Lessons from the Bitter History of Massacre

Foreword

In Dey 1404 — December 2025 to January 2026 — the streets of Iran became the scene of one of the bloodiest and most horrifying chapters in the country’s modern history. The nationwide protests, which had begun in late Azar 1404, reached their height with popular calls for regime change, as millions of Iranians took to the streets in more than four hundred cities. But the Islamic Republic’s response was not a “security operation,” nor “crowd control.” It was a brutal mass killing. According to numerous reports, security forces, acting under direct orders from Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, to “suppress by any means necessary,” carried out a massacre. The government’s official figure put the death toll at roughly 3,117, but independent sources — including The Times, The Independent, Iran International, and Iran Human Rights — have estimated the number of those killed at more than 36,500, a figure that would make this one of the largest massacres of the contemporary era.

This massacre involved not only direct shots to the heads and chests of protesters, but also execution-style finishing shots against the wounded in streets and hospitals. It was also carried out under conditions of “digital darkness”: a nationwide shutdown of the internet and communications, designed to keep the world from grasping the scale of the catastrophe. The “digital darkness” of Dey 1404 was not merely a technical instrument. It was part of the architecture of massacre: the removal of witnesses, the destruction of evidence, the suffocation of narrative. When they cut off the internet, they do not merely cut communication; they close the path to documentation. When they seize the image, they make the massacre deniable. When they silence the narrative, they open the door to repetition.

The Islamic Republic denies. But this denial is itself a confession. The “murderer’s narrative” always begins with a fabricated number: a number produced not to illuminate the truth, but to bury it. In Dey 1404, the regime waged two wars at once: a war against the people in the streets, and a war against truth in the media. The nationwide internet shutdown and the digital blackout served precisely this purpose: not only to silence protest, but to silence evidence. Then comes the manufacturing of numbers — the stage at which the murderer tries to make the massacre deniable. The exposing contradiction is this: when a regime built on lies is forced to admit that “several thousand” people were killed, it means the scale of the catastrophe is so naked that even the language of propaganda cannot remain silent. Yet even there, the regime suffocates the truth: it reduces the scale of the killing by an order of magnitude — not because people will believe it, but so that in files, official reports, show trials, and the manipulated memory of the future, there will remain a trace through which accountability might be evaded. The murderer, even when he “confesses,” is still distorting.

This crime is the latest link in a chain of repression that began in the 1980s: the execution of thousands of political prisoners in the summer of 1988; the repression of ethnic minorities such as Kurds and Baluchis; and the systematic persecution of religious minorities, including Sunnis, Baha’is, and Christians. Through prison, torture, and execution, the regime has silenced every dissenting voice and pushed marginalized communities further into the margins. But Dey 1404 was not an “incident.” Dey 1404 was the moment when the logic of several decades appeared naked and undisguised in the streets: the logic of elimination.

The central question is this: what do we learn from these massacres?

History is full of examples showing how authoritarian regimes, in their effort to destroy “others,” resort to genocide and mass killing. Three major examples — the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, and the Arab invasion of Iran — can help illuminate the Iranian situation, not merely because of their scale, but because of their shared pattern. The organized elimination of a society often begins with the breaking of its intellectual and social pillars, but it does not stop there. Soon it reaches mass murder and the destruction of ordinary life. These events also show how religious or quasi-religious ideology can become an instrument for erasing national and cultural identity. The similarity to the behavior of the Islamic Republic is clear.

In what follows, I first briefly discuss these historical massacres, and then turn to the historical lesson and the path forward.

1. The Armenian Genocide: A Massacre That Began with Intellectuals but Reached Everyone

The Armenian Genocide began in 1915 under the Ottoman Empire and led to the killing of approximately 800,000 to 1.5 million Armenians. The catastrophe began with the arrest and murder of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople on April 24, 1915 — a day now commemorated as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. As a Christian minority in a predominantly Muslim Ottoman society, Armenians played a significant role in the economy, culture, and politics: many were merchants, physicians, lawyers, and journalists. But the Young Turk regime, driven by nationalist ideology, branded them as an “internal enemy” and destroyed Armenian communities through forced deportations, engineered famine, and mass killing.

