Society
Prosperity is more than money. Migration, crime, elections and free speech: the numbers everybody quotes and hardly anybody checks.
Two Nights, 7000 Dead. At least.
Iran's uprising in 2025/2026 began over the price of a dollar on 28 December and was shot to pieces on the nights of 8 and 9 January, behind a switched-off internet. Nobody serious disputes that thousands died. The government says 3,117. A rights group lists about 7,000 confirmed dead. A broadcaster in exile says 36,500, and an American president said 32,000 eight days before going to war. Only one of those numbers comes with a list that gives places and dates. We counted it.
On Sunday, 28 December 2025, the traders who sell mobile phones in two shopping centres in central Tehran went on strike. That day the rial fell to 1.42 million to the dollar; when the nuclear deal was signed in 2015 it had been 32,000. A trader who buys stock in dollars and sells it in rials cannot set a price in a currency like that, so the traders stopped selling. On Monday shopkeepers in and around the Grand Bazaar shut too. On Tuesday students rallied at Sharif, Amirkabir and other universities. They were not chanting about exchange rates.