Iran Protest Death Toll Could Top 30k, According to Local Health Officials
time.com
time.com
This is Iran's third total internet shutdown, but the methodology has evolved into something far more surgical. They didn't just block IP addresses; they severed BGP routes, killed mobile data, and effectively jammed Starlink signals into a dead zone thanks to Russian imports. When the signal itself is murdered, your Tor bridges and VPNs become expensive paperweights.
As builders, we are being out-engineered. We have grown complacent, assuming the "always-on" cloud is a fundamental constant of the universe. But if your software requires a remote handshake to function, it is a liability, not a tool, in a crisis zone. Every application built with heavy reliance on centralized APIs vaporizes the moment the backbone is cut.
We must stop designing for the "connected" illusion and start building for the darkness.
This is my plea to the HN community: stop treating "offline-first" as a niche feature and start treating it as a human right. We need robust, decentralized mesh networks that bypass state-controlled gateways entirely. We need isolated documentation tools and local-first databases that can sync via Bluetooth or physical handoffs.
Build for the 212 regions that went dark last year so that the next time a state pulls the plug, the people aren't left helpless.
a throwaway account for obvious reasons (they have also Chinese tech to track); make your code work when the world goes quiet.
I'm not saying that nobody should ever consider "the state cuts off the internet" as a criteria when deciding what to do, but making that a foundational requirement is like starting out with "handle google-scale" as a requirement when you have zero reason to believe you will.
There are plenty of good reasons for local first apps, but "build for darkness" is pretty far down the list for me.
The sad thing about continuing development of existing technologies is that all reliability, robustness, and multi-purpose capabilities get optimized away over time. In the ideal world, companies wouldn't even sell you hardware or software, they'd just charge for magically doing the one thing you want at the moment, with no generality and no agency on your end.
It's a miracle we still have electric outlets in homes, and not just bunch of hard-wired appliances plugged in by vendor subcontractors.
As opposed to what? Everyone pays the overhead and price of apps designed for things like local-first Bluetooth sync?
This is a situation where the market will prevail and people would go toward (and therefore pay for) apps designed to fit their needs, not apps designed around rare and unusual scenarios.
Build specific tools for specific situations. You won’t get anywhere trying to get all general purpose apps to focus on niche requirements.
I think having an offline map of at least the region you live in can come in handy. In fact, I carry an old phone with impressive battery life (Samsung Galaxy A10) and offline maps installed on it so I don't get lost.
Very useful in some areas. Not even that out of the way - I have needed offline maps in Cumbria, which is just rural and hilly.
The funny part of engineers is that they always think that, at some point, they will reach perfect engineering.
The best engineering already exists and you do not need to do a thing. Code will not save you from the shtstorm that is coming.
This is the opposite of what I’ve observed. Most engineers know that everything is tradeoffs and compromises. They know there will always be a better way.
A lot of engineering management is getting engineering teams to accept good enough rather than endless iterations and refactoring.
I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of the problems in Iran, but switching to a world where tools are design first for syncing via Bluetooth and offline methods just isn’t going to make a better world for all of us.
You need specialized tools for specialized situations. Trying to get the whole world to pay the overhead of mesh networks and Bluetooth handoffs and all of the design choices that go along with it would be a mistake.
The software world is not monolithic. Pleas for everyone to stop building for the way the world works and start building for highly unusual and specific use cases isn’t reasonable.
Build specialized tools for specialized circumstances. They will always serve the purpose far better than if you try to get everyone to build their general purpose tools around extremely rare circumstances.
Expecting a robust ecosystem of offline-first apps, ideally compatible with everyone else's existing apps, would be awesome.
An opt-in facebook streaming offline mode where posts are queued and sent...
or an opt-in signal mode where p2p messaging is possible via transient connections (imagine the data mule movie that would be coming out in 2030). All this is technically possible, just not prioritized.
This expressed expectation of "how the world works" is the perception of a monolith, however. There is no divine right or reason for things to be designed online-first, except for incentives to the service providers. When somebody designs an app to be online-first, they are choosing to be a service provider, and not an app author. This distinction may not be clear to developers who came to be in a culture where online-first is a first order concern, but it is immediately clear to anybody who "owns" the "app" in question when the service is either neglected or decommissioned in a few years, or is otherwise made inaccessible via the internet.
