Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated on Saturday that “several thousand individuals” lost their lives in this month’s anti-government protests—his first admission of the unrest’s lethal magnitude.
Khamenei noted that some of these deaths occurred “brutally and inhumanely” during a state TV-broadcast public gathering, though he provided no specifics. He blamed the U.S. and Israel for facilitating the killings, adding that the Islamic Republic possesses evidence to back this assertion.
Khamenei emphasized that Iran has no intention of leading the nation into war, yet it will not let either domestic or foreign offenders escape punishment.
He asserted that U.S. President Donald Trump is responsible for “the deaths, harm, and accusations he has directed at the Iranian people,” and that Washington’s overarching policy aim is to bring Iran under military, political, and economic control.
Khamenei’s stated death toll aligns with estimates from human rights organizations and other sources indicating around 3,500 people have died. These groups also estimate over 22,000 individuals have been detained.
Trump that Iran requires new leadership and labeled Khamenei as responsible for “the total devastation of the country and the employment of violence at unprecedented levels.”
The protests have unfolded amid a record-breaking internet blackout affecting Iran’s roughly 92 million residents.
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Earlier, local media outlets reported that internet connectivity had been partially restored, even though most residents still seemed largely disconnected from the outside world on the ninth day of the blackout.
Iran’s government suspended internet and mobile phone services on January 8 to curb growing unrest triggered by a currency crisis that emerged late last month.
“Internet access has been restored for some subscribers now,” the semi-official Mehr News Agency stated, without clarifying which restrictions had been removed or if users had reconnected to international platforms and services.
The semi-official Fars News Agency additionally reported that mobile text messaging services had been reactivated following an earlier block.
NetBlocks, an internet traffic monitoring group, that there had been a “very minor increase” in connectivity on Saturday, noting that overall access still stood at approximately 2% of normal levels and there was “no sign of a substantial recovery.”
As of early Saturday afternoon local time, most users in Iran seemed to be offline, with little activity visible on platforms like Telegram, , and — services they had previously used through virtual private networks (VPNs).
Near-total communications blackouts have become a common tactic for Islamic Republic authorities during critical events—from this month’s nationwide protests to the June conflict with Israel. This has disconnected a large portion of the population from the global internet and redirected users to a government-controlled domestic network that functions separately from the broader web.
On Friday, NetBlocks that the current blackout had exceeded the internet shutdown implemented during Iran’s 2019 protests.
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Earlier on Saturday, Fars quoted unnamed authorities as stating that internet and other communications services were being gradually restored, but that certain restrictions would stay in effect “for as long as security conditions demand.”