Iranian Presidential Office casualty announcement

Provenance and source chain

Open-source records show the ¹ published the Persian-language announcement on February 1, 2026, labeled 12 Bahman 1404 on the official presidential site and the state government portal. ² The announcement states that Iran’s authorities compiled a list of 2,986 deceased people from “recent incidents” tied to unrest during the month of Dey 1404, and that the government previously announced a total death toll of 3,117. ²

Iranian state and semi-official outlets rapidly amplified the same text, often reproducing identical phrasing and numbers. Reporting in ² echoed the official language and repeated the figures of 2,986 named entries and a 3,117 total. ^1 3 published a matching writeup with the same totals. ^4 3 posted a version that likewise repeated the core numbers and narrative framing. ⁵

International coverage treated the announcement as part of a broader state effort to control dispute about protest fatalities. ⁶ described the 3,117 figure as the first official death toll and reported that official statements labeled a portion of deaths as “terrorists,” while activists reported substantially higher totals. ^7 8 cited the same official total while also citing higher counts from ⁹ and documenting competing claims about who caused deaths. ⁸

Event context and timeline

Calendar conversion sources place Dey 1404 roughly from late December 2025 through late January 2026 in the Gregorian calendar. ¹⁰ A date conversion tool equates 7 Dey 1404 with December 28, 2025, a date that multiple international reports identify as the start of nationwide protests tied to economic distress and a currency collapse. ¹¹

Reporting from ¹² and the ¹³ framework describes a rapidly escalating crackdown in early January, with the UN human rights chief expressing alarm at mounting violence against protesters and citing UN sources that spoke in terms of “hundreds” killed at that stage of the crisis. ^14 15 dates the protest wave to late December 2025 and describes early January 2026 as an extreme period of repression, with large-scale unlawful killings and heavy restrictions on information flows during shutdown conditions. ¹⁶

Multiple credible sources also describe an extended nationwide internet shutdown that sharply constrained verification. ¹ reports widespread lethal force and mass detentions during the early phase of protests, describing unlawful use of firearms and sweeping arrests. ¹⁷ Reuters reports that Iranian authorities blocked internet access starting January 8, 2026, and that security organs expanded arrests after authorities suppressed street protests. ¹⁸ A Chinese-language report carried by SWI swissinfo cites NetBlocks and reports more than 300 hours of disruption, while also acknowledging the severe difficulty of producing an accurate death count under prolonged blackout conditions. ¹⁹

Verifiable claims and evidentiary gaps

The President’s Office announcement contains several discrete claims that open sources confirm at the surface level.

First claim concerns publication. Official government web pages show the Office of the President posted the full statement text on February 1, 2026, and the government portal reposted the same text shortly afterward. ² A separate presidency site post reports that ² announced through ⁵ that the Office of the President planned to publish an important notice about the Dey events, reinforcing the official nature of the subsequent release. ¹³

Second claim concerns the arithmetic. The statement asserts a previously announced total of 3,117 deaths and publishes 2,986 named entries, then attributes the gap of 131 to unidentified victims and national ID inconsistencies. Basic internal consistency exists because 2,986 plus 131 equals 3,117, matching the total. ² Internal consistency does not validate the underlying data, yet it reduces the likelihood of accidental mismatch inside the narrative.

Third claim concerns data sources. The statement asserts that Iran’s forensic body compiled names and that officials matched names against civil registration records. ² Open sources confirm the statement’s claim about stated methodology only in the limited sense that multiple state outlets repeat that same description, creating repetition but not independent validation. ¹

Fourth claim concerns a verification mechanism. The statement promises an online system for public submissions and verification within 48 hours and frames the system as a way to reduce administrative friction while respecting privacy through limited identifiers. ² Reporting from ² indicates Iranian legal and reformist figures pressed for an open platform that permits safe public input and independent verification, while also noting fear of retaliation among families. ²⁰

Major evidentiary gaps remain for any truth judgment about completeness and accuracy.

Open sources do not provide a strong method to verify the published list at scale. The statement links to a downloadable list file, yet independent researchers face major barriers due to internet shutdowns, intimidation of families, and restricted access to official raw data beyond what authorities choose to release. ⁹ AGSI’s Iran Media Review explicitly states that outside observers cannot independently verify official figures while Iran remains largely offline, and it also questions the state’s category labels such as “martyrs.” ³

The overall death toll dispute also cuts against the statement’s implication that a single authoritative number exists. Al Jazeera reports the government figure of 3,117 while reporting HRANA’s contemporaneous count of 4,519 deaths, with 9,049 additional deaths under review. ⁸ AP reports a later activist figure of at least 6,221 while also stating that independent verification remains difficult given blackout conditions and limited press access. ¹² Reuters reports HRANA tallies above 5,900 in late January and states that Reuters lacked independent verification for competing figures. ¹⁸

Message design, reasoning errors, and cognitive biases

Language choices in the statement strongly shape perception.

