What Iran’s Theocracy Doesn’t Want You To See
Thousands of Iranians are dead from a crackdown on protests. The Khamenei regime responded to mass protests with repression. Mohsen and Mohammad are working to keep the uprising alive abroad.
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By Martina Podsklanova
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Mohsen Abdolreza was once an ordinary child.
He loved playing the drums, took part in kickboxing championships, helped his parents at their family restaurant, and was in love with a girl named Samira.
For most people, these are beautiful, nostalgic experiences — memories that, in adulthood, bring a soft smile to the face and warmth to the heart.
But for Mohsen, they are tied to hatred.
He had to leave kickboxing competitions and take up coaching, after he lost his eye in protests in the late 1990s.
Under Iran’s strict theocracy, he could be beaten up for playing instruments.
And even though his feelings for Samira were mutual, he could never take her out. Premarital relationships – even a couple appearing in public, or holding hands, was a crime punishable by law.
Later Samira moved and he never saw her again.
Khamenei’s regime stripped him and millions of other Iranians of the chance to live a normal life. When people like him demanded it be returned to them, the cost was devastating, with thousands killed in the crackdown.
A new wave of protests swept across Iran on December 28, 2025. They later spread to more than one hundred Iranian cities and are escalating into a full-scale revolution.
Economic hardship ignited public anger, but protesters quickly started to demand the removal of what might be the crisis’s root cause: Supreme Leader Khamenei. The protests have now been crushed through mass repression. At least 5,000 people have been killed – with some estimates rising as high as 16,500.
Security forces are using war-class weapons against protesters and storming hospitals to arrest injured people. Iranians inside the country have been cut off from the world for over 10 days as the regime has restricted mobile and internet connection.
Iranians abroad, however, continue to be the voice of their people. In Hamburg, Germany, around 13,000 people came out to support Iranian protesters, one of the biggest protests outside of Iran itself. Protests took place in Germany, France, and the UK – all the way to Australia and New Zealand. On January 18, Kyiv’s Iranian diaspora gathered near the Iranian embassy.
The situation in Iran is now a test for the international community of how much a totalitarian regime can kill without facing consequences. The coming months will be decisive for whether Iran’s theocratic regime will topple.
Mohsen was 20 years old during his first protest in 1999.
These were the first mass student protests in Iran after Islamic revolution in 1979. Young people took to the streets to protest restrictions on free speech. In July 1999, the reformist newspaper Salam was shut down after it criticised the Islamic regime. After the first demonstration, pro-government thugs stormed student dormitories, arresting students.
“It was a national movement. If I, as an Iranian, had not joined the protests, it would have meant betraying my people,” Mohsen said.
Mohsen remembers standing in a crowd during those 1999 protests, when regime forces threw something resembling a Molotov cocktail, a simple incendiary weapon, directly at them. A fragment struck Mohsen’s eye.
“Someone from the crowd took me to the hospital in a taxi, and I stayed there for several days. But due to retinal damage, I lost my sight a few years later,” Mohsen said.
Iranians have lived under constant threat since Mohsen can remember. From childhood, he remembers harsh laws – and the severe punishments for breaking them. Walking with a girl could lead to arrest and flogging. Women who did not wear a hijab, or wore it ‘incorrectly’, risked being beaten. Drinking alcohol was punishable by fines and flogging, and repeat offenses could carry a death sentence.
Around 2005, Mohsen realized that he no longer identified with Islam because of how the religion had been distorted in Iran, his home. Without telling anyone, he traveled to Turkey and converted to Christianity. This was a life-threatening move.
“If you say, ‘I am no longer Muslim, I am Christian,’ you will be arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. And if you do not return to Islam, you will be executed,” Mohsen said.
He never spoke about it openly in order not to put his family in danger.
In 2022, Mohsen was travelling to Finland for a kickboxing competition as a coach, when he heard from his family that his country was once again drowning in blood. Iranian moral police had beaten a woman named Mahsa Amini to death for wearing a hijab improperly.
Protests began the day after Mahsa Amini’s death in intensive care on September 16, 2022. The main slogan became ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’, a chant that had not been heard since the early 2000s.
The government brutally suppressed any dissent in spring 2023 through violence and mass political imprisonments.
The 2022 mass demonstrations spread across more than 150 cities and nearly all 31 provinces of the country. Women burned their hijabs and publicly cut their hair. Security forces used heavy weapons to suppress the uprisings.
Just like today, the regime restricted access to mobile networks and the internet, cutting protesters off from the outside world, limiting coordination, and hiding the brutality of the crackdowns. As a result, more than 500 Iranians were killed, and around 21,000 were imprisoned.
In Finland, Mohsen began raising awareness about the situation back home, helping friends coordinate protests in Iran through social media chats. The Khamenei regime identified him, and he started receiving demands to stop his activities. That’s how he ended up staying in Finland as a refugee.
