SAEDNEWS: With the official announcement of the names of the recent incident victims by the government, opposition media now have to prove their fictional statistics.
According to the political news service of Saed News, the Iranian government has fulfilled its promise and released the list of casualties from the January incidents. Now it is up to Western media, which claim the death toll is 36,000 or even 50,000, to publish their list of alleged victims. Can they provide not dozens of names, but even just 500 national ID numbers to supplement the official list?
Yesterday, the Office of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran published the names of those killed during the January unrest, including first and last names, fathers’ names, and the last six digits of their national ID numbers. The office’s statement noted that the list covers “2,986 individuals” and emphasized that “the total number of victims of the recent incidents, as previously announced, is 3,117.” It explained that the discrepancy of 131 names compared to the previous report is due to some individuals being unidentified or having mismatches in their national ID registration, which will be corrected in an updated list.
The statement also announced that “a system has been designed, which will be made public within 48 hours, allowing any new information or claims to be verified without bureaucratic complications, while respecting privacy, and providing accurate responses to any potential questions.”
Western Media Should Publish 36,000 National IDs
Western media—both Persian- and English-language—claim the number of deaths is twelve times higher than Iran’s official count. Reza Pahlavi has even cited 50,000. On social media, fake users, monarchists, and cyber operatives affiliated with the MEK have circulated countless fictional stories about deaths, more far-fetched than the most imaginative Hollywood movies—claims of people pretending to be dead among piles of corpses to avoid police shootings, burying bodies in home yards, or retrieving unidentified bodies from forensic offices by lying about relations. Even if all these stories were true—which they are not—the claim of 36,000 deaths still seems cinematic, if not Bollywood-like.
The narratives of outlets like Iran International and the BBC rarely cover more than a few dozen victims. Yet, even with such a small number, they present a “high figure” in the audience’s perception and can manipulate the perception of casualties as they wish.
Previously, a report in Farhikhtegan newspaper called on Iran International to publish the national ID numbers of 12,000 of the 36,000 alleged victims. Beyond reiterating that demand, it is now essential to stress that Western media should release national ID numbers and names of individuals not included in the list published by the Iranian government.
The report explained that people are not mere numbers that can disappear, vanish, or be hidden. Each individual is connected to family, relatives, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. To conceal 36,000 people, millions would have to cooperate and remain silent—a logistical impossibility, especially in a country where Western media claim the majority oppose the government and are begging for a foreign attack. How could so many dissenters be silenced simultaneously? This reveals the contradictions in the lies these outlets publish.
Western media aim to turn the Iranian people into numbers—figures that do not exist in reality, hiding the real nation behind them. The Iranian people are not numbers to be counted in tens of thousands to justify foreign intervention, nor are they rioters and terrorists attacking citizens, security forces, libraries, banks, mosques, shrines, or government and private facilities. The identity of the Iranian nation cannot be distorted.