Euphemism and ambiguity appear early. The text repeatedly uses terms equivalent to incidents and unrest rather than clear labels such as protests, crackdown, or state violence, and the wording avoids direct responsibility for deaths. ² Such phrasing narrows the frame to an unfortunate national tragedy rather than a political conflict about state conduct, accountability, and rights.

Moral framing dominates the center of gravity in the argument. The statement emphasizes shared grief and national belonging, asserting that every deceased person represents a rich network of ties and that the president regards himself as a guardian of public rights. ² Emotional appeals do not equal deception, yet emotional priming often shapes audience judgments before evidence review. Readers who feel moral alignment with the speaker often relax scrutiny, a pattern consistent with authority bias and affective reasoning in persuasion research.

Authority bias appears through institutional signaling. The statement invokes Iran’s forensic authority and civil registration system as the basis for the list, a technique that encourages acceptance through perceived technical rigor rather than disclosed methodology. ² The text offers no sampling rules, no inclusion criteria, no date and location fields, and no cause-of-death categories. Lack of disclosed audit steps leaves a large space for selection effects or classification disputes.

The statement also contains a clear adversarial narrative that fits common propaganda logic.

Scapegoating and ad hominem framing appear in the repeated references to “enemies” and “ill-wishers” who allegedly trade human lives as mere numbers for political profit. ² The statement attacks motives rather than engaging specific evidence from critics. Such framing encourages a hostile attribution bias among supporters, priming them to interpret any alternative dataset as malicious fabrication rather than competing measurement under blackout conditions.

A false dichotomy structure also appears. The statement implies a binary where the government values every life while opponents treat deaths as a numeric instrument. ² Reality supports more than two categories. Human rights groups often treat casualty counting as accountability work rather than political profiteering, while states often treat casualty counting as narrative control rather than pure transparency. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch reporting describes unlawful lethal force, mass arrests, intimidation of families, and coercive measures, none of which align with a purely humanitarian state posture. ¹⁵

Preemptive refutation functions as an inoculation tactic. The statement labels alternative statistics as manipulative before describing any verification process, then presents the official number as the stable baseline. ² Anchoring bias then encourages audiences to treat 3,117 as the reference point, judging all other counts as deviations rather than parallel estimates under severe information constraints. International reporting reinforces the existence of competing anchors, with official sources at 3,117 and activist sources ranging from above 4,500 to above 6,000, plus even higher claims in political debate. ⁸

Category manipulation represents another reasoning risk. State-linked narratives separate “innocent” victims from “terrorists,” a classification that carries major political consequences. AP reports that officials described 2,427 deaths as civilians and security forces while labeling the remainder as “terrorists.” ⁷ SWI swissinfo reports an official claim that the remaining 690 people fit labels such as terrorists, rioters, and attackers of military facilities, paired with official assertions about security force restraint. ¹⁹ Such labeling shapes perceived legitimacy of deaths and shifts blame toward opposition actors, even when the state releases no public evidence for each classification.

A parallel state narrative from presidential communications reinforces the same bias patterns. A January presidency site message attributed crisis and bloodshed to “enemies” and described an “American-Zionist conspiracy,” while also asserting deaths “near three thousand” and promising investigations and justice. ²¹ A state government portal post quotes ³ describing enemy “psychological operations,” accusing adversaries of planning “killed-making” and inflating statistics, and promising the government would publish names and correct errors after review. ²² Alignment between the casualty-list statement and earlier messaging suggests a coordinated narrative line that mixes empathy with external blame and information control.

