shut its air­space, like­ly in an­tic­i­pa­tion of a strike.

The USS Abra­ham Lin­coln, which had been in the South Chi­na Sea in re­cent days, had passed through the Strait of Malac­ca, a key wa­ter­way con­nect­ing the sea and In­di­an Ocean, by Tues­day, ship-track­ing da­ta showed.

A U.S. Navy of­fi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said the air­craft car­ri­er and three ac­com­pa­ny­ing de­stroy­ers were head­ing west.

While naval and oth­er de­fense of­fi­cials stopped short of say­ing the car­ri­er strike group was head­ed to the Mid­dle East, its cur­rent head­ing and lo­ca­tion in the In­di­an Ocean means it is on­ly days away from mov­ing in­to the re­gion. Mean­while, U.S. mil­i­tary im­ages re­leased in re­cent days showed F-15E Strike Ea­gles ar­riv­ing in the Mideast and forces in the re­gion mov­ing a HI­MARS mis­sile sys­tem, the type used with great suc­cess by Ukraine af­ter Rus­sia’s full-scale in­va­sion in the coun­try in 2022.

Protest death toll ris­es

The death toll ex­ceeds that of any oth­er round of protest or un­rest in Iran in decades, and re­calls the chaos sur­round­ing the 1979 rev­o­lu­tion that brought the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic in­to be­ing. Al­though there have been no protests for days, there are fears the toll could in­crease sig­nif­i­cant­ly as in­for­ma­tion grad­u­al­ly emerges from a coun­try still un­der a gov­ern­ment-im­posed shut­down of the in­ter­net since Jan. 8.

The first in­di­ca­tion from au­thor­i­ties of the ex­tent of ca­su­al­ties came Sat­ur­day from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ay­a­tol­lah Ali Khamenei, who said the protests had left “sev­er­al thou­sand” peo­ple dead and blamed the Unit­ed States. The protests be­gan over eco­nom­ic pres­sures but quick­ly broad­ened to take on the theoc­ra­cy.

The In­te­ri­or Min­istry state­ment Wednes­day as­sert­ed that “ter­ror­ists used live am­mu­ni­tion that led to the deaths of 2,427 peo­ple and se­cu­ri­ty forces.”

The Mar­tyrs Foun­da­tion said Iran would pur­sue what it called “ter­ror­ists” who it claimed were tied to Is­rael and “sup­port­ed, equipped and armed” by the U.S.

Near­ly 26,500 peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed, ac­cord­ing to the Hu­man Rights Ac­tivists News Agency. Com­ments from of­fi­cials have led to fears of some of those de­tained be­ing put to death in Iran, one of the world’s top ex­e­cu­tion­ers.

That and the killing of peace­ful pro­test­ers have been two red lines laid down by Trump in the ten­sions.

Kur­dish ex­iles claim Iran­ian at­tack in Iraq

The Na­tion­al Army of Kur­dis­tan, the armed wing of the Kur­dis­tan Free­dom Par­ty, or PAK, claimed Iran launched an at­tack against one of its bases near Ir­bil, some 320 kilo­me­ters (200 miles) north of Bagh­dad. It said one fight­er had been killed, and re­leased mo­bile phone footage of a fire in the predawn dark­ness.

Iran did not im­me­di­ate­ly ac­knowl­edge the at­tack, which would be the first for­eign op­er­a­tion Tehran has launched since the protests start­ed.

A hand­ful of Iran­ian Kur­dish dis­si­dent or sep­a­ratist groups — some with armed wings — have long found a safe haven in north­ern Iraq’s semi­au­tonomous Kur­dish re­gion, where their pres­ence has been a point of fric­tion be­tween the cen­tral gov­ern­ment in Bagh­dad and Tehran. The PAK has claimed it launched at­tacks in Iran as a crack­down on the demon­stra­tions took place, some­thing re­port­ed by semi­of­fi­cial Iran­ian news agen­cies as well.