Statement on the Iranian Government’s Response to Recent Protests

The Lemkin Institute vehemently condemns the use of deadly force by Iranian authorities against protestors across the country, accompanied by the security forces’ unlawful use of firearms and mass arbitrary arrests. This wave of persecution has caused widespread death and injury among civilians and security personnel, while authorities have deliberately imposed internet shutdowns and information blackouts to obscure the scale of abuses. Such repression marks a dangerous escalation of state violence and constitutes crimes against humanity. It also substantially increases the risk of future mass atrocity crimes by the regime.

The current wave of protests erupted on 28 December 2025 following a sharp collapse of Iran’s currency amid runaway inflation, which dramatically worsened living conditions, and chronic state mismanagement of essential services. The immediate trigger was a sudden spike in the prices of basic goods, such as cooking oil and chicken, after the central bank ended preferential access to cheaper U.S. dollars for certain importers, prompting shop closures and strikes in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. What began as economic protests led by bazaar merchants – a constituency historically aligned with the Islamic Republic – rapidly spread nationwide and evolved into mass street demonstrations demanding human rights, human dignity, and the dismantling of the existing political system. The authorities’ violent response transformed economic unrest into a nationwide political uprising and sharply escalated civilian harm.

The ongoing protests in Iran are the culmination of decades of authoritarian governance, systematic repression, and the Iranian state’s sustained failure to secure the consent, dignity, and basic rights of its own population. These protests are the result of a regime that has ruled through fear, censorship, gender apartheid, and coercion, and that has steadily alienated its own people through violence rather than reform. According to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR), the final death toll of the recent crackdown could exceed 25,000. An estimated 50,000 protesters have been detained and there is widespread fear that the regime will fast track executions.

Given Iran’s long-standing status as a focal point for regional and international intelligence operations, it is plausible that foreign actors have attempted to inflame or instrumentalize elements of the unrest. However, such activity does not negate the fundamentally domestic, grassroots nature of the protests, which arose from decades of repression and systemic state violence.

From a genocide prevention perspective, this trajectory is deeply alarming. When a state dehumanizes protesters, brands dissenters as traitors or foreign agents, and employs lethal force against civilians, it moves further along the continuum of mass atrocity risk. Accountability, restraint, and independent investigations are not optional – they are binding obligations under international law, which applies equally to all states. International law cannot be invoked selectively to condemn others while remaining unobserved at home; its authority depends on consistent adherence. The Iranian regime’s persistent refusal to meet these obligations not only endangers citizens but also entrenches a governing logic that normalizes violence against civilian populations.

For many years, Iranian authorities have presented their international isolation as the unavoidable consequence of standing up to Israel and the United States. That explanation is no longer convincing. Iran’s predicament is not solely the result of external pressure; it is the product of a sustained rupture with its own population and with much of its own region. Today, regional alienation compounds Iran’s internal political, economic, and social deterioration, and perceptions across the Arab and Muslim worlds have shifted in ways that will be difficult to undo.

In particular, the regime’s backing of the Assad regime in Syria, despite overwhelming evidence of mass killings, chemical weapons use, forced displacement, and crimes against humanity, stands as one of the clearest indictments of Iran’s moral and political posture. No efforts were made to rein in the state’s violence. Millions of people were killed, displaced, or permanently traumatized with Tehran’s material and political support. While groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas emerged from environments marked by prolonged occupation and violence, Iran’s funding of these actors has transformed them into tools of regional power projection, further entrenching cycles of violence and civilian harm. These relationships are strategic investments designed to expand regional influence without consideration for the impact on civilian lives. Iran’s proxy warfare has prolonged conflicts, weakened state institutions, and contributed directly to the spilling of blood across Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Gaza.

In this context, Iran’s claims of principled support for Palestine ring hollow. A regime that enabled the mass slaughter of Syrian civilians forfeited any credible moral authority to posture as a defender of oppressed populations. If opposition to genocide were truly the guiding principle, Iran would not have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with one of the most brutal regimes of the modern era.

Nevertheless, acknowledging Iran’s authoritarianism and regional violence does not – and must not – translate into support for Israeli and U.S. military intervention.