Truth assessment and confidence judgment

Evidence supports a high-confidence judgment that Iranian authorities published the announcement and presented the stated numbers as official figures. Official government web pages show the text, the totals, and the promised publication of a linked list. ² Multiple Iranian outlets across the state and semi-official spectrum repeat the same content, indicating centralized dissemination rather than an isolated rumor. ¹

Evidence supports a medium-confidence judgment that the government’s internal bookkeeping produced a coherent dataset for at least some portion of deaths. The statement’s reference to forensic and civil registry matching, plus the decision to publish partial IDs and father names, implies authorities pulled data from formal administrative systems rather than inventing all names ad hoc. ² Government risks also rise when officials publish personally identifying components, since families and local communities can challenge omissions and errors, a dynamic reported by The Guardian in its discussion of public pressure and mistrust. ²⁰

Evidence does not support a high-confidence judgment that the published list captures all deaths from Dey events, classifies them accurately, or assigns responsibility truthfully. Several factors drive that limitation.

Information constraints sharply limit independent validation. Reuters reports that authorities blocked internet access from January 8 and describes mass arrests, intimidation, and unofficial detention sites, conditions that reduce free reporting and discourage families from public claims. ²³ The Guardian reports fear of retaliation among families who publicly identify fatalities, a fear that directly affects any crowdsourced verification system. ²⁰

Independent counts also consistently exceed official totals. Al Jazeera reports HRANA’s count above 4,500 at the time of the official death toll release, with thousands more under review. ⁸ AP reports activist totals above 6,000, while also noting severe verification problems under shutdown conditions. ¹² Reuters reports HRANA totals above 5,900 in late January and states that Reuters itself could not independently verify competing numbers, reinforcing the epistemic uncertainty rather than resolving it. ¹⁸

Human rights documentation raises strong concerns about unlawful lethal force. Al Jazeera cites Amnesty reporting that security forces used rifles and shotguns with metal pellets, often targeting heads and torsos, and Amnesty’s own materials describe mass unlawful killings and repression during early January. ²⁴ Human Rights Watch likewise reports lethal force and sweeping arrests. ¹⁷ Reuters reports testimony from a UN expert about hospital removals of wounded protesters and alleged ransom demands for bodies, allegations that portray systematic coercion rather than the transparent, victim-centered posture advanced in the official statement. ¹⁸

A reasoned judgment therefore splits the statement into two tiers of truth.

Tier one includes verifiable facts about publication, stated totals, and the government’s claim that it compiled a list with partial identifiers. Open sources support those points. ²⁵

Tier two includes the implied claims that the list offers complete accounting, that the government’s classification of deaths reflects objective reality, and that adversaries drive the main distortion through inflated numbers. Open sources do not support those implied claims at a high confidence level, and the weight of independent reporting points toward undercount risk and category-driven narrative shaping under conditions of repression and blackout. ⁸

Indicators and collection priorities for verification and influence analysis

Analysts seeking to validate the list and assess disinformation dynamics need disclosures that the statement omits.

Method transparency stands as the first requirement. Authorities need to publish clear inclusion criteria, the date range each entry covers, the geographic location fields, the cause-of-death coding rules, and the definition of categories such as terrorist, rioter, bystander, security force, and protester. Official messaging already demonstrates strong incentives to label a residual category as terrorists. ⁷ Category rules therefore matter as much as raw totals.

Auditability stands as the second requirement. Independent reviewers need a public mechanism that allows families, hospitals, local clerics, and civil society groups to submit corrections without exposing identity, followed by transparent publication of resolved disputes and unresolved cases. The Guardian reports Iranian legal voices proposing such a public upload and verification mechanism and also reports fear of retaliation, which directly shapes participation quality. ²⁰ A state-run portal that logs submissions while security services conduct mass arrests risks producing self-censorship rather than truth. Reuters reporting about intimidation, secret lockups, and arrests from hospitals supports that risk assessment. ²³

Cross-validation stands as the third requirement. Credible checks require independent datasets from hospitals, morgues, cemetery registries, and local funeral associations. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch reporting about violent repression and restrictions indicates that authorities likely constrain access to those records. ¹⁵ Analysts should therefore treat the President’s Office list as one dataset among several, not the ground truth.

Influence indicators stand as the fourth requirement. The statement mixes empathetic language with hostile attribution toward “enemies,” a pattern common in state persuasion that seeks to reduce domestic anger while externalizing blame. ² Monitoring should track whether IRGC-linked outlets amplify the same narrative line, especially claims that opponents fabricate numbers, since such claims support justification for repression and censorship. AGSI reports that ¹ reposted official figures through its Telegram channel and describes the “martyr” label as a state narrative tool during offline conditions. ²⁶ Public records also link Tasnim to the ¹⁷ through sanctions listings, reinforcing the role of security-linked media in narrative enforcement. ²⁷

