Western media would like you to believe that the protests in Iran are purely economic. While it is true that the standard of living is miserable under the regime of the Islamic Republic, and the people naturally desire better, the protests are fundamentally a rebellion against political and religious tyranny. And there are shocking statistics to prove just how heinous and bloodthirsty Ayatollah Khamenei’s terror-sponsoring regime is.
It is striking how the same media and politicians and activists who screamed about Palestinian terrorists nonstop for two years are now ambivalent about the freedom protests in Iran. When they do mention the protests, they downplay the reasons for the uprising. Perhaps that is because they don’t want to admit that Islamic rule is always a disaster for the people who live under it.
It might also be because Donald Trump has vocally supported the Iranian freedom protesters. His latest message to that effect was on social media: “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!” But whatever the reason that Western media is not properly covering the uprising of the Persian people, some facts remain indisputable.
Iran’s Islamic dictatorship stepped up its arrests and executions for political and religious reasons this past year. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights were able to uncover statistics that the Iranian regime prefers to keep shady — for instance, "at least 1,858 executions, 1,552 arrests, and 59 deaths in prisons, alongside the killing of 74 civilians in direct gunfire by Iranian government forces."
This is a nightmare for Khamenei.
— 𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) December 29, 2025
Entire Iranian cities have shut down all markets and bazaars, and are not only protesting the regime - but also calling on the Shah to return.
The deformed, evil mullahs have lost control of the streets.
pic.twitter.com/KRFQDSaGxI
Journalist Masih Alinejad said that sources within Iran tell her hundreds of protesters have been killed in the latest round of protests.
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MEMRI continued:
The Hengaw report, compiled using recorded data over the course of 2025, highlights a marked escalation in judicial executions, deaths in prisons, arbitrary arrests, systemic violence, and grave human rights abuses against women, religious minorities such as Bahai's, Sunni Islamic scholars, and dissenting Shi'ite clerics, across the country.
Persecution of Christians and Kurds is also intensifying. Punishments for political prisoners include flogging and even death.
Why isn’t this the front page of the New York Times? pic.twitter.com/ExMGluE20m
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) January 10, 2026
These are all the facts that mainstream media outlets will leave out of or bury in their stories. They will never discuss how Christians are locked up and executed for sharing Bibles, and it makes them squeamish to discuss how women are assaulted by morality police for not wearing full hijabs or how even Muslims who do not hold to every brutality prescribed by sharia can be imprisoned.
The reality is that Islamic sacred texts endorse various vicious cruelties as punishments for theft and "blasphemy" (i.e., being non-Muslim or not living up to Islamic precepts as strictly as the authorities interpret them). Islam is not a religion that teaches individual rights or rational governance. The Islamic regime is carrying all of this to an extreme, but they are not wrong when they claim to find justifications for their actions in their Islamic texts.
May the Iranian people overthrow the evil regime that is oppressing them and reject the harsh Islamic ideology that inspires it.
