Logo of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) superimposed over a photo of an Iranian anti-government militant firing on police. Photo: The Grayzone.
By Max Blumenthal and Wyatt Reed – January 12, 2026
As deadly riots burn Iranian cities, Western media ignores the shocking wave of violence, turning instead to US government-funded NGOs for data. The one-sided portrayal has helped push Trump to the brink of authorizing renewed US attacks.
Western media has ignored a growing trove of video evidence showing terrorist tactics deployed across Iran by protesters described by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as “largely peaceful.” Recent videos published both by Iranian state media and anti-government forces reveal public lynchings of unarmed guards, the torching of mosques, arson attacks on municipal buildings, marketplaces and fire stations, and mobs of armed gunmen opening fire in the heart of Iranian cities.
Instead, Western media has focused almost exclusively on violence attributed to the Iranian government. In doing so, they have relied heavily on death counts compiled by Iranian diaspora groups funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the regime change arm of the US government, and whose boards of directors are filled with committed neoconservatives.
The NED has taken credit for advancing the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests which filled Iranian cities throughout 2023 – and which also featured gruesome acts of violence ignored by Western media and human rights NGOs. Today, the NED is far from alone among the intelligence-aligned actors seeking to fuel the chaos inside Iran.
The Israeli spying and assassination agency known as Mossad issued a message from its official Farsi language account on Twitter/X urging Iranians to escalate their regime change activities, pledging that it would be supporting them on the ground.
“Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” Mossad instructed Iranians. “We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”
Toppling Tehran through terror
Protests began in Iran in early January 2026 when merchants took to the streets to demonstrate against rising inflation rates triggered by Western sanctions. Iran’s government responded sympathetically to the bazaar protests, providing them with police protection. However, these demonstrations quickly dissolved, as an amorphous mass of anti-government elements seized the moment to launch a violent insurrection encouraged by governments from Israel to the US – and by self-proclaimed “Crown Prince” Reza Pahlavi, who has branded government workers and state media outlets as “legitimate targets.”
On January 9, the city of Mashhad became the scene of some of the most intense riots, as anti-government forces torched fire stations, burning fire fighters alive, while setting buses alight, attacking city workers, vandalizing Metro stations and causing over $18 million in damage, according to local municipal authorities.
In Kermanshah, where anti-government rioters shot and killed 3 year-old Melina Asadi, groups of militants were filmed firing automatic weapons at police. In cities from Hamedan to Lorestan, rioters have filmed themselves beating unarmed security guards to death for attempting to impede their rampages.
Kermanshah was infested with armed militants and rioters when 3 year old Melina was killed
The Israel-controlled Trump administration brands unarmed American protesters as terrorists and supports terrorists in Iran https://t.co/ukqXvhhWPc pic.twitter.com/TpCnl6xmTA
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 11, 2026
Footage has emerged from the central Iranian city of rioters attacking a public bus and setting it aflame on January 10.
In Tehran, meanwhile, mobs of rioters have attacked the historic Abazar Mosque, burning its interior, while others conducted arson attacks and burned copies of the Quran inside the Grand Mosque of Sarableh and the Muhammad ibn Musa al-Kadhim shrine in Kuzestan.
The footage shows damage being inflicted on ABUZAR #mosque.
In recent days, claims had circulated that mosques were being used as bases for repression or as detention sites. However, the images indicate that the mosque was closed at the time, with no signs of unusual activity or… pic.twitter.com/XXX3OuCH8f— Hussein bin Saeed Ahvazi (@SayyidHussein) January 11, 2026
Rioters have set fire to a large municipal building in the heart of the city of Karaj, while burning the marketplace to the ground in central Rasht. In Borujen, anti-government hooligans reportedly torched a historic library filled with ancient texts during a night of looting and destruction.
Rioters burned the marketplace in the Iranian city of Rasht to a crisp
Netanyahu, Trump and every leader of the collective West has endorsed this
Of course, they are a model of tolerance toward protesters in their own cities pic.twitter.com/fQ26XDSVnS
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 12, 2026
None of these incidents have elicited any reaction from Western media outlets or governments, even after the Iranian foreign ministry obliged ambassadors from Britain, France, Germany, and Italy to view footage of the violence carried out by rioters firsthand.
According to the Iranian government, over 100 police and security officers have been killed during the unrest. However, a pair of Iranian NGOs based in Washington and funded by the US government has set the death toll on the government’s side at a much lower figure. These groups have become the go-to source for Western media on the protests.
