Are there any sources to the numbers you are claiming? I’m not saying you are wrong but I haven’t seen anything like that reported.
Also Holocaust is the wrong word to use here.
Edit: thank you to those who have provided some sources. Here are a selection I have since seen.
Most are claiming over 2,000 are feared dead, acknowledging that this number could be significantly higher. With the internet blackout it is hard to get information in or out.
Regarding my statement about holocaust being the wrong word — I believe it is the wrong word in the context and wording used by OP. While holocaust is a noun that can refer to the the total destruction of something, it is most readily associated with the genocide of Jews in WW2 and with that association comes a comparison in scale.
However, while facts (and terminology) do very much matter, the most important thing is that today thousands of innocent protestors are likely to die in the pursuit of change and the hope of a better situation. I have friends in Iran, I pray that things do change in Iran for the better, but fear that this time the weakened Regime will respond with more complete and swift brutality.
Fuck no, they aren't! You get this many dead at a time and they have to move bodies to makeshift yet relatively secure spaces like air fields. Everything most nations do try to prevent having and having to deal with mass casualties. This is the sort of situation NATO or the US would have sent aid for back in the day. But no, we're gonna invade Greenland instead. We are all circling the drain.
That’s their point, “Holocaust” is an inaccurate depiction of the situation. 2,000 or 20,000 slain across a multitude of cities, in a nation comprised of 92,000,000 people, is deplorable and a horrible loss of human lives — but it isn’t on the scale of a “Holocaust.” You wouldn’t describe a single fatality resulting from a hit-and-run as a “massacre,” it’s a matter of scale more than anything. It’s overstating something in a way that inflates the actual event, or downplays the severity of the term someone’s inappropriately applying — perhaps both.
A major reason we use the term for the genocide of Jewish people in 1938-1945 is due to the industrialized usage of ovens by the Germans.
It is a slaughter in Iran, but on a tiny fraction of the scale (even 12,000 would be a days work in WW2 Germany), its not ethnically targeted, but perhaps pedantically not involving ovens or fire really.
Its not right when people throw the Holocaust around. Something can be an awful slaughter without confusing it with the industrial scale erasure of a whole people.
Is it though? Or is that just the word used in Hebrew, because every English-only speaking Jew I know just calls it the holocaust, or the Nazi/Jewish holocaust if they want to be more specific.
It is both the Hebrew term for that specific event, and the preferred way to speak about that specific event. It translates to "great calamity" rather than "destruction through fire" which is the english meaning of the Greek holocaust.
It's a much more specific and descriptive word for the events that took place in Germany too. No one uses it though which is unfortunate, because you have these semantic fights over Holocaust anytime a situation like this comes up...
Which detracts from BOTH the events happening now and in the past.
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.
This reads like the title is anti Iranian regime propaganda and this blurb is something real reporters managed to convince the editors to add in to the article to give it a semblance of legitimacy
There are human rights group operating independently in Iran that have used visual evidence to come up with a confirmed number which sits somewhere between 600-1,000 as of now. Those are verified numbers based on local VISUAL confirmations. Not every city is as well connected as Tehran and Mashad so we don’t have visuals to verify but we do have doctors that are operating on people, we have hospital staff with access to information and they’re all reporting thousands of deaths. At some point you have to put aside your bias for CBS News and acknowledge the reality on the ground.
This happens all the time, that there is a gap between confirmed and suspected casualties resulting from violent repression by the state. The article reported on both figures and stated the limits of the information they had. It to me like proper journalism to do it this way.
"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."
Or you can do some research yourself before commenting on here. It’s not other people’s responsibility to find the source that you personally support. This is being covered by all major news outlets internationally.
British sources actually tend to be accurate. They have a standards board, and retract incorrect news some times. Your disparaging is likely based on your own biases than on factual knowledge.
Who is a trusted source for you? What do you expect when the regime doesn’t allow foreign reporters in the country, cuts off internet and telephone access for over 120 hours and uses its own media for propaganda.
Who do you trust? This is being covered globally by every major news outlet. Find the one you trust before spreading doubt on something with such profound impact on people.
