Starting in late December 2025, Iran experienced massive popular protests right across the country, reaching almost all cities, towns, rural areas, and villages. These overwhelmingly peaceful protests were swiftly met with brutal state violence that peaked on January 8 and 9 and lasted for days thereafter. It has emerged that, within the span of a few days, the security forces of the Islamic Republic massacred thousands of innocent Iranian civilians, many of them in their teens and twenties. These tragic events have sparked profound shock and widespread grieving throughout Iran and around the world in the Iranian diaspora. We mourn this colossal loss of life and extend our heartfelt condolences to the victims’ families and to the people of Iran as a whole.
Deliberately killing protesters who took to Iran’s streets in response to deepening economic, ecological, and social crises, and who were demanding a freer, more equitable, and dignified life, is a moral wrong that demands unequivocal condemnation. Such horrifying brutality stands in direct opposition to the most basic principles of our shared humanity, and we condemn these latest acts of bloody violence meted out on ordinary Iranians by the Islamic Republic in the strongest possible terms. We also express our grave concern over the fate of the many thousands of protestors and other innocent civilians detained during this same period by the Islamic Republic who are now at serious risk of being subjected to torture, forced confession, extrajudicial killing, and execution.
As an interdisciplinary scholarly association devoted to the study of Iran in all its diverse historical, cultural, environmental, and social dimensions, we recognize our responsibility to respond to moments of collective suffering in Iran such as this. In response, the Council of the Association for Iranian Studies has established a committee to develop thoughtful and sustainable ways of engaging constructively with such tragedies. This new committee will seek to bring our members inside and outside of Iran together in spaces of scholarly dialogue, collective reflection, and respectful discourse, while ensuring that our expressions of solidarity with the victims of such violence and injustice are grounded in meaningful intellectual engagement, ethical responsibility, and long-term commitment—rather than symbolic gestures alone.
We affirm our enduring commitment to academic responsibility, ethical engagement, and solidarity with all those who struggle for dignity, justice, and freedom in Iran.
Council of the Association for Iranian Studies