There’s a second Iranian we want to introduce you to, who had a similar experience to Mohsen. His name is Mohammad Farzi.
Mohammad was among people who wanted to leave the country before 2022. He was working in the sphere of arts – acting in theatre, filming and creating music.
He hated censorship of the regime, hiding his art from authorities, and often having to approve with the authorities what music he can or can’t produce.
But he changed his mind and decided to stay with his people when the police killed Mahsa Amini.
He remembers standing amongst a crowd of protesters when he noticed that a laser ray was aiming at his eye. A bullet struck Mohammad’s eye, severely damaging his eyesight. To this day, the bullet is still stuck in his head.
Disclaimer: You can view a video of Mohammad after he was shot here, via a video provided by him. Be warned, the video includes scenes of blood and injury.
“It felt like I left my body and everything was in slow motion,” Mohammad recalled.
But as the regime’s ability to block information has developed, others are fighting to get information out of Iran. Mohammad also said that some people inside Iran have figured out ways to connect with friends and family abroad, despite the internet limitations.
“They used Starlinks to communicate and send messages and news inside Iran to outside,” said Mohammad. “One of [the hacks] is that they recorded videos, and they went to the border lines, for example, from Iraq, using the other internet, not Iran’s internet,” Mohammad said.
As of this week, three of Mohsen’s friends are dead. He talks to his family about once a week, if and when they briefly get access to the internet and mobile connection.
“We are fine, but all people around us are being killed,” Mohsen’s family told him during one of those brief moments of contact.
This year’s protests spread to all the 31 provinces in more than 500 locations and taken over rural areas, which hasn’t happened before. What started as economic demands spread to multiple demands for change, including political ones.
Iran’s supreme leader has acknowledged that thousands of people were killed in the uprisings, and as of Monday the demonstrations seem to have slowed due to the government-backed violence. However, an internet blackout still appears to be in effect: the vast majority of traffic is being blocked according to the monitoring service NetBlocks.
Similar to Mohsen and Mohammad, many protesters are losing their eyes from bullet wounds and pressure-based guns. Forces seem to be aiming at people’s heads and the most vulnerable places of their bodies.
Many morgues in Iran are currently overflowing with bodies. In many cases, they are stacked on top of each other or placed in other rooms because they do not fit in the refrigerated storage units. A lot of these dead bodies are aged 20-25 years, mostly dying from shots in the head or heart, or in the eyes.
Mohammed, Mohsen and other protesters have terrible, life-altering eye injuries.
In some ways it is not a coincidence, but symbolism of the regime’s intentions.
These injuries served a grisly reminder: the Iranian regime asks you to deny what you see.
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“I’ll support The Counteroffensive as long as you and your colleagues can do the work. It’s valuable and difficult at the same time. I appreciate it and I also hope that you can all do it without the understandable exhaustion.”
By Martina Podsklanova
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NEWS OF THE DAY:
By Tania Novakivska and Yelyzaveta Kolos
Good morning to readers: Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
DROUGHT FROM KAKHOVKA DAM FALLOUT IS REDUCING HARVEST: Amidst a drought caused by the Russian attack and destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, Ukrainian farmers in Ukraine’s south are warned by scientists to avoid planting sunflower and corn.
In 2025, farmers in the Dnipropetrovk region planted a record number of sunflowers, and only 50% of the plantings could be harvested. Both sunflower and corn are two major crops for the Ukrainian agricultural industry - with sunflower being a national symbol for Ukraine.
RUSSIA WILL PRODUCE 1,000 SHAHED-TYPE DRONES PER DAY: As peace talks continue Russia continues to ramp up armament, increasing drone production to 1,000 units per day, Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi stated in an interview with Ukrainian media.
Syrskyi also noted that over the past year, Ukraine has struck 719 Russian targets in the rear, causing damage of more than $15 billion. These attacks targeted Russia’s energy industry which is the backbone of Russia’s economy.
RUSSIA IS AUSTRIA’S BIGGEST SPY THREAT: While some estimate that 20% of diplomats are working with special services, there are 13,000 diplomats working in Austria’s capital Vienna, according to Austria’s intelligence director Sylvia Mayer.
The full-scale invasion has prompted this intensification of Russian espionage activities, and has increased the risk of cyberattacks and sabotage across Europe.
DOG OF WAR:
This adorable fox-like doggie met Nastia’s sister in Ivano-Frankivsk when she was travelling to the Ukrainian Carpathians. It went up to her group to say hello.
Stay safe out there.
Best,
Nastia
Thank you for all your brave reporting with all the hardships you have faced. These words I look for with hope every time...Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands. And hoping all the despots/dictators and wannbe dictators pay for their sins.