Let's do a thought experiment: assume they're here and that we are talking about a dictatorship. What's next?
If it's something like Meshtastic — it requires standalone hardware. These devices will be outlawed. The entire country will stop importing them, confiscating these devices from whoever uses them, probably jailing people who own them.
Alright, then what if it's something like BitChat instead — you only need your phone. If it gets traction, police will stop you and force you to unlock your phone. They do this already in Russia.
It's not a technical problem and can't be solved like one.
So there were of course various programs to simulate the experience of clearing the calculator. Plenty of ways through the police stop with our illicit digital goods, even then.
Generally just don't come here anymore, but with the US fascists now checking phones at borders, the idea of having low detectability digital "smuggling compartments" (digitally speaking) in our devices is becoming all too real. Some loopback filesystem that your phone can mount that has the rest of the phone, various systemd-sysext layers for bitchat.
With the UK joining the idiot races to maybe ban VPNs, we have another not so far off reason for needing protection versus the totalitarian. Sorry but if you believe tailscaling home is a crime you're the enemy of society, your rules are a joke, and declaration of Independence of cyberspace strongly is in detail about what a mockery of yourself you are making.
Are you replying to the wrong comment? The person above said nothing about how good or bad privacy measures are. What they're saying that totalitarianism is a problem of governance, not technology. In a totalitarian world, when some new technological way to bypass oversight is conceived, the government or other powerful entities will always have the means to shut it all down, they just need to care enough. If people start using VPNs en masse, they'll start mandatory computer searches, develop increasingly sophisticated tracing and detecting tech, or as a last resort shut it all down by targeting the underlying infrastructure - you know, like Iran. If enough people start carrying devices with hidden filesystems, then they'll start equipping police, border guards etc. with devices that plug into phones and detect these hidden compartments, armed with mandatory manufacturer backdoors and all zero-days they'll ever need. The point is that crackdowns are inevitable, unless your movement aims at staying nearly irrelevant to the regime. They always have the means to win. Changing it requires a restructuring of society, not an increasingly elaborate and lopsided cat-and-mouse game.
> declaration of Independence of cyberspace
Please tell me you're joking.
Comparing high school to a dictatorship is one way to confirm that you have very little experience with the latter. You do understand that if something is causing issues to the regime, then regime will simply make it illegal? Illegal to use, to posses, to buy, etc. — not like specifics matter here.
> Generally just don't come here anymore, but with the US fascists now checking phones at borders, the idea of having low detectability digital "smuggling compartments" (digitally speaking) in our devices is becoming all too real. Some loopback filesystem that your phone can mount that has the rest of the phone, various systemd-sysext layers for bitchat.
Even then, that's just wishful thinking. Only GrapheneOS has something similar right now, duress PIN/password (which isn't exactly designed for cases like this, but still) [0]. It won't help you much in a dictatorship, the police isn't that dumb — you'll be subjecting yourself to physical harm by using it. They know that your phone isn't empty, and they don't need anything to prove it. For them gut feeling is enough, laws and human rights are irrelevant.
Also, let's be realistic, Apple isn't going to have something like that on iOS.
The teachers made having a calculator with stuff loaded on it illegal. IP piracy is illegal. Streaming sports is illegal. There's all manners of illegal activity we do. I don't see how my story wasn't clear to you: legality isn't self-enforcing, and it isn't the world's job to bow down to information control demands from governments.
I'm not surprised but I am disappointed seeing two comments that have the most unhackerly spirit. Assuming we should try and do nothing, assuming the government has vast infinite overwhelming technical power, to the degree where it's not even worth trying anything or securing ourselves and our freedom of speech. Assuming technical works will make no difference. I don't think tech has control, is the end all be all here. But I think tech should be showing up to attempt the right thing, attempt to help people deal with fascist totalitarian movements trying to clamp down on the people of this world is something tech ought to do.
> Even then, that's just wishful thinking.
Well, to some degrees, I think it depends on us and our attitudes. And whether we just accept our lot/accept domination from above or not. With the increasingly scary situation at the US and in places like Iran, I think maybe perhaps more people might be interested in doing some civic good against thought control, hopefully.
if you get caught doing an illegal activity in an authoritarian dictatorship, you face fines and/or prison time or death.
of course we can compare these situations to use them as light analogies, but i think that's about where the comparison ends. or in other words, of course you can 1:1 compare situations if you completely dismiss the potential consequences.
having the spirit to free yourself from fascism is needed, but you may get shot while trying to flee to safety or while being pinned to the ground, defenseless.