But this must be said plainly: this crime was not merely the “elimination of the educated.” The elimination of the educated was the opening instrument — a way of decapitating a society. But then one and a half million Armenians from every social class were consumed: men and women, children and the elderly, villagers and city-dwellers, the poor and the wealthy. This is what genocide is: it does not choose; it devours.

After the catastrophe, Armenians kept historical memory alive through commemorations and rituals. The first commemoration was held in Istanbul in 1919. In 1965, mass demonstrations in Yerevan led to the construction of the Tsitsernakaberd memorial in 1967, a monument with an eternal flame symbolizing the victims. Turkey continues to deny the genocide, calling it a “relocation.” And this denial itself can prepare the ground for the repetition of crime.

2. The Holocaust: Systematic Destruction — Beginning with Elimination, Ending with the Devouring of All

The Holocaust — the systematic murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime from 1941 to 1945 — is another example of this pattern. Before the Second World War, European Jews played crucial roles in science, art, and the economy. But Nazi racial ideology cast them as a “threat” and carried out genocide through death camps such as Auschwitz. This killing was not only physical; it was also cultural. The destruction of Jewish communities placed their heritage and knowledge across Europe at risk of annihilation.

And again, this must be made clear: the Holocaust did not target only the “elite.” Although the targeting of social and cultural pillars can be part of the machinery of elimination, in the end six million Jews of all classes, ages, and genders were murdered: children and adolescents, women and men, the poor and the wealthy, ordinary people of everyday life. As stated above, genocide is not a “selection”; it is a devouring.

After the war, the international community — though belatedly — moved toward mechanisms of justice: the Nuremberg Trials, official documentation, and eventually networks of memorials and education. The decisive act was the construction of memory: museums, archives, and organized education, so that the crime could not remain deniable. (1)

3. The Arab Invasion of Iran: Ideological Domination and the Threat to Identity

Although this event took place in the seventh century CE, between 633 and 651, the Arab-Muslim invasion of Sasanian Iran remains one of the closest historical examples for understanding the pattern of “ideological domination.” This invasion, which led to the fall of the Sasanian Empire and the Islamization of Iran, was accompanied by widespread slaughter. Tens of thousands of Iranians were killed at Qadisiyyah and Nahavand, and cities such as Istakhr suffered mass killings — estimated at around 4,000 — as well as the enslavement of thousands. In the name of Islam, the Arabs imposed policies such as the jizya, pressure to convert, and cultural repression, all of which eroded and sought to eliminate Iranian identity — an identity rooted in ancient traditions, language, and culture. This was not only a military conquest; it was a cultural assault: the destruction of fire temples, the imposition of a new order, pressure to change language, and the erasure of Iranian historical memory and identity. (2)

Unlike Armenians and Jews, who built memorials to their catastrophes, Iran has never had an official memorial or monument to this invasion. The reason is the long domination of Arabs and later Islamic regimes, which suppressed Iranian identity and did not allow such memory to survive. Domination does not only seize land; it seizes memory.

The similarity between this ideological domination and the Islamic Republic is clear: both threatened “Iranian identity” through Islamic ideology — one Sunni-caliphal, the other Shiite-juristocratic. The Islamic Republic, too, by privileging ideology over nationality and by relying on external networks and foreign forces, has reproduced a model rooted in the same logic of domination. And both have used repression and silence to consolidate that domination.

Yet despite military defeat and occupation, the spirit of Iranian resistance was not extinguished. Like a flame beneath the ashes, it flared again in numerous uprisings. The uprising of Sinbad the Zoroastrian after the killing of Abu Muslim is one clear example: an attempt to stand against the caliphate and reclaim the dignity of Iranians. The uprising of Maziar in Tabaristan was another act of resistance against the same logic of forced Islam and ideological domination.

One of the most significant of these uprisings was the rebellion of Babak Khorramdin, which began in 201 AH / 816 CE and continued for more than two decades. Babak rose in Azerbaijan against the Abbasid Caliphate and called for a return to Iranian dignity and glory. Although his uprising was eventually suppressed, the movement became a symbol of the endurance of identity — proof that military defeat does not necessarily mean the defeat of identity.

