As details of the death toll for January’s protests continue to emerge, three students explain why they are resisting a return to normality
More than 45 days after a brutal January crackdown that left thousands of Iranian protesters dead, students across several universities are protesting again. As Iran’s new academic term began on Saturday, students in Tehran gathered on campus, chanting anti-government slogans, despite a heavy security presence and plainclothes officers stationed outside university gates.
The Guardian spoke to protesting students about why they were rallying despite the fact that thousands had been killed and tens of thousands arrested in the January demonstrations.
“Our classrooms are empty because the graveyards are full,” said Hossein*, 21, a student at the University of Tehran. “It’s for them – our friends, classmates and compatriots, who were gunned down in front of our eyes, that we decided to boycott the classes.”
Yawn more Western propaganda to justify war against Iran.
300 cops were killed by these “peaceful protesters”.
I’m sure the cops were equally as ‘peaceful’ as the protesters and didn’t go and kill a few tens of thousands of them.
Shit gets violent under a fanatic totalitarian regime.
It is amazing the amount of mental gymnastics people are willing to do to justify American and Israeli backed terrorism. Iran tolerated the protests until terrorists started shooting with AK’s and shotguns. The terrorists also shot many civilians because they know that you will blame every single death they cause on the Iranian government.
based
But yeah, it is warmongering propaganda.
I mean, it can be both. The Iranian government has been an oppressive theocratic reactionary force practically since day one of the revolution. They rejected socialist reforms and partnered with Ronald fucking Reagan to start a turf war with Iraq using chemical weapons. They’ve flubbed any effective containment of Israel, failed to integrate their economy with Pakistan or Turkiye or Afghanistan, gave up backing Yemen, and never finished their nuclear deterrent.
The current crisis they’re in wasn’t unforeseeable. But when even Ahmadinejad is too far left for your Guardian Council, it locks you into a dark future.
We can keep talking about dumb stuff Iran did 50 years ago but Khamenei is already dead. Iran is currently the only major party fighting Israel and standing for human rights and against genocide.
Saying they have failed to contain Israel is laughable. The entire American air force is on Irans doorstep because they have been so effective in containing Israel. Pakistan and Turkiye are led by unreliable NATO slaves there is no stable partnership to build with them.
Yemen is still receiving Iranian weapons and has defeated the US air force last year with them while lobbing missiles at Israel.
Pezeshkian is their current president and he is a reformist. The reformists are the reason that Iran does not have nukes right now.
No, they aren’t. They’re rolling over for Israel time and time again.
They withdraw support from Hezbollah, from the Houthis in Yemen, and from the Taliban in Afghanistan for a few temporary sanctions suspensions. They actively collaborate with Israel’s friends in Russia and Saudi Arabia. They collaborated with the fucking Americans during the initial Iraq War. They crack down on their own domestic civilians when those populations want more aggressive Palestinian support. They’ve been “six months from producing a nuclear weapon” for thirty fucking years.
They are not
The only thing they know how to do to Israel is to fire Warning Shots. Over and over and over again. Even as Israelis butcher their people at home and abroad.
They aren’t fighting them in any material sense.
The Iraq war is 20 years in the past it is no longer relevant. Bigger recent human rights abuses from Iran came from their support from Assad. But now that Assad is gone a US slave has taken his place so that is double sided.
Iran supports the resistance behind the scenes not in front of it like Yemen. I would love for Iran to actively start shelling Israel, they have during the 12 day war, but they are already doing a million times more than every other country worldwide such as China which is actively helping Israel colonize the West Bank.
I clicked your Houthi link and it is one of those anti Houthi propaganda websites. Becomes rather obvious when you go to their front page. I hope you reconsider your sources.
That stopped being true years ago. They’ve fully retreated from the regional stage.
They’re unable to keep the water flowing and the lights on, because they keep trying to make deals with Western imperialists and getting played
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/07/22/post-12-day-war-iran-continues-to-invest-in-the-houthis/
Iran is sanctioned because it does not bow for Israel. That is the entire reason.
Iran literally sentencing kids to death and you’re saying this shit? You’re getting paid or smt?
This isn’t novel to Iran. The US was sentencing minors to execution until as recently as 2005, when the SCOTUS struck down junivenille executions in Roper v. Simmons.
And that was under a relatively liberal majority. No way Roper would have gone 5-4 under a Roberts court.
Two 17 year old terrorists magically become children.
Those 300 cops must have killed themselves.
So they literally killed police and burned down mosques.
Amnesty is an imperialist propaganda organisation which has repeated the debunked Hamas rape hoax. They will paste any Zionist propaganda they are asked on their frontpage.
I mean, they did commit arson with a deadly outcome, but Basij are not cops. They’re a junta.
That being said, I strongly oppose the death penalty, I oppose war (fuck the US and fuck Israel), and also fuck the “protestors” that destroyed people’s cars, shops, mosques and homes. I’m an anarchist and a revolutionary, they’re mindless thugs. We are not the same.
I guess security forces are technically a better description but in practice they would be comparable to volunteer cops.