Iran has had to turn off the internet for good to maintain their vicious violent theocratic totalitarianism. They had to basically give up technology, pull the plug. Sure that demonstrates them "winning", them having control, but also, they couldn't monitor everyone, they couldn't control technology, and their nation will be immensely poorer and worse generally, in remarkably huge ways, because they lost so hard & had no choice.
The declaration of Independence of cyberspace was over the top & ridiculous, but it's right. These states have extremely limited power, and are smaller, much smaller, than the noosphere that surrounds them. With extreme injury states can secluded themselves, like a North Korea, to maintain control. But humankind comes from man the tool maker, homo erectus, and that has been and will keep being our better side. Giving the bastards up above hell, building liberatory, private systems isn't nearly as pointless and hopeless and useless as your 100% all negative don't even try view would indicate, we do have power, especially if we work broadly to improve the general footing, rather than building just exceptional war-time tooling.
of course nothing that would help iranians right now. even if, the numbers would be blocked quickly i guess. but also there doesnt seem to be features that would help in such a serious situation
The 30,000 number comes from the Ministry of Health. It seems the UN number also aligns with the new 30,000 number. This is much worse than the 3,000 that was reported earlier. But it also seems like the crackdown is over now, and we're still just counting deaths from Jan 8 and 9.
I compare this to the recent protests in Bangladesh, where Sheikh Hasina ordered the military to shoot the protesters and the military refused. The difference between these two countries is proof that people do have the ability to disobey orders from authoritarian leaders, and that decision can have a huge impact.
Then why does the article say that they couldn't independently verify the number and that the only source is a German-Iranian eye doctor?
1. The army (air, land, sea, etc)
2. IRGC (revolutionary guards)
3. Basij (a specialized militia within IRCG, often with their own chain of command)
4. Police (for civilian monitoring and control)
5. Guidance Patrol (specialized "morality" police for enforcing Islamic law)
6. Other (undercover, highly trained agents both inside and outside of country)
The reason why it's setup up this way, is to prevent mutiny within the regime.
After the revolution, they realized that they have to setup a system like this to protect themselves, if one of these is compromised.
Currently, Iran is in the process of preparing for a long war with Israel, United States (and their allies in the region). Khamenei has been moved to a secure location and is no longer appearing for "Friday prayers".
He will likely attempt to flee should the regime falls. I hope that he is captured alive and is forced to stand trial.
He has to answer for every single person he has harmed, both in Iran and elsewhere.
(Also, were your family part of the mujahideen/OMPI/MEK? I know two French iranian from the diaspora: one had his family involved in the revolution against the shah, and then had to leave when fundamentalists took power, and the other is from a Persian northern clan who supported the Shah and got booted out when the Shah fell, but they still had property (Hashish and poppy seeds if i understood the "import export" subtext correctly) in Afghanistan and northern Iran. Wildly different family stories, both still sad at what Iran became)
It comes, allegedly, from people from that ministry who were talking to TIME.
I would imagine their contact was probably mediated by the state department - the same people currently gearing up for an Iraq-style invasion.
Later on TIME adds:
>TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.
Which is not altogether unsurprising. TIME wasnt exactly the most careful magazine when it came to verifying state department supplied intelligence about WMDs back in 2003.
“The Iranian regime is in trouble. Bringing in mercenaries is its last best hope,” Mr Pompeo wrote on X. “Riots in dozens of cities and the Basij under siege — Mashhad, Tehran, Zahedan. Next stop: Baluchestan," he added. At least ten killed in Iran protests as authorities issue warnings to demonstrators"
“Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them."
https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2026/01/03/mike-po...
They're trying into install a literal monarchy on behalf of a regime which is guilty of committing a Nazi style genocide.
Probably a little skepticism is warranted on their casualty figures.
It's more ethnic cleansing via conflict than it is industrial racially targetted murder.
Remember Israel has millions of "Arab Israelis"/Palestinians living in Israel proper.
The salient features are mass slaughter and land grabs motivated by a racial supremacy based ideology. In these respects they are identical.
