After mass protests in Iran erupted in December and continued to escalate into the new year, with the government shutting down internet access across the country. But after weeks of trying, one man in Iran was able to cut the power and spoke to CBS News on a video call, describing what sounded like a massacre of anti-government protesters in early January.
Jan. The 8th and 9th are believed to be the bloodiest and most brutal days of the government’s crackdown on protesters since its establishment in 1979.
The suspect asked not to be identified, his head is wrapped in a black cloth and his eyes are covered with glasses because he is afraid that the government will find him and put him in prison or kill him. He described the attack on Jan. 9 in the city of Yazd, about 400 kilometers southeast of the capital Tehran.
He was in a crowd of about 1,500 people marching toward Imam Hossein Square when, he said, government forces began shooting at them from the front and back in what he thought was a plan to cut them off from both sides.
Two sources, including one inside Iran, previously told CBS News that at least 12,000, and possibly as many as 20,000 people have been killed across Iran in the protests.
“More than a thousand were killed that night…because I hear shooting,” he said.
He said the thing that made him survive is that he was in the crowd and managed to escape down the side road.
Now the roads across the country are quiet. The man told CBS News that people are depressed and angry and have lost many “brothers and sisters” — friends, comrades in arms — in the coup protests.
Asked what he hoped the protests would achieve, the man said, “All the people that night came out and said, ‘Pahlavi,'” he referred. Crown Prince Reza Pahlavithe exiled son of the last shah of Iran, now living in the Washington, DC area.
“You just want Pahlavi, okay?” he said.
In an interview with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell earlier this month, Pahlavi described himself as the voice of the Iranian people abroad, and said that people chanting his name during protests showed he could play a role as a revolutionary leader, although it was unclear how much support he actually had inside the country.
“Why am I giving my help to Iran? I am answering their call,” he said. “I’m a bridge, not a destination right now.”
Pahlavi’s father became shah in 1941 and consolidated power in a coup in 1953, supported by the United States and the United Kingdom, that overthrew the Iranian prime minister. He ruled until 1979, when he was deposed by the Islamic Revolution.
Some now hope that the US will intervene again.
“On behalf of all the Iranian people, I am asking President Trump to help us get freedom, because our freedom is global freedom from terrorists,” the man said.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly warned Iran’s leaders against killing peaceful protesters and protesters mass murder of people arrested during the violence. He also threatened possible military action.
USS Abraham Lincoln strike group just arrived in the US military’s Central Command, which covers most of the Middle East region, including Iran. The arrival of these warships took place after the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic he warned that his troops they had it “finger on the trigger,” following the threats of Mr. Trump.
A video call with an Iranian man, who suffered multiple problems due to the blackout, went down shortly after his request for US support, but in subsequent texts, he told CBS News that he wanted the US to provide air support “to send the entire leadership of this regime to their ideological paradise with a lightning strike.”
