Key Highlights
- By Scott Peterson Staff writer @peterson__scott Jan.
- 24, 2026, 2:48 p. m.
- ET | London The way Iranian state television journalist Fatemeh Faramarzi describes it, the violence she witnessed at the peak of Iran’s latest street protests – including her face being sprayed with shotgun pellets – could only have been carried out by “terrorists” guided by foreign hands. She was speaking to the IRIB channel’s prime-time “Eyewitness” program.
- It was created – after a lethal crackdown reportedly left thousands of Iranian citizens dead – to help shape the official narrative that Iran’s security forces were not to blame for the bloodshed, but were instead instrumental in stopping it. Beginning in late December, hundreds of thousands of Iranians demonstrated throughout the country.
- The protests, which were triggered by economic grievances, turned into vehicles for anti-regime anger.