Those Arabs dont feel entirely safe living as second class citizens in a society where UN recognized genocide of their brothers and sisters goes unpunished and chants of "death to arabs" have become louder every day.
Perhaps we know, but the reasons will be unpopular.
US isn’t arming or funding or enabling Iran directly, so calls for US action would mean call to war, which US leadership has already been signaling.
Maybe you think US should go to war. Regardless that’s the biggest difference.
There are also frankly many who are confused about Iran - sympathizing with Iran leadership as enemies of IDF and not understanding who they are and what they do. Lack of video going around doesn’t help.
and the islamic regime was a sponsor of previous pro-palestine movements.
leftists don't find this an appealing mix. they'd rather blame Israel for everything, but here we see Iranians siding with the Israelis because they've seen what islam does to their country.
On the topic of Politicians, Democratic congressmen like Dave Min and Jim Hines have also spoken in favor of US intervention in Iran.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/video/full-interview-exiled-iranian-...
[2] https://youtu.be/jk6wfvje8Zo
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/23/world/video/iran-united-state...
I think its simpler. There is no one white involved. What is unique about Israel is that most of its population is white so its an issue worth covering (for people backing either side). The same with Ukraine. On the other hand what happens in Eritrea or Sudan or Myanmar or Xinjiang does not matter.
Iran's population is also overwhelmingly pro-West.
[0] https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-r...
China in Tibet, China's treatment of the Uyghurs, Russia's war against Ukraine, Kony 2012 etc, there are lots of causes where the local government in whichever country you look at isn't actively involved, yet there was a lot more public noise and campaigns.
I don't know what the answer is, but "my government doesn't deliver weapons to them" hasn't been a reason before, so I don't see why it would be now.
The Uighur is easy: Nike and a lots of western brand used Chinese work camps. In my neighborhood that's what people protested, not really Chinese treatment of their minority, but the fact our brands used slave labor. Nike and all no promised they wouldn't use slave again, the Uighur are still discriminated and forcefully sterilized, no one care anymore in the West.
Russia war against Ukraine is very different, it's the first war in Europe since the 90s, and the first "real" war in europe since 45 (I guarantee you if Ukraine folded in 3 days, no one would have said much). Also, Europe is financing the Russian war economy, which is easy to protest.
The US government wasn't a friend of Kony in 2012. Before Trump 2, the US were not that friendly with Russia, yet people protested in many places around the world to show support for Ukraine and to voice their opposition to Russia's imperialistic wars, being aligned with their governments' position.
It's different with Iran. Some of that is likely to be Iran's lower profile, but not all -- it's not like media outlets are not reporting on it at all and you have to get your information from niche sources to hear about events in Iran.
And the outrage wasn’t always directed at the government. We don’t see Iranian students in the US being attacked. We don’t see Iranian places of worship in the US being attacked. We don’t see as much outrage in the comments on HN - there were some event justifying it.
This is very different from Israel, where our govts are actively supporting a genocide. That requires activism to change course.
Why would people demonstrate if everyone is aligned?
“Human beings are members of a whole
In creation of one essence and soul
If one member is afflicted with pain
Other members uneasy will remain
If you have no sympathy for human pain
The name of human you cannot retain”
—Saadi, Persian poet
Are you under the illusion that the Palestinians funded and built their previous infrastructure? Lol.
Israel has already grabbed a huge amount of Gaza after the genocide and Trumps "peace". And in the west bank they have ramped up the annexation as well. Israel has been swallowing Palestine while driving away Palestinians for more than 75 years now.
An apartheid state is not going to give the second class ethnic group any concessions.
Unfortunately, ABC and NBC haven't found a way to blame Trump for what's happening in Iran. Highlighting the atrocities perpetuated in the name of Islam is more likely to help Trump than hurt him, so this story must be minimized. It's just good, smart politics.
The only NGO looking for Iran exclusively is Iran Human Right (https://iranhr.net/en/) and depend on the UNHRC, which is not particularly media trained and not good at reacting (also, they lost US funding less than a year ago and are reorganizing as we speak).
In the end, it will be like Yemen or Sudan all over again: media hear of the massacre late, send journalists, journalists get refused, they send journalists to neighboring countries and infiltrate with local guide help, some journalist dies, and three month after the beginning of the trouble we will get images and information.
