Snipers on rooftops: How Iran’s theocracy shoots to disable dissent

 

The ongoing nationwide uprising in Iran, now in its third week as of mid-January 2026, offers stark and urgent lessons for freedom-loving citizens everywhere. What began as outrage over economic collapse—a plunging rial, runaway inflation, and unaffordable basics—has mushroomed into explicit demands to dismantle the Islamic Republic's clerical rule. Protesters chant “Death to the dictator,” wave pre-1979 flags, defy compulsory hijab laws, and risk live fire, mass arrests, and mutilation to assert that no regime owns their dignity or destiny.

Iran’s regime has responded to the latest wave of nationwide protests with a level of brutality that recalls—and in some accounts surpasses—the bloodiest episodes of its post-revolutionary history. Rather than tolerate dissent, the country’s theocrats and security officials have ordered their forces to fire into unarmed crowds, with snipers and sharpshooters deliberately aiming at protesters’ faces and genitals in a calculated effort to maim, blind and terrorise.

The unrest, which erupted on December 28th 2025 over a precipitous collapse in the value of the rial and spiralling inflation, has rapidly evolved into the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic since the Green Movement of 2009. What began as economic grievances quickly broadened into calls for the fall of the clerical system, with chants of “Death to the dictator” targeting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei echoing across dozens of cities. By mid-January 2026 the protests had spread nationwide, drawing tens of thousands onto the streets each night despite—or perhaps because of—an intensifying crackdown.

The authorities’ response has been swift and savage. Since January 8th, a near-total internet blackout has severed most communication with the outside world, making independent verification difficult but not impossible. Smuggled videos, eyewitness testimonies relayed via satellite links such as Starlink, and reports from doctors and human rights monitors paint a grim picture. In Tehran hospitals, ophthalmologists have documented more than 400 gunshot wounds to the eyes in a single facility alone, many caused by birdshot pellets or live rounds fired at close range. Medics describe patients blinded for life, with pellets lodged in eye sockets and skulls fractured by high-velocity ammunition. Colleagues in other cities report similar patterns: deliberate targeting of the head and face to destroy vision and demoralise survivors.

Even more disturbing are accounts of gendered violence. Human-rights groups, including the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, have gathered credible testimony that security forces—members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Basij militias and regular police—have shot protesters in the pelvic region and genitals. At least one young girl is reported to be in critical condition after sustaining such a wound. Rights monitors describe these tactics as instruments of systematic mutilation, echoing the deliberate disfigurement seen during the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising that followed the death of Mahsa Amini.

Snipers positioned on rooftops have been repeatedly cited by witnesses. In Tehran neighbourhoods such as Tajrish Arg, Sattarkhan and Pasdaran, protesters and bystanders describe shooters picking off individuals with precision aimed at heads, faces and hands. Videos analysed by Amnesty International show security forces firing automatic weapons from police-station roofs into fleeing crowds. Eyewitnesses in Alborz and Razavi Khorasan provinces report mass killings, with bodies piling up in makeshift morgues and hospitals overwhelmed to the point of turning away non-urgent cases.

Death-toll estimates vary widely owing to the communications blackout and the regime’s efforts to conceal casualties. Opposition sources and some hospital leaks suggest figures in the thousands—potentially exceeding 3,000—far surpassing the roughly 1,500 killed in 2019 or the 550 during the Mahsa Amini protests. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented unlawful killings on an “unprecedented scale”, with security forces raiding hospitals to arrest wounded protesters or pressure families into false statements that their relatives were Basij members killed by demonstrators.

The regime frames the unrest as the work of foreign saboteurs and “rioters”, vowing harsh punishment under charges such as moharebeh (“waging war against God”), which carries the death penalty. Supreme Leader Khamenei has blamed the United States, while state media releases coerced confessions and insists autopsies show stab wounds rather than bullets. Yet the pattern of injuries—concentrated on vital and symbolic areas—suggests intent to punish and deter rather than merely disperse.

As the blackout enters its second week, the flow of information has slowed to a trickle. Sporadic reports continue to emerge of ongoing demonstrations, fires set to regime symbols and isolated acts of resistance. The economic strain of prolonged securitisation, combined with the regime’s reliance on exhausted security forces (and alleged deployment of Iraqi militias), raises questions about sustainability. For now, however, Iran’s rulers appear determined to crush the uprising at any cost, betting that terror will once again prove more effective than reform. The coming weeks will test whether that wager holds—or whether the streets’ demand for change will prove unquenchable.

♦️ The core takeaway is timeless yet freshly brutal: freedom is never granted; it must be seized, often at terrible cost. Iranians have learned from the 2009 Green Movement and the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising that sporadic outrage fades under sustained repression unless it becomes persistent, strategic, and nationwide. Protesters now emphasize consistency—small groups linking up street by street, turning funerals into fresh demonstrations, and sustaining strikes despite blackouts and bullets. One young demonstrator captured it plainly: the path to liberty lies in “continuing protesting and doing so consistently and strategically.” Fragmented or reactive dissent invites defeat; unified, unrelenting pressure can erode even entrenched tyrannies.

♦️A second lesson concerns the regime's playbook—and its limits. Authoritarians rely on fear, information control, and disproportionate violence to survive. Iran's rulers have imposed a near-total internet shutdown (disrupting even Starlink), jammed communications, raided hospitals for the wounded, and deployed snipers to maim faces and genitals in a deliberate campaign of terror. Yet these tactics reveal weakness, not strength. When a government must blind its own people to hide its brutality, or fabricate foreign plots to justify killings, legitimacy has already crumbled. The mask slips: obedience enforced by atrocity is not consent, and no amount of jamming can erase collective memory or shared fury.

♦️For global citizens, the implications are sobering. Digital authoritarianism is spreading, but so is defiance. Regimes worldwide—from autocracies in Asia to populists elsewhere—study Iran's blackout model to choke coordination and obscure crimes. Freedom-loving people must counter this: support tools for uncensored access (satellite internet, VPNs, proxy networks), amplify smuggled evidence, and pressure governments to sanction enablers of repression rather than equivocate. Silence or selective outrage only emboldens tyrants; consistent solidarity—moral, financial, technological—can tip balances.

Finally, the Iranian streets remind us that economic pain often ignites political awakening, but the deeper fuel is dignity denied. When daily life becomes intolerable under corruption, ideology, and incompetence, grievances blur into existential rejection of the system itself. Surveys and chants show Iranians increasingly united against theocracy, yearning for secular democracy even if visions of what follows (republic, constitutional monarchy) differ. The lesson: defend institutions that protect individual rights before crises force desperate uprisings. Complacency in free societies risks squandering what Iranians die to reclaim.

The uprising may yet be crushed—security forces remain loyal, foreign intervention is fraught—but the genie is out. Iranians have shown that even after decades of indoctrination and terror, the human demand for agency endures. For citizens who value liberty, the message is clear: stand ready to defend it at home, amplify those fighting for it abroad, and never underestimate the power of ordinary people refusing to kneel. The struggle in Iran is not distant spectacle; it is a mirror held up to the fragility—and resilience—of freedom itself.