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Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on January 17 that “several thousand people” were killed during anti-government protests this month, marking his first public acknowledgment of the scale of the deadly unrest.
Speaking at a public event broadcast on state television, Khamenei said some of the victims were killed “brutally and inhumanely,” without providing further details. He blamed the United States and Israel for fomenting the violence, claiming that the Islamic Republic has evidence to support these accusations, Bloomberg reports.
Khamenei added that Iran does not seek to push the country toward war, but warned that it would not allow domestic or foreign perpetrators to go unpunished. He also accused US President Donald Trump of bearing responsibility for the “deaths, damage, and suffering inflicted on the Iranian people,” saying Washington’s broader political objective is to establish military, political, and economic dominance over Iran.
The death toll cited by Khamenei broadly aligns with estimates from human rights groups and other sources, which suggest that around 3,500 people were killed and more than 22,000 were detained during the protests.