And the neoliberal west has more in common with Israel than Iran, I don't quite understand why you choose to write broad political comments if you don't have the basic background knowledge that would be needwd in this discussion.
The entirety of the world does not run on Western neoliberal lens and every region has had its history and challenges and fights that due to cognitive limits during discussion are never given their legitimate space.
This can apply to grooming gangs in UK, the conditions of minorities in middle east (Yazidis or others)
An individual who might have an issue with a broad ideology that considers all non believers as subhuman to be converted, killed or brought into the said ideology by hook or crook can be motivated with their own experiences.
> What explains the silence from activists outside Iran on this particular issue?
What explains the silence from the media on all other conflicts. It's certainly not because lives are not being destroyed in Sudan [1] and Myanmar [2].
Not exactly. There's a singular exception which has received torrential "coverage".
The way I see it, any support for Iranians will be co-opted to start a war with Iran, which will be a disaster.
This isn't the case for Israel / Gaza, which is what I assume you're alluding to when you talk about activism.
If the US were serious about the well-being of Iranian people they'd stop trying to screw the economy and foment violent unrest, but of course that is not what they are interested in. They want war. They want regime change. They want balkanisation.
There is footage slowly trickling out.
I have to imagine the situation in Iran is more difficult for a few reasons:
1. Gen AI is much better today than it was in 2022. So, both sides can generate much more realistic fakes.
2. There was an article here on HN about Iran's internet slowly coming back on a whitelist basis. We're probably getting more pro-Government videos now than we were at the beginning of the current events.
3. Further crackdown on Starlink minimizes authentic leaks (I only heard about this and have no way to confirm how impactful this really is)
I'll add my own anecdotal agreement with your suspicion though - the footage coming out of Iran has been, for me, more difficult than other conflicts to piece together into a cohesive story. Western countries are claiming 30k+ dead, and while I don't necessarily reject the claim, the situation on the ground is still very blurry to me.
I am sure some people would like to know who’s on the whitelist.
If there’s nothing happening, then the obvious way for the authorities to prove that is to let observers in, and let independent information out. They do not do this, so I will take these reports of deaths more seriously.
E.g. like reading the sentence:
>TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.
And going "hmmm".
> Hamas mercenaries
Literally LOL'd at that! What an utter load of nonsense.
> >TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.
> And going "hmmm".
Journalists couldn’t possibly independently verify large scale death counts, especially at this point.
That doesn’t mean they’re wrong or propaganda.
If you start “going hmmm” when journalists honestly report their own limitations then that’s just going to leave you more vulnerable to the psy-op peddlers who never give such disclaimers.
TIME magazine didnt do anything like that. They most likely got a call from the state department in between their Iran invasion planning meetings to say "hey, we've got a totally legit guy on the inside of rhe iranian ministry of health with an EXPLOSIVE story you wanna talk to him?"
That guy will be getting paid to risk his life talking to the enemy and he will know that he shouldnt disappoint.
The US paid all sorts of informants to provide information on WMDs and shockingly, they told the state department what it wanted to hear and TIME printed all of that nonsense too.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-casualty-counts-us-funde...
Then I'm sure the full might and wrath of the U.S. military would be unleashed upon him and his regime...
It will be his greatest act as president if Trump sends real assistance, as the Iranian people are begging him. It will save countless lives. Either way, in the end, Persia will rise again, the lion will raise its head, the brutality of Islamic oppression will be cast off, and the world will come to know the true spirit of these people.
How come I wonder?
[edit] I don't get why I'm getting downvoted. Are people making assumptions because I mentioned Dresden? Get a hold of yourself.
And the crowd itself can be deadly if it gets too dense, due to panic or otherwise. For example, there have been at least two crowd collapse events with >1000 deaths in the Mecca pilgrimage.
It is a fair question.
Can You IMAGINE 30k deaths? A genocide happened in gaza and it took months, i think a year to reach 30k target and you are saying iran judt straight up killed 30k civilians in 1-2 days?
Labeling it a "protest" is equating it to what a bunch of clustered people holding stupid billboards and yelling into microphones. This isn't that.
However, if none of that happen, you have a civil war.
It sucks that no one has morals or consistant stances anymore. Just political positions to push specific agendas.
12 instances of Israel already on a thread about 30 THOUSAND HUMAN BEINGS murdered in Iran.