Iran has a long history of violent suppression, but this time may be different

Key Highlights

• The Human Rights Activists News Agency, a nonpartisan Virginia-based organization that relies on supporters inside Iran to track the protests and monitor deaths, says that demonstrations spread to all of the country’s 31 provinces.
• The bloody reprisals against protesters are the culmination of decades in which the regime’s “propensity and ability to use violence” have only increased, said Rouzbeh Parsi, an adjunct lecturer at Sweden’s Lund University.
• The reason for that is the twin fear of “external pressure” and “domestic hatred” converging, he said. Some 19,000 people have been arrested, according to HRANA, which says its data comes from on-the-ground sources and goes through multiple internal checks.
• Iran’s top judge has suggested that there needs to be rapid trials and executions to restore order. Eyewitness accounts are scant, and those who do report on the situation usually do so anonymously for fear of reprisals. Body bags are lined up at the Tehran Province Forensic Medicine Diagnostic and Laboratory Center in the city of Kahrizak in a video circulated on social media Monday. via XA video geolocated by NBC News was posted online last weekend showing scores of bodies piled outside a makeshift morgue near Tehran.
• The scene is punctuated by screams and wails as people converge at the site in search of missing loved ones amid the chaos of the demonstrations.