A final analytic point concerns audience psychology. The statement’s empathy-heavy framing, authority cues, and enemy attribution target predictable biases. Authority bias encourages acceptance because officials cite forensic and registry systems. Anchoring bias encourages the audience to treat 3,117 as the baseline. In-group bias encourages acceptance because the text frames victims as national family. Motivated reasoning encourages dismissal of counterevidence by assigning hostile intent to critics. The same environment that produces competing death tolls also produces an elevated risk of psychological operations, since blackout conditions reduce correction and rapid public verification. ²⁸

References
Official Iranian government sources
Office of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. (2026, February 1 [12 Bahman 1404]). همه قربانیان حوادث اخیر فرزندان این سرزمین بوده اند و هیچ داغدیده ای نباید در سکوت و بی پناهی رها شود/ هر ایرانی برای ما به مثابه یک ایران است و رئیس جمهور خود را پاسدار حقوق آنان می داند/ سوگمندانه فهرست مشخصات 2986 نفراز جان‌باختگان حوادث اخیر به اطلاع ملت شریف ایران می رسد [Presidential Office notice on the Dey 1404 incidents and publication of 2,986 names]. https://president.ir/fa/163429
Office of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. (2026, January 31 [11 Bahman 1404]). دولت خود را همدرد و داغدار همه جان‌باختگان حوادث تلخ اخیر می‌داند/ انتشار اسامی جانباختگان نخستین قدم در شکل‌گیری درست روایت واقعه است/ دکترپزشکیان بر عهد خود با ملت باقیست [Deputy for communications describes publication of names as a first step]. https://president.ir/fa/163414
Office of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. (2026, January 22 [2 Bahman 1404]). انتقام شکست دشمنان در جنگ 12 روزه، بحران‌سازی و ناامن‌سازی دی‌ماه 1404 بود/امروز داغدار همه جان‌های از دست‌رفته و همدرد یکایک ملت ایران هستم/حاکمیت در برابر همه آسیب‌دیدگان این حوادث تلخ مسئول است [President’s message on the Dey 1404 events]. https://president.ir/fa/163355
Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Government Information Portal. (2026, February 1 [12 Bahman 1404]). همه قربانیان حوادث اخیر فرزندان این سرزمین بوده‌اند/فهرست اسامی و مشخصات 2986 نفراز جان‌باختگان اعلام شد [Government portal repost of the Presidential Office statement on 2,986 names and a 3,117 total]. https://dolat.ir/detail/476864
Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Government Information Portal. (2026, February 1 [12 Bahman 1404]). چرا اسامی 131 نفر از جانباختگان حوادث دی ماه 1404 اعلام نشد؟ [Government portal explainer on the 131-person discrepancy]. https://dolat.ir/detail/476870
Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Government Information Portal. (2026, February 1 [12 Bahman 1404]). انتشار اطلاعیه دفتر رئیس‌جمهور پزشکیان درباره حوادث دی‌ماه تا ساعاتی دیگر [Advance notice of the forthcoming statement]. https://dolat.ir/detail/476830
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Motamedi, M. (2026, January 24). Iran rejects UN rights resolution condemning protest killings. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/24/iran-rejects-un-rights-resolution-condemning-protest-killings
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Reuters reporting
Farge, E. (2026, January 13). UN rights office says hundreds killed in Iran protests. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/un-rights-office-says-hundreds-killed-iran-protests-2026-01-13/
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Le Poidevin, O., & Hafezi, P. (2026, January 26). Iran detaining protesters being treated in hospitals as part of crackdown, says UN expert. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-detaining-protesters-being-treated-hospitals-part-crackdown-says-un-expert-2026-01-26/
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Human rights organizations and United Nations documentation
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Amnesty International. (2026, January 26). What happened at the protests in Iran? https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/01/what-happened-at-the-protests-in-iran/
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Internet shutdown monitoring and related reference material
NetBlocks. (n.d.). NetBlocks. Retrieved February 1, 2026, from https://netblocks.org/
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Tabdil.app. (n.d.). 12 بهمن 1404 چند شنبه است؟ Sunday, 01 February 2026 [Date conversion page]. Retrieved February 1, 2026, from https://tabdil.app/time/calendar/bahman/12-%D8%A8%D9%87%D9%85%D9%86/
Tabdil.app. (n.d.). 7 دی 1404 چه روزی است؟ Dec 28, 2025 [Date conversion page]. Retrieved February 1, 2026, from https://tabdil.app/time/calendar/dey/7-%D8%AF%DB%8C/
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