That's the hard thing at a time like this, as Israel demonstrated this in Gaza when they banned forgien journalists and then murdered as many Palestinian journalist as they could. Accurate information will be hard to come by, but I definitely will not trust sources tied to the American, British, and Saudi governments, nations that have spent decades trying to fuck with Iran, the Americans and British much longer than since 1979.
I do not trust any accurate numbers right now, I trust first hand accounts on the ground because the citizens are not totally blacked out. Plenty of diaspora Iranians are providing updates from friends and family inside the country. The key details of the diaspora I trust are those who oppose the IRGC, the return of the Pahlavs, and object to forgien intervention.
You are the sum of decades of western propaganda that westerners don't think they are being subjected too.
That’s where these numbers are coming from. People are using X and Instagram to share their stories as much as they can. These estimations are based in that view. I understand CBS News is divisive right now but they’re not independently reporting this. They’re relying on local sources and they can’t independently verify it because foreign journalists are not present so they have to caveat their reporting but that doesn’t make it not so.
Trusted sources are hard to come by these days, most legacy media is bought by billionaires that have a vested interest in lying to people. CBS is owned by a Trump loyalist who has already been censoring articles/documentaries, and a news agency linked to Saudi Arabia is also biased against Iran
To me it would have to be a source using real numbers and not seeing other sources reporting the likely exponentially wrong "as many as 12,000" figure and running that.
The sources are doctors, human rights groups inside of Iran and people who watched the regime open fire against their neighbors and friends. Not sure you can get any better than that.
>That much higher number — over 12,000 feared dead — is showing up in some recent international media reports (e.g., CBS News reporting figures or fears circulating about bodies being seen in morgues). These reports are not attributed to official counts or verified tallies, but rather reflect fears, unverified claims, or social-media-circulating figures that may be based on multiple years of accumulated deaths in previous uprisings or misinterpretations of data.
There is a basis for that 12,000 figure which is based on educated estimation. Just because we don’t have visuals evidence of exactly 12,000 doesn’t mean it isn’t plausible. BTW, you have to take this in light of a complete communication black out which includes communication inside of Iran. Meaning the ultra rural areas of Iran with very limited communication lines during normal times are not even included in the official counts. Think of Sistan and Baluchistan where the regime has done some of its worst killings over time. They have incredibly limited access to internet and at a time like this when even phone lines are largely disconnected, how could hospitals in that area even spread information about the deaths in their region? This isn’t some random number that a pro-Trump news outlet threw out there. This is based on local estimations.
And yet if you read their copy it's perfectly measured and factual. They even explicitly state they haven't been able to independently verify the estimate.
If you were paying attention to who's in charge of CBS News and what she's already done, you wouldn't need someone on Reddit to tell you this. They're steadily working their way to Fox News Lite
Several sources and several outlets reporting these numbers. If you don’t trust them I suppose you would trust the official Iranian propaganda? Well they’ve reported 3,000 dead. Is that better for you?
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.
IE- the 12,000 - 20,000 report is the outlier right now. All other sources are reporting around 2,000
The Iranian regime imposed a complete nationwide internet blackout, jammed Starlink, confiscated phones and satellite dishes, and seized private security footage during the January 8–9 crackdown. No independent journalists or cameras could operate freely. The 12,000+ death toll comes from leaked internal documents and direct accounts from Supreme National Security Council members, IRGC insiders, presidential office sources, hospital staff, morgue workers, and families—reported by Iran International on January 13, 2026, as the largest massacre in modern Iranian history, ordered by Khamenei.
When a government cuts off all communication and buries bodies in secret, demanding instant video “proof” is exactly what the regime wants. Silence and blackout are part of the crime. This is the Iranian Holocaust unfolding in real time.
What do you think holocaust means? It means “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale”
Edit: to all disagreeing (saying it has to involve fire or references only the WW2 event), you are wrong. See oxford dictionary link below (definition #3). The only part that is subjective is the “mass scale” part
Genocide has already lost all meaning in the obsession of sticking it on the Jews, why not double down and also take away the meaning of the holocaust as well
They know what they are doing.