History Education: A Pillar of Iranian Identity and a Condition for Preventing the Repetition of Catastrophe

One reason catastrophe repeats in our history is not only the violence of rulers; it is also the rupture of memory. The real history of Iran — its catastrophes, massacres, uprisings, and forms of resistance — has not been told to everyone. Many generations have encountered it only in fragments, in distorted form, or under censorship. This ignorance is the product of ideological domination and cultural repression: the same domination that does not want people to know what was done to them, or how they resisted.

In the Iran of the future, therefore, history education must begin in childhood — not to produce hatred, but to create understanding; not to manufacture myth, but to build memory. From the Arab invasion and its cultural consequences, to the uprisings of Sinbad, Maziar, and Babak; from contemporary repression to civil resistance. Such education strengthens a trans-ethnic and trans-religious Iranian identity: an identity that gathers all ethnicities and beliefs under the name of Iran and, like the phoenix, transmits to future generations the power to rise from the ashes.

Dey 1404: The Killing Was Not Selective — It Was Everyone

If we are to learn from history, one sentence must be repeated aloud: massacre is not selective. Just as the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust began by targeting pillars but ultimately devoured everyone, the massacre of Dey 1404 was not “selective.” People from every stratum of society were in the streets and fell in blood: teenagers and the elderly, women and men, merchants, street vendors, workers, the educated, students, employees, mothers, fathers; small towns and large cities; center and periphery. This was not a confrontation with a “special group.” It was the regime’s confrontation with the people in their entirety.

Common Lessons for Iran Today

From these three historical catastrophes — and from the experience of Dey 1404 — several key lessons emerge.

Remembrance and commemoration are essential to preventing repetition. The regime’s denial — manipulation of the death toll, concealment, threats against families, destruction of evidence — must not succeed. To this end, we must begin now to seek recognition of an International Day of Remembrance for the Massacre of Iranians, just as International Holocaust Remembrance Day has been established. Such a day must not be a ceremonial occasion; it must be a global instrument for recording truth and preventing repetition — a day on which, every year, names are read, documents are reviewed, and the world remembers what happened and why it must not happen again.

Ideological fanaticism is the root of the crime. In all three historical examples discussed above, political power prepared society for slaughter by labeling a group as the “enemy.” In today’s Iran, this fanaticism takes the form of velayat-e faqih — the rule of the jurist — and targets both minorities and ordinary citizens. And this fanaticism is not merely rhetorical; it is structural: a structure that kills and then denies, while simultaneously producing the instruments of denial.

The use of external forces and the logic of domination are instruments of repression. As the history of domination shows, ideological powers seek to sever a people’s connection to their own identity. Today, security suffocation, military control, and domination of the digital sphere are all part of the same pattern.

Justice is impossible without evidence. If truth is not recorded, the crime remains deniable. And if the crime remains deniable, it can be repeated.

Beyond Memorial: The Need for an Organization to Archive Crime and Pursue Justice

After the Holocaust, Jews did not merely mourn. They built memory, preserved evidence, institutionalized education, and pursued justice. The lesson for Iran is clear: a memorial is not merely a symbol; it is a structure.

Here the difference between historical outcomes becomes clear. Memorialization alone is not enough. What determines the fate of a nation after catastrophe is the transformation of memory into institution, and the transformation of mourning into the reconstruction of collective power. After the Holocaust, despite the loss of six million members of their community, Jews were able — through an extraordinary degree of unity and a focus on rebuilding a shared identity — to move beyond the position of mere “victims” and become a durable socio-political force. This unity was not confined to monuments. It took shape through systematic efforts to preserve memory, educate future generations, collect documents, and pursue justice. Many survivors emigrated and played a key role in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 — a state that, despite all criticisms and historical complexities, became for dispersed Jews a symbol of security and concentrated identity. At the same time, Jewish communities in Europe were rebuilt in countries such as France, Belgium, and the Netherlands; representative institutions and socio-cultural networks emerged; and educational, religious, and cultural centers, from America to Israel, helped reproduce a shared identity. The result was clear: memory did not remain mere remembrance. It became structure.

