Grief hangs heavy over freshly turned earth in cemeteries in Iran, where families are marking 40 days since some of the bloodiest nights of state repression in years. As the Middle East remains on edge over the possibility of US military action against Tehran, mourning continues defiantly at home.
“I’m afraid because I don’t have Ayda with me anymore. I don’t have the strength. I don’t have it in me to carry on without Ayda,” a woman wailed in front of a flower-festooned grave bearing the photograph of a young woman.
Ayda Haydari was a medical student in her early 20s at the University of Tehran. She was shot dead by government forces during a protest in the Iranian capital last month, Iranian students’ groups confirmed.
“They shot her and my heart is aching,” the woman cries in a video published this week and widely shared on social media. The National verified the footage. Ms Haydari’s name appears on lists of protesters confirmed dead that have been compiled by Iranian activists.
While the world’s attention has turned to renewed nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran, US military build up in the Middle East and speculation over potential American strikes on Iran, Iranian families, including Ms Haydari’s, are still mourning the thousands killed in protests last month.
They held ceremonies again this week to mark 40 days since the bloodiest nights of the crackdown on protests on January 8th and 9th. According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, at least 7,000 people were killed in the crackdown, including 6,500 protesters and 214 members of the security forces. It is also working to confirm an almost 12,000 reported deaths.
Frustration with regime
Social media platforms were flooded with images and videos of families commemorating their dead loved ones 40 days after their deaths, in a traditional mourning pattern common in Iran.
Alongside the tributes were expressions of mounting frustration with the government. The protests began in late December over a sharp drop in the value of the Iranian rial against the US dollar, against a backdrop of years of economic hardship, but quickly spread to encompass political demands. Those included the fall of Iran’s clerical leadership, which has ruled the country since a revolution in 1979.
Some families distributed roses and balloons at the points where their relatives were shot dead.
Others sang and danced, in defiance of bans on these activities by the Iranian government. Relatives and friends described the dead as “Javid nam”, (the eternal), snubbing the word “shaheed”, (martyr), which has been used by the Iranian government to commemorate members of the security forces it says were killed in the protests.
Some wore white in place of the traditional black for mourning, and many women appeared without wearing the mandatory headscarf.
“More than the American battleships, fear the mourners wearing white, who dance and read the Shahnameh,” one Instagram post from Thursday read, in an apparent address to the Iranian government. The Shahnameh is one of Iran’s most important works of literature, including stories from its pre-Islamic era.
Public anguish
The Instagram page of one woman in the central city of Isfahan, once filled with adverts for her skincare services, is now an online shrine to her 36-year-old brother, whose name is among lists of those confirmed killed in protests in the city last month.
“I don’t know how to express my anguish,” one caption on her page reads.
Families’ commemorations were meant as a rejection of claims by Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei that the dead were “rioters” or had been killed by what he described as “terrorists”, according to Mahshid Nazemi, communications director at Iran House, a non-governmental organisation that provides legal and mental health support to survivors of torture and psychological trauma.
Iranian authorities have repeatedly described the unrest as part of foreign-backed efforts to destabilise the country and claimed that protesters were working with the US and Israel.
Mr Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s most powerful military force, have for four decades presented themselves as protectors of the Islamic Republic and associated themselves with important figures in Shia Islam.
“Khamenei comes and says the dead were among our martyrs, and people want to signal that no – our children were not Basijis, they were ordinary people,” Ms Nazemi told The National in a phone interview. The Basij is a paramilitary wing of the IRGC that authorities often employ to quash dissent during protests.
Families of the dead have reported pressure from Iranian security forces demanding that they describe their dead relatives as members of the security personnel, including the Basij, in exchange for the release of their bodies from hospitals and morgues for burial.
Shadow of war
Alongside Iranians’ mourning, fear and anger is the ever-present shadow of a possible US attack on Iran.
Some Iranians have posted polls on social media over the possibility of war. “I think we need to get ready for war. What do you think?,” one reads.
Iranians, who number more than 90 million in population, are divided between supporting and opposing US military intervention, according to Ms Nazemi. The state’s violent response to the protests, including the arrest of over 53,000 people, human rights activists say, makes many feel that they are already fighting a war.
“The people who support the idea of strikes concede that this government has weapons, it has money, it has proxy forces, and it's strong enough to suppress the people at home,” she said.
“The people have no means to fight this regime with their bare hands, and they think that if America were to target these key [nuclear] centres and draw them into a military conflict, the situation would surely be better for Iranian people inside Iran,” she added.
One man in the city of Isfahan, who spoke on condition of anonymity over security concerns, supported the idea of military intervention against his government. “I hope there will be a war,” he said.
Others oppose it – some because they support the government, others out of fear of the consequences and doubts about whether it would end the Islamic Republic.
Emadeddin Baghi, an Iranian writer associated with the country’s reformist movement, who has been imprisoned several times over his criticism of the government, said in a social media post that the threat of war “only makes things worse” for Iranians.
They have been, “crushed under sanctions for years” and the best way to help them would be to lift those curbs, he wrote.
US and Iranian officials have held two rounds of negotiations in recent weeks in an attempt to reach a deal over Tehran’s nuclear programme that could limit its activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
But the US has not ruled out military strikes on Iran, especially if a deal is not reached.
The last round of talks between the two countries was held in Geneva on Tuesday. After the negotiations, US officials said that “progress was made, but there are still a lot of details to discuss”.
At the heart is the issue of uranium enrichment. Israel and the US have said they want Iran to cease all enrichment activity and dismantle plants. Iran insists on retaining some fuel-making capacity for peaceful purposes.
Israel has also demanded that any deal cover Tehran’s ballistic missile programme and proxy networks in the region.
“We may have to take it a step further, or we may not,” US President Donald Trump said of negotiations with Iran. “You're going to be finding out over the next probably 10 days.”
He said Iran “cannot continue to threaten the stability of the entire region,” adding that “bad things will happen” if it doesn't make a deal.
Military strikes would draw in the whole region as Iran would respond “decisively and proportionately” to any military aggression, Tehran’s mission to the UN said on Friday.
