Anti-government protests that swept Iran beginning December 28 have met one of the Islamic Republic's harshest crackdowns in decades, with the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reporting more than 2,500 people killed, including 147 security officials, by mid-January.
Internet access has been repeatedly severed across major cities, and security forces have conducted mass roundups in an attempt to prevent renewed demonstrations. President Masoud Pezeshkian accused the United States and Israel on January 11 of trying to "sow chaos and disorder" in the country.
The Diplomatic Fallout
The crackdown has poisoned the atmosphere around nuclear negotiations, with European foreign ministers calling for new sanctions and the State Department issuing targeted measures against Iranian security officials.
Analysts note that the regime has survived protest waves before, but the geographic spread and the scale of the reported death toll mark this round as different. The question facing policymakers in Washington and Europe is whether economic pressure can be calibrated without collapsing the already fragile talks.
