In grainy mobile footage allegedly taken in Iran, people are seen crying as they move between more than a dozen bodies, laid out in body bags on the floor.
The clip is said to have been filmed at a makeshift morgue in southern Tehran, although it is not possible to independently verify. It has been shared on Iranian Telegram accounts that have been disseminating the scant videos coming out of Iran, where the regime, struggling to crush a two-week uprising, has shut down the internet and even landlines.
It follows other videos of protests where continuous gunfire can be heard in the background. Eyewitness accounts describe blood-stained streets and protesters being deliberately blinded.
Even Iranian state TV has aired footage of dozens of body bags at Tehran’s coroner’s office, though it claimed the dead were victims of “armed terrorists”.
The increasingly fragile Islamic Republic is lashing out as it faces its gravest existential threat yet.
Some of the most respected Iranian analysts I know now believe that, for the first time, there is a genuine possibility the regime could fall.
But the toll is already massive.
Norway-based Iran Human Rights said on Sunday that it has verified the killing of 192 people in the rallies, but added that the real death toll may be as high as 2,000.
On the streets, protesters are openly demanding the ousting of the country’s oppressive clerical rulers, chanting “Death to the dictator” and, in some quarters, even calling for the return of the Pahlavi royal dynasty, which was kicked out in the 1979 revolution that birthed the regime.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana) says protests have now spread to 185 cities across all 31 provinces of the country.
This is not the first mass protest movement to rock the country. Just under four years ago, the Women, Life, Freedom uprising erupted after the death of a young Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the country’s repressive morality police for not wearing a hijab.
But this feels different because of the unique vulnerabilities Iran’s rulers are facing.
For a start, the protests erupted in response to soaring prices as the local currency, the rial, spiralled, piling pressure on all corners of society.
Crucially, it comes in the wake of the disastrous 12-day war between Israel and Iran last year. Israeli, and later American, forces bombed Iran’s key nuclear installations, military infrastructure and even nuclear scientists.
