Featured film
77 Hours — the film about Iran's Two Nights
A psychological thriller by Vahid Mahdavi, set across the nights of 8 and 9 January 2026. Watch the trailers, read the story, and see the documented record behind it.
Iran protests: the dated record
Month by month, what happened in Iran during the Crimson Winter of 2025–2026 — with every published death toll set side by side.
Month by month
Three months that changed the Islamic Republic
Each page below is a standalone dated record: a timeline, the casualty figures published for that month, the named dead where they are known, and the sources behind each claim.
December 2025
How it began
The rial collapse, the Tehran Grand Bazaar strike, protests in more than 180 cities, and the first live fire and blackouts.
Read the record →
January 2026
The Two Nights
The deadliest month in the Islamic Republic's history: the 8–9 January order for full military suppression, the Rasht massacre, and every published death toll.
Read the record →
February 2026
Counts, apology, war
The official 3,117, HRANA's verified 7,007, President Pezeshkian's public apology on 11 February, and Operation Epic Fury on the 28th.
Read the record →
Earlier uprisings
- The Uprising, 1979–2026 — fourteen chapters of state violence, from the rooftop of Refah School to the streets of Rasht.
- The Two Nights — 8 and 9 January 2026 in full.
- In Memoriam and memorial biographies — the named dead.
- Sources and methodology — how every figure on this site is verified.
Frequently asked questions
What are the Iran protests of 2025-2026?
A nationwide uprising known as the Crimson Winter that began with bazaar strikes in December 2025 over the collapse of the rial, peaked with mass killings on 8-9 January 2026, and ended in February 2026 with competing death tolls ranging from the government's 3,117 to leaked IRGC estimates of 33,000-36,500.
Are the Iran protests still happening?
Protest continued through February 2026 in the form of funerals, strikes and localised confrontations, and was interrupted by the outbreak of war on 28 February 2026. Detentions and executions continued after that date.
Where can I find a day-by-day record of the Iran protests?
This page indexes a dated record for each month: December 2025, January 2026 and February 2026, each with a timeline, published death tolls and sources.
Protest archive · updated September 2026
Short answer: Iran has seen five nationwide protest waves since 2009 — the Green Movement, the 2017-18 economic revolt, Bloody November 2019, Woman, Life, Freedom in 2022, and the Crimson Winter of 2025-2026. Each was larger, more geographically dispersed and more violently suppressed than the one before. This archive holds the dated event pages for each wave.
Five waves, 2009-2026
| Wave | Trigger | Spread | Documented dead |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 — Green Movement | Disputed presidential election | Tehran and major cities | Dozens; 72 claimed by opposition |
| Dec 2017-Jan 2018 | Food and fuel prices, corruption | 80+ towns, mostly small | 25+ |
| Nov 2019 — Bloody November | Overnight petrol-price rise | 100+ cities, near-total blackout | 304 named; up to 1,500 reported |
| 2022-23 — Woman, Life, Freedom | Death of Mahsa Amini in custody | 160+ cities, all 31 provinces | 551, including 71 children |
| 2025-26 — Crimson Winter | Economic collapse, executions, water and power failures | Nationwide, including rural towns | 7,007 verified; far higher estimates |
The anatomy of a crackdown
The suppression pattern has hardened into a sequence that is now recognisable within hours of a protest beginning. Documenting the sequence matters as much as counting the dead, because it establishes intent.
- Connectivity control. Mobile data is throttled province by province, then cut. The national information network stays up so banking and state services continue — see the journal for how the filtered domestic internet is engineered.
- Deployment of non-police forces. Basij units and plain-clothes agents are used alongside special units, blurring accountability for who fired.
- Lethal and blinding force. Live ammunition to the head and chest, and shotgun pellets fired at the face, producing the distinctive mass eye injuries documented by ophthalmologists since 2022.
- Hospital capture. Security agents posted in emergency departments, wounded protesters arrested from their beds, injuries recorded under false causes.
- Control of burial. Night burials, forced silence at funerals, families made to sign statements attributing death to rioters or illness.
- Judicial phase. Mass indictments, televised confessions, capital charges of moharebeh and efsad-e fel-arz, and the public hangings recorded in the executions archive.
Using this archive
Each dated event page holds what was verified for that day: named dead where they are known, the sequence of events, the state's statements at the time, and the sources. The archive is designed to be cited by date, so a reader can check what was known and when.
- December 2025 — the strikes and price protests that opened the wave.
- January 2026 — the Two Nights and the Rasht bazaar killings.
- February 2026 — the mass-trial phase and the first protest executions.
- Death-toll tracker — every published figure, dated and attributed.
- Victims database — the searchable named record.
Frequently asked questions
How many nationwide protest waves has Iran seen since 2009?
Five: the 2009 Green Movement after the disputed presidential election; the December 2017-January 2018 economic protests that spread to more than 80 towns; the November 2019 fuel-price uprising; the 2022-23 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising after the death of Mahsa Amini in morality-police custody; and the 2025-2026 Crimson Winter, the deadliest of them all.
What makes the 2025-2026 uprising different from earlier waves?
Scale and lethality. Where 2019 saw hundreds killed over roughly two weeks, the Crimson Winter produced 7,007 verified named deaths by February 2026, more than 100,000 detentions, and a 48-hour period on 8-9 January in which hospital registries recorded over 30,000 deaths. It also spread to small towns with no protest history and drew in strikes by bazaar merchants, truckers and oil workers.
Why do internet shutdowns matter to the protest record?
Because they are operationally connected to the killing. In November 2019 and again in January 2026, the heaviest casualties occurred during near-total national blackouts, when footage could not leave the country and families could not coordinate. Shutdown periods are the periods where the documentary record is thinnest and the verified count understates the toll most severely.
Which cities have seen the heaviest crackdowns?
Tehran and Karaj by absolute numbers; Rasht, Mashhad, Isfahan and Shiraz in the 2026 wave; Zahedan in Sistan and Baluchestan, where Bloody Friday in September 2022 killed at least 96 people at a single Friday prayer; Mahshahr and Shahriar in November 2019; and the Kurdish cities of Sanandaj, Saqqez, Mahabad and Javanrud, which face a permanent, heavier security presence.
Are protesters organised, and by whom?
Largely not by any single organisation. The waves since 2017 have been leaderless and networked, coordinated through neighbourhood groups, encrypted messaging and diaspora amplification. The absence of a central command is why the state's standard tactic — arresting leaders — has repeatedly failed to end a wave, and why the crackdown has instead been aimed at whole populations.
Documentaries
Long-form documentaries on Iran
Feature films, investigations and a three-part series on the uprising, the crackdown and the people behind the record.