Over 12,000 feared dead after Iran protests, as video shows bodies lined up at morgue

Information trickling out of Iran on Tuesday suggests that a crackdown by authorities to end more than two weeks of widespread anti-government protests has likely been far more deadly than activists outside the country have reported. With phone lines opening back up for calls from inside the Islamic Republic, two sources, including one inside Iran, told CBS News on Tuesday that at least 12,000, and possibly as many as 20,000 people have been killed. 

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said in Parliament on Tuesday that the U.K. government believed there “may have been 2,000 people killed, there have been more. My fear is that the number may prove to be significantly higher.”

The truth has been incredibly difficult to piece together due to Iran’s hardline rulers cutting off internet access and phone service in the country for the last five days. While a complete internet shutdown in Iran remained in place for a fifth day, some Iranians were able to make phone calls out of the country on Tuesday, though it was still not possible to call into Iran from outside. 

A source inside Iran who was able to call out told CBS News on Tuesday that activist groups working to compile a full death toll from the protests, based on reports from medical officials across the country, believed the toll was at least 12,000, and possibly as high as 20,000.

The same source said security forces were visiting the many private hospitals across Tehran, threatening staff to hand over the names and addresses of those being treated for injuries sustained in the protests.

CBS News has not been able to independently verify the massive death toll indicated by the source, which is some many times larger than the numbers reported by most activist groups independently in recent days — though those groups have always made it clear that their tallies are likely underestimated.

The opposition Iran International television network said Tuesday that its information suggested about 12,000 people were killed. A source in Washington with contacts in Iran told CBS News on Tuesday that a credible source had told him the toll was likely between 10,000 and 12,000.

Iranian officials have not provided regular official estimates of overall deaths from the unrest. Reuters quoted an unnamed Iranian official Tuesday as saying about 2,000 people had been  killed since the protests began on December 28, and blaming the violence on foreign influenced “terrorists,” even suggesting that agitators had been paid to foment chaos.

CBS News has verified that video posted online Tuesday shows the bodies of hundreds of people killed amid the protest piled up at a morgue in a Tehran suburb. The video appears to show forensic personnel documenting gruesome injuries on the bodies, and crowds of people seemingly trying to identify the dead. 

New video shows badly injured bodies lined up at morgue

An Iranian activist and blogger who identifies himself only as Vahid Online first posted the shocking 16-minute clip. Vahid said it was sent to him from a source who traveled about 600 miles to upload the video amid the communications blackout. 

The graphic video shows people with what appear to be injuries caused by bullets and shotgun pellets, as well as other wounds, and piles of bloody clothing inside the morgue compound.

The protests — which drew warnings of a U.S. military intervention by President Trump — were sparked in late December by anger over a new spike in the cost of living in Iran’s sanctions-hobbled economy. They quickly grew into mass rallies in all of Iran’s 31 provinces, with tens of thousands of people chanting for the downfall of the country’s Islamic rulers.

Even the lower death toll reported by Cooper in Britain on Tuesday, if confirmed, would surpass any officially reported casualty figure from past anti-regime protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which brought the current government to power.

President Trump warned multiple times as the protests escalated last week that if the Iranian regime killed protesters, the U.S. would take action, without ever specifying a red line that might prompt a response, or what the response might be.

President Trump tells Iranian protesters help is on the way

“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING — TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” Mr. Trump said in a social media post on Tuesday.

Again he offered no details about what help the U.S. might provide to Iran’s long-stifled domestic opposition.

The president’s national security team was scheduled to hold a meeting at the White House on Tuesday to discuss his options, according to several sources familiar with the matter. It was unclear whether the president himself would attend. He has been briefed on a wide array of military and covert tools that could be used against Iran, well beyond conventional airstrikes, according to two Pentagon officials who spoke to CBS News on the condition of anonymity to discuss national security matters. 

A crackdown “much worse than we can even imagine”

“The information that we are receiving shows that the violent crackdown [against] the protests has probably been much worse than we can even imagine,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, who leads the Norway-based activist organization Iran Human Rights. 

“The whole international community’s red lines have been crossed,” said Amiry-Moghaddam. “We have a mechanism called responsibility to protect civilians against grave human rights violations, against mass killings … so not only [the] United States, not only President Trump, but the European Union, basically all countries have a responsibility to stop these atrocities.”

He didn’t call for U.S. military action, but urged world powers to “provide Iranians with more means to communicate with the world, because this is what the regimes do — they shut off the internet. Basically, it’s like solitary confinement. They put Iranian people into solitary confinement and start torturing and killing them.”

He told CBS News his organization had received a video Monday night showing the aftermath of one purported attack by security forces that left 75 people dead in Mazandaran province, about a three-hour drive north of Tehran. Amiry-Moghaddam said he could not share the video or specific town where the alleged assault occurred as the information “can be tracked,” and would thus endanger his sources. 

“This is what indicates that the extent has been much worse than we anticipated,” said Amiry-Moghaddan. 

Internet access and text messaging services were still blocked in Iran on Tuesday, leaving largely in place the blackout initiated on the evening of Jan. 8, when thousands of people appeared to heed a call by Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to make their voices heard. 

The protests — and the security forces’ action against them — appeared to escalate sharply for a couple of days from that evening.

On Tuesday, Iran’s police chief claimed the protests had been ordered from outside the country and that “terrorists” paid to cause unrest had been confronted inside Iran.

Iranians want “anyone who can remove the Islamic Republic”

Amiry-Moghaddan told CBS News many Iranians wouldn’t believe that narrative from their leaders.

“Iranian people are so fed up with the regime, and so desperate to come out of this system,” he said. “I remember that I used to ask many people, with different backgrounds, ‘Who would you support?’ And all of them basically say that we would support anyone who can remove the Islamic Republic. Iran is a country with a lot of different kinds of people, different opinions. Some would like to have monarchies, some are opposed to monarchy, but I think the priority is to remove this regime.”

Pahlavi has said he’s ready to return to lead Iran, despite not having been there since his father, the U.S.-backed shah, fled almost 50 years ago amid intense public outrage over his rule. He told CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell on Monday that the Iranian people “need action to be taken.”

“The best way to ensure that there will be less people killed in Iran is to intervene sooner, so this regime finally collapses and puts an end to all the problems that we are facing,” he said. 

Pahlavi said he has communicated with the Trump administration, but he didn’t reveal any details of those conversations. 

Amiry-Moghaddan said an “absolute majority” of Iranians “don’t want the regime, like more than 80%.”

But he said that 80% was “roughly divided into three groups, those who would like to have [the] shah’s son, those who oppose a monarchy, and those who haven’t made up their minds.”