By contrast, Armenians, despite memorials such as Tsitsernakaberd and annual commemorations dating back to 1919, were not able to achieve the same level of reconstructed collective power. One main reason was Turkey’s continued denial of the genocide and its obstruction of full justice and global recognition. The wide dispersion of the Armenian diaspora and the limited power of the Armenian state also made political and cultural reconstruction more difficult. This comparison shows that memorialization is necessary, but not sufficient: the oppressive ideology must be defeated, denial must be neutralized, and memory must become unity and institution.

The Direct Lesson for Iran Today

Iran, as the historical embodiment of the idea of a trans-ethnic nation, can draw from this lesson. It must rebuild Iranian identity by honoring all ethnic groups — Persian-speaking, Lor, Azeri, Kurd, Baluch, Mazani, Gilaki, Turkmen, Arab, and others — regardless of religion or non-religious orientation. This trans-ethnic and trans-religious identity can become a bridge to unity, just as Jews focused on a shared heritage. The reconstruction of a trans-ethnic Iranian identity is both the foundation of tomorrow’s unity and a mechanism for preventing disintegration. When “Iran” becomes the common umbrella of all ethnicities and beliefs, ethnic and religious divisions can no longer be used to tear the country apart.

If this identity is rebuilt, then the remembrance of the dead will move beyond a “ceremony” and become a national project: a project to record truth, educate, and build a future in which massacre can no longer be repeated.

Here is my concrete proposal: the formation of an organization for the remembrance of the Islamic Republic’s massacres — an organization with both a place and an archive. Not merely a building, but a mechanism.

Under present conditions, as long as the Islamic Republic remains in power, the memorial must begin outside Iran: a symbolic yet practical memorial, a place where ceremonies can be held freely, stories can be told, and documents can be collected safely. This external memorial must also function as a coordination center: for archives, for education, for legal pursuit, and for efforts to secure recognition of an International Day of Remembrance for the victims of Dey and for the victims of the Islamic Republic, comparable in function to Holocaust Remembrance Day.

After the fall of the Islamic Republic, this structure must be completed officially and nationally inside Iran: a museum, a monument, a national archive, and especially — as stated above — an official organization. In this way, memory will move from an exilic symbol to a national institution and become part of the identity of a free Iran.

Such an organization must have three pillars:

A physical memorial: a specific place for honoring the dead, holding ceremonies, seeing, and remembering.
A digital archive: the systematic recording of photographs, videos, names, dates, locations, and the narratives of families and witnesses.
A written and library archive: so that memory does not remain merely a wave inside social media, only to disappear; so that it acquires a documentary form.

All the photographs, videos, names, and stories now circulating across social media must not be lost there. Social media is a graveyard of memory: it raises something up and buries it just as quickly. The evidence of this crime and massacre must be recorded, categorized, verified, and preserved so that national memory is not lost. If we do not record, the murderer achieves precisely what he wants: the erosion of memory.

A Database of Perpetrators and an Organization for Legal Accountability

Alongside the archive of victims, there must also be a comprehensive database of the perpetrators of repression: with visual, audio, and testimonial evidence; with names, responsibilities, roles, chains of command, and documentation. This is not only for “tomorrow”; it is also for “today.” The existence of such a database, together with an organization for legal accountability, sends a clear message to the agents of massacre inside the Islamic Republic: there is no escape from the law. When they know that their names, images, roles, and traces are being recorded and may one day be used in future courts or international mechanisms, the cost of crime rises. This awareness can also contribute to fracture within the regime’s forces: it creates doubt, changes calculations, and may prevent some from actively participating in violence.

For this reason, this effort must be accompanied by a specific institution: an organization for legal accountability, tasked with preparing cases, standardizing evidence, protecting witnesses, and connecting documentation to legal mechanisms at the national and international levels. We must not forget: tomorrow’s justice is built from today’s evidence.

The creation of a database of perpetrators and the documentation of chains of command is not only a legal and judicial tool. It also has another vital function: the precise differentiation of responsibility. It must become clear who ordered and carried out repression, and who — especially within the bureaucracy and executive administration — played no role in violence or the violation of citizens’ rights. This distinction, on the one hand, prevents collective punishment and blind revenge; on the other hand, it allows competent and specialized bureaucratic personnel whose hands are not stained by repression to continue working during and after the transition, so that public services and the reconstruction of the country do not collapse — while the commanders and perpetrators of crime remain accountable and prosecutable on the basis of evidence.