The use of force by one state against another is tightly constrained under international law. Humanitarian interventions conducted in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter require Security Council approval and are by nature international in scope. They are also a last resort. Repression of protests, however grave, does not justify unilateral invasion by UN members without Security Council approval. In the 21st century especially, the doctrine of humanitarian intervention has repeatedly been abused to rationalize illegal wars that produce catastrophic civilian harm while delivering no lasting protection for human rights or improvement in human security.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Iraq. The illegal 2003 U.S.-led invasion, launched without UN authorization and justified through demonstrably false claims, resulted in the collapse of state institutions, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and the displacement of millions. The dismantling of Iraq’s government and security structures created the conditions for sectarian warfare, mass atrocities, and the emergence of armed extremist groups, including the Islamic State. Far from protecting civilians, the intervention fractured Iraqi society, entrenched communal violence, and inflicted long-term harm that persists more than two decades later.

These realities must be understood alongside broader U.S. double standards. The United States remains materially and diplomatically complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. This active complicity stands in direct contradiction to U.S. claims of humanitarian concern and fundamentally undermines any assertion of moral authority to invoke human rights as a justification for intervention elsewhere.

Moreover, the United States’ historical role in Iran fundamentally disqualifies it as a credible arbiter of the country’s political future. In 1953, the United States—working with the United Kingdom—engineered the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically elected leader, after he moved to nationalize the Iranian oil industry and challenge Western corporate control. The coup, driven by British and American oil interests and fear of losing strategic dominance rather than any genuine democratic concern, dismantled Iran’s constitutional order and reinstated monarchical authoritarianism under the Shah. This intervention extinguished Iran’s democratic trajectory, entrenched decades of repression, and directly shaped the conditions that culminated in the 1979 revolution.

In the decades that followed, U.S. policy towards Iran, particularly the extensive use of economic sanctions, has continued to undermine prospects for democratic governance. Rather than weakening authoritarian rule, sanctions have often consolidated power in the hands of unaccountable state institutions and economic elites, while severely constraining civic space and political dissent. By devastating livelihoods, limiting access to essential goods, and isolating civil society, sanctions have disproportionately burdened ordinary citizens, and weakened social actors most capable of pushing for reform.

Calls for U.S. intervention are further undermined by the United States’ own record at home. The U.S. has a long history of violently suppressing domestic protests, deploying militarized policing, conducting mass arrests, and using lethal force against civilians. These abuses are not a thing of the past; they have become more visible and more frequent in recent years. Against this backdrop, it is hard to take seriously claims that Washington now occupies the moral high ground on the treatment of protesters abroad. Such claims are especially ironic given the recent escalation of lethal force used against U.S. citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as the recent arrests of multiple journalists in connection with protests they attended in journalistic capacities.

The reality is that no state, including the United States, has clean hands when it comes to the use of state violence to police protest.

President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly asserted that the United States will no longer act as the “world’s policeman.” Yet current actions and rhetoric contradict this claim. Efforts to coerce or delegitimize foreign governments, aggressive posturing toward sovereign states, and public statements suggesting U.S. readiness to “help” engineer political outcomes revive the same interventionist logic that has devastated entire regions.

The international community cannot allow any single country – no matter how powerful – to dictate the fate of others through force, coercion, or regime-change fantasies. Recent actions toward Venezuela, threats of annexing Greenland and Canada, and public messaging framing unrest in Iran as an opportunity for U.S. involvement reflect a dangerous return to imperial logic under the language of freedom. Make no mistake — U.S. interest in Iran has nothing to do with the welfare of Iranians and everything to do with U.S.-Israeli expansionism, including the genocidal project of “Greater Israel,” the securing of military dominance over the Greater Middle East, and securing access to the strategically significant and mineral-rich region of Central Asia.

History offers no ambiguity. When the United States claimed to bring “freedom” to Iraq and Libya, the result was state collapse, sectarian violence, mass displacement, economic plunder, and bloodshed that set entire societies back decades. These were not unintended side effects; they were predictable and desired outcomes of militarized intervention that was divorced from accountability. Millions paid the price, and the region continues to bear the scars.

The Lemkin Institute rejects both authoritarian repression and militarized “liberation.” We reject the false choice between brutal regimes and foreign bombs. War is not a human rights mechanism. Invasion is not civilian protection. And selective morality, whether practiced by Tehran or Washington, only deepens cycles of mass violence.

The people of Iran deserve dignity, freedom, and accountability, but these cannot be delivered by foreign force. Political change in Iran must come from Iranians themselves, not through external intervention.

The Lemkin Institute stands firmly with Iranian citizens who are courageously advocating for their own freedom, human dignity, and a fairer society free from repression and fear.