The US-funded ecosystem of Iranian 'rights groups,' Israeli operatives, and monarchist activists has become a revolving door of unverifiable statistics and atrocity propaganda.
The Cradle
These claims – none of which provide any credible evidence – continue to circulate in a coordinated fashion, amplified by Iranian opposition media and the mainstream western press alike.
Amid the wave of western coverage on Iranian protests, a Toronto-based NGO issued an outrageous claim that Iran had killed 43,000 protesters and wounded another 350,000. The group behind the figure, the International Center for Human Rights (ICHR), offered no footage, no forensic data, and no independently verifiable proof. Yet this statistic – dropped in a flimsy 900-word blog post – was catapulted into public discourse by British-Iranian comedian and opposition supporter, Omid Djalili, who pinned it to the top of his X profile.
As intended, the claim went viral. So did similar or even more extreme death tolls. They were echoed across social media by monarchist influencers, recycled by opposition outlets like Iran International, and eventually laundered into western corporate media coverage. The figures varied wildly – from 5,848 to 80,000 dead – and lacked even the pretense of substantiation. But they all served a clear political purpose: to build a case for regime change in the Islamic Republic.
The CIA fronts posing as human rights groups
The lowest estimate of Iran protest deaths – 5,848 people – came from the US-based group, Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI), which admits it is still “investigating” 17,000 additional cases. HRAI is no independent arbiter. It was partnered in 2021 with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US soft-power tool established under former US president Ronald Reagan to continue the CIA's work under NGO cover.
Another frequent source for Iran's death tolls is the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, which is also funded by NED. One of its board members is Francis Fukuyama, a signatory to the infamous neoconservative blueprint for the “War on Terror,” the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).
Then there is United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which claimed 12,000 Iranians were killed in the latest protests. This lobbying outfit, which successfully pressured the World Economic Forum (WEF) to disinvite Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, counts among its ranks former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, current US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Dennis Ross of the Israel Lobby's think-tank WINEP.
These entities feed a revolving door of narratives, all designed to delegitimize the Islamic Republic, decontextualize internal unrest, and greenlight foreign meddling.
Israel-backed outrage machines and war agitators
The ICHR – the group behind the 43,000 deaths claim – is based in Canada and almost solely focused on Iran. It openly celebrates Israeli assassinations of resistance leaders like the late Hezbollah secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, and praises the “growing friendship” between Israel and the Iranian opposition. Its executive director, Ardeshir Zarezadeh, has published photos of himself posing with Israeli and monarchist flags while toasting with wine.
The organization also employs extremely politically biased language, like labeling the Iranian government “the criminal regime occupying Iran” in official press releases.
Despite the bombast, the ICHR's report offers no evidence. It relies on unverifiable “comparative investigative analysis” and anonymous sources, and falsely claims that 95 percent of killings occurred over just two days. There is no footage of anything approaching the numbers it alleges.
Meanwhile, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), another US State Department-funded outfit, once promoted a bizarre claim that a protester faked his death and hid in a body bag for three days. Even the IHRDC admitted it could not verify the story – but opposition outlet Iran International broadcast it anyway, while omitting that it was fiction.
Far-right activists in the west, like Tommy Robinson, and monarchist influencers have pushed even more outlandish stories, including the allegation that Iran's security forces suffocate protesters by zipping them alive into body bags. No evidence required. Just one anonymous voice note.
The IHRDC has also been consulted by the US government to guide its sanctions policy, including the creation of a blacklist targeting Iranian individuals. Its executive director, Shahin Milani, recently posted on X that US President Donald Trump’s overtures to Iranian protesters, if “not backed up by overwhelming American support to cripple the regime’s armed forces,” would “constitute the greatest betrayal of Iranians by the West.”
This is part of a broader US strategy whereby Washington has poured funding into dozens of NGOs focused solely on Iran, from women’s rights outfits to ethnic minority advocacy groups, all tasked with feeding the narrative architecture of regime change.
Manufacturing atrocity, laundering lies
The propaganda pipeline runs from online influencers to western media. Take online activist Sana Ebrahimi, who claimed 80,000 protesters had been killed, citing only a friend “in contact with sources inside the government.” Her post garnered over 370,000 views.
Soon after, British radio station LBC News quoted an “Iranian human rights activist” named Paul Smith, who upped the death toll to 45,000–80,000. Smith, it turns out, is a regime change agitator on social media who endorses US military intervention in Iran.
In October 2025, the Israeli daily Haaretz exposed how Tel Aviv funds Farsi-speaking bot farms to promote Reza Pahlavi – the exiled son of Iran’s former monarch – and spread anti-government propaganda. These same bots helped inflate Iran protest narratives back in 2022. It is a digital war campaign masked as grassroots outrage.
Time Magazine claimed 30,000 Iranians had been killed, citing two anonymous Health Ministry officials. Iran International topped that, citing its own unverifiable sources to allege over 36,000 deaths.
Only Amnesty International, despite its hostile posture toward Tehran, refrained from a specific number, saying only that “thousands” had died. That estimate roughly aligns with Tehran's own figures: Iran's Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs reports 3,117 deaths, including 2,427 civilians and security personnel.
When lies become ‘casus belli’
There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to make of the Iranian state. But what we are seeing now is a coordinated misinformation offensive driven by Washington‑backed networks, Tel Aviv’s propaganda arms, monarchists and other oppositionists in exile, and compliant corporate press.
The grotesque death tolls and phantom atrocity stories being circulated follow a familiar imperial playbook: the bogus incubator babies in Kuwait in 1990, the forged WMD claims in Iraq in 2003, the invented Libyan “genocide” in 2011, and the endless chemical weapons fabrications in Syria. Each time, the purpose was the same: to build a ‘casus belli.’
The people who died in Iran’s protests have become props in another foreign-backed narrative war, laying the groundwork for selective intervention disguised as humanitarian concern.
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