Continuing Repression: Executions, Revolutionary Courts, Suffocation, Digital Control

Nor should we forget that, at the time this text is being written — in Bahman 2584 / 1404 — repression continues. The forms change, but the logic remains the same: from execution to imprisonment; from torture to fabricated cases; from Revolutionary Courts, which lack even the minimum principles of proper law, to forced confessions and theatrical verdicts. At the same time, digital control and political-military suffocation are intensifying. The same “digital darkness” that served as an instrument of massacre in Dey 1404 remains today an instrument for sustaining fear and silence. This regime does not only kill people; it kills narrative. It does not only strike the body; it strikes memory.

Conclusion

History shows that ideological fanaticism — whether in the form of Nazi racism, Ottoman nationalism, or Shiite velayat-e faqih — lies at the root of crimes against humanity. This fanaticism breaks pillars and devours masses; it attacks minorities and ordinary people alike; it targets culture and life itself. This pattern was repeated in Dey 1404, and its victims came from every layer of society — without selection, without exception, across an entire nation.

But the solution is clear: the revival of a trans-ethnic and trans-religious Iranian identity, and the construction of mechanisms of memory and justice. By forming a memorial organization, creating digital and written archives, building a symbolic memorial outside Iran and then a museum and official institution in a free Iran, establishing a database of perpetrators and an organization for legal accountability, and seeking recognition of an International Day of Remembrance for the massacre of Iranians, we can prevent the crime from becoming deniable — and thereby help prevent its repetition.

Memorialization is necessary, but it is not enough. What breaks the cycle of repetition is the transformation of memory into institution and the transformation of mourning into trans-ethnic, trans-religious unity — a unity the regime fears.

This text was not written in order to “review history.” It was written so that memory might be built. And memory, once built, becomes power. The Islamic Republic wants Dey 1404 to appear as “an event”: a page that turns and ends. But Dey 1404 is not an event. Dey 1404 is the naked exposure of a truth: the truth of a regime that kills people in order to survive; then denies in order to escape; then burns evidence, plunges the internet into darkness, and stages show trials in order to repeat the crime.

If we have learned anything from history, it is this: great crimes occur twice. The first time with bullets, knives, and rope. The second time with denial. And if denial takes hold, the third time with repetition. Only one thing can break this chain: the recording of truth and its transformation into institution.

That is why a memorial is not merely a stone or a statue. A memorial means the construction of public memory. It means transforming names, photographs, and narratives into official evidence. It means pulling truth out of the overflow of social media and placing it in an archive — somewhere it cannot be forgotten, erased, or buried. That is why a memorial organization must be formed: with a physical memorial, a digital archive, and a written archive. That is why a database of perpetrators must be created and an organization for legal accountability established: so that the criminal knows his name will not only remain in history, but also in a case file; so that the agent of repression knows violence is not cost-free; so that cracks appear in the apparatus of repression and defection becomes possible.

And that is why we must act to secure recognition of an International Day of Remembrance for the Massacre of Iranians. The world must not remember only when it is too late. There must be one day each year when this truth is repeated: what happened in Iran, how it was denied, and why it must not happen again. This day is neither a plea to the world nor a political ornament. It is a global instrument of resistance against denial — because denial is itself the continuation of the crime.

Under present conditions, the memorial must necessarily begin outside Iran, where the regime’s reach is shorter and where documentation, collection, and protection of evidence are possible. But this is not the endpoint; it is the beginning. After the fall of the Islamic Republic, Iran must give this memory a national form: a museum, a monument, an official archive, and a judicial mechanism. Only then will mourning become power; and power become a guarantee against repetition.

This text is not a call to hatred, nor a reopening of the wound for its own sake. It is a call to memory — because without memory, we are killed again. It is a call to justice — because without justice, the murderer returns. And it is a call to identity: the trans-ethnic and trans-religious Iranian identity that this murderous ideology seeks to take from us. If we preserve these three — memory, justice, identity — Dey 1404 will be the last massacre of Iran, not the first of the next.