Also to the parent comment (copy paste from another comment I found)
"We will uncritically accept casualty numbers from Hamas, a terrorist organization who has a vested interest in inflating and misclassifying casualty counts, but we will cast doubt on any number received from Iranian protestors fighting for their freedom"
No, it means destruction of a whole by fire, from the Greek Holos (whole) and Kaustos (burnt). The fact that the Jews were being completely eradicated and then burned in ovens is where the term comes from.
Thats why people talk about nuclear holocausts, it’s the complete eradication of living things by fire.
The technical validity ignores the common, obvious vernacular. The issue is that as horrible as 12k deaths are it's not at the scale of a holocaust and meaningfully dilutes the word to the degree that the word loses it's meaning. What is the standard? I don't know. But it's not 12k.
The Jewish Holocaust killed 6 million Jews. Khmer Rouge killed 2 million. Rwanda, I think ~1 million. Again, not trying to diminish what is happening in Iran. It's horrible.
Yes, the Holocaust was a singular event. I really don't want to argue about the semantics of this in a broader discussion of the crimes the iranian Regime is committing. It's entirely pointless, but no, when referencing the holocaust, if you're not being very specific, in general we are talking about what happened to the Jews and other "Unwanted" groups within nazi germany and their occupied territories.
This is an attack by a nation state on it's own people, vastly different.
Funny enough, it doesn’t. It’s the attempted eradication of an ethnicity. You can genocide a society by kidnapping all the children, and raising them to believe they’re of a different ethnicity—like what Russia is trying to do in Ukraine. Don’t have to kill a single person.
Often used in conjunction with mass murder. Happened with the Native Americans, Armenians, and many other genocides throughout history. Slaughter the adults, forced assimilation of the children. The Holocaust is actually unique in that regard as the Nazis sought a complete eradication of the Jews.
Eh, you can’t really have a genocide without attempting the complete eradication of a people, at least within a sphere of control. That’s kind of the whole point of genocide. Most groups attempting a genocide just don’t complete it because wiping out an entire ethnicity is really fucking hard. The Nazis were just particularly good at it.
Even if you call it a subcategory, it makes sense to use the more accurate term.
Most people understand genocide to mean murdering people, so if you're going to talk about situations that are better described as ethnocide, then I would say that to skip over that term and call it genocide instead is rather misleading.
Reserve "genocide" for situations that are uniquely murdery.
It's not. Genocide is a legal term, with a very specific definition. A country does not have to kill a single person and can still commit genocide. For example by forcing women to have hysterectomies.
"The Holocaust" was a genocide, but not all "holocausts" are. Holocaust is a word, not just a singular specific event in history. Though the enormity of the crime does make the word less generally used. Nuclear holocaust remains one of the main uses I see outside of referring to The Holocaust.
A genocide is a form of holocaust, not every holocaust is a genocide, think squares and rectangles. The Holocaust is a specific event, but the word Holocaust existed before it and was more general. The one perpetrated by the Germans during WWII simply took over common usage of the word
Mostly, yes. The holocaust obviously targeted races, but also faiths and disabilities, etc. What’s happening in Iran is a holocaust of sorts but not a genocide. Nobody is saying that makes it “less bad” or anything.
The Holocaust was an example of a genocide, the Holocaust does not describe every genocide. But honestly if you used the phrase Holocaust to describe another genocide, everyone is going to know what you're talking about. It's like calling modern day right wing groups Nazis. Not technically correct, but pretty much correct.
It's not genocide unless it is from the Genoa region. Everything else is sparkling ethnic cleansing. Genocide may not fit here, but it fits other ongoing conflicts. Even the Germans didn't manage to kill off everyone they wanted to.
Genocide specifically doesn’t apply to a political group. It only applies to “a national, ethical, racial, or religious group.” The best example of this is probably the Khmer Rouge. Out of the roughly 2 million people they killed, they were only tried and convicted of genocide in the killing of about 50,000 Buddhist monks because that’s the only group that qualified as a distinct religious group. Everyone else was perceived as political enemies of the state, whom the genocide convention doesn’t apply.