Regime change lobbyists set the agenda
In assessing the death toll in Iran, outlets throughout the US and Europe have depended on two NGOs based in Washington and funded by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy: the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran and Human Rights Activists in Iran.
A 2024 press release by the NED explicitly described the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran as “a partner of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).”
Elsewhere, a 2021 statement from Human Rights Activists in Iran states that the group “expanded its network and decided to start receiving financial aid from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a non-governmental and non-profit organization based in the United States” after it was accused by the Iran government of ties to the CIA in 2010.
The NED was created under the watch of the Reagan administration’s CIA director, William Casey, to enable the government to continue meddling abroad despite widespread distrust in US intelligence services. One of its founders, Allen Weinstein, famously admitted, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
While failing to acknowledge the NGO’s funding from NED, The Washington Post and ABC News have cited the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center prominently in their coverage of Iranian protests. Seated on the Center’s board of directors is Francis Fukuyama, the ideologue who signed the Project for a New American Century’s founding letter – perhaps the most important manifesto of modern neoconservatism.
Figures from the suggestively-named “Human Rights Activists in Iran” have circulated even more widely, with the NGO’s recent estimated death toll of 544 people cited by dozens of US and Israeli mainstream outlets across the political spectrum, as well as by Dropsite. The “shadow CIA” intelligence firm Stratfor has also cited the NGO in an article entitled, “Protests in Iran Provide a Window for U.S. and/or Israeli Intervention.”
With the precise number of casualties from the protests still difficult to ascertain, a motley crew of online influencers has filled the information void with overblown, dubiously sourced claims. These propagandists include the noted Jewish supremacist Trump confidant Laura Loomer, who crowed that “the death count of Iranian protesters killed by the Islamic regimes’ forces is now over 6,000!,” citing a supposed “source in the Intel community.”
The digital casino Polymarket also inflated the death toll, claiming without sourcing that “over 10,000” people had been killed by “Iranian Forces [using] Automatic Rifles on Protesters,” and falsely stating that Iran had “lost nearly all control” of three of its five largest cities.
In recent months, Polymarket has become notorious for allowing insiders to abuse advanced knowledge of political developments – such as the recent US military assault on Caracas and their abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro – to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars. The self-described “world’s largest prediction market” was established with a major investment from AI warlord Peter Thiel, and now features Donald Trump Jr. as an advisor.
Polymarket spreads neocon disinformation to manufacture consent for bombing Iran
It is also paying influencers all across this site to popularize its brand
The “world’s largest prediction market” relies on psychological warfare to manipulate betting markets https://t.co/wPfOtneENR
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 12, 2026
By spreading clearly inflated death tolls, regime change activists and Trump cronies are apparently goading the notoriously gullible president into launching another military assault on Tehran.
In a January 7 assessment of the protests, Stratfor described the chaos in Iran’s streets as an enticing opportunity for war, writing, “While unlikely to collapse the regime, the ongoing unrest could open the door for Israel or the United States to conduct covert or overt activities aimed at further destabilizing the Iranian government, either indirectly by encouraging the protests or directly via military action against Iranian leaders.”
However, the CIA contractor acknowledged that “renewed military strikes on Iran would also likely put an end to the current protest movement by leading instead to a wider display of Iranian nationalism and unity, a pattern observed after U.S. and Israeli strikes in 2025.”
‘Locked and loaded’
Iran’s latest round of anti-government protests has predictably received hearty endorsements from a host of Western leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump.
“If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump announced. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
Days later, Trump threatened Iran again: “You better not start shooting [protesters] – because we’ll start shooting too.” Then, on January 12, Trump decreed that any country caught trading with Iran would face a 25% tariff on goods exchanged with the US.
Now, Trump is reportedly mulling an attack, considering options ranging from cyber-warfare to airstrikes. However, the pace of the anti-government protests appears to have slowed, with relative calm returning to major cities.
As the dust clears, millions of Iranian citizens are pouring into the streets of cities from Tehran to Mashhad to express their indignation at the riots, to denounce the foreign elements that helped spur the regime change rampage, and to proclaim their support for the government. But in newsrooms across the West, giving voice to these masses of Iranian demonstrators seems forbidden.
Max Blumenthal
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath,The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
Wyatt Reed
Wyatt Reed is a Blacksburg, Virginia-based writer and activist who spent several years in Latin America.