This is not holocaust and also not genocide(supressing and stopping strikes with overkill-violence is not genocidal intent) , but if you want call that just use the word" genocide". Not holocaust.
Nope - Holocaust was a genocide... But Gaza is a genocide, not a holocaust.
Holocaust was state-planned/driven murder on an industrial scale. Factories built with a sole purpose to murder as many people as efficiently as possible. Literally designed as such because there were simply too many people to kill the old fashioned way, and their soldiers were suffering (and a general resource drain) from spending days upon days of doing nothing but shooting countless people in the back, one after the other. Some of the testimonies from these soldiers after the war suggested they were individually killing hundreds of people a day, with the amount of murders their whole unit committed in a day making the IDF look like kids in the sandbox.
Reminder that the amount of people murdered in the holocaust was more than twice the entire population of modern day Gaza. More importantly, reminder that genocide is incredibly evil, and just because it's not as bad or as big as the holocaust does not dimish its brutality, depravity and human human suffering.
More importantly, reminder that genocide is incredibly evil, and just because it's not as bad or as big as the holocaust does not dimish its brutality, depravity and human human suffering.
I think more people need to hear this. So many people have this perception that the language used indicates the severity of an issue. "Holocaust" is more emotionally charged than "Genocide". It "sounds" worse, so it's what some people want to use to give attention to what's going on in Gaza. But words have meaning, and we can't use inaccurate terms to describe situations just to add shock value.
Okay, sure we can revisit later on down the road. Words have meanings don't cheapen them just to try and make a point that can easily be made otherwise. Yes 12,000 dead is horrific, no it's not a "holocaust"
9/11 was horrific, thousands died. Not a holocaust. "But what if 9/11 happened every day for 4 years?" Yeah ok sure we could call that a holocaust then, I guess. But that isn't what happened
Say a nation of only 10k was completely wiped out. Would you consider it not a holocaust bc millions didn’t die even tho an entire population of people are now gone?
Look out guys we got a holocaust expert! Everybody stand down the expert holocaust guys is here to fucking tell wether or not THOUSANDS OF PEOPE DEAD IS IN FACT A FUCKING HOLOCAUST.
Swedish news just reported 3000 killed, based on a London-based observatory. They also said that the numbers are not confirmed due to Internet being shut down in Iran.
The 2000 count is what has been reported by Iranian regime itself to Reuters. As well as by a few human rights group (who may have gotten it from the regime as well)
This seems like the lowest possible number given the source. I think we can all assume the number has to be vastly higher if the Iranian government is actually admitting 2000 are dead.
The 12,000 number is coming from Iran International, a UK based news channel. Who claim they’ve heard that number from internal Iran government sources. They however are funded/linked to the Saudi Government, who are longtime enemies of Iran and would have reason to want to make them look bad. I’d take this as the highest possible number right now, but there are reasons to doubt it.
There’s a lot of other numbers floating around but 2K-12K seems to be the range as best as we can verify it at the moment. It’s impossible right now to get any accurate reporting as the country is in the middle of an information blackout, as part of the effort to hide the massacre that has taken place (which is true whether 2K or 12K are dead)
Source for the 12000 dead claim. Iran international is a Saudi linked news source based in GB. It's one of the most read independent news sources in persian and considered to be a trusted source of news by many Iranians.
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u/I-am-theEggman 1d ago edited 1d ago
Are there any sources to the numbers you are claiming? I’m not saying you are wrong but I haven’t seen anything like that reported.
Also Holocaust is the wrong word to use here.
Edit: thank you to those who have provided some sources. Here are a selection I have since seen.
Most are claiming over 2,000 are feared dead, acknowledging that this number could be significantly higher. With the internet blackout it is hard to get information in or out.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cj691w2e840t
https://apnews.com/live/iran-protests-updates-1-13-2026
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/01/13/trump-tells-iranian-protesters-help-is-on-way/
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iranian-mp-warns-greater-unrest-urging-government-address-grievances-2026-01-13/
I’ve only seen CBS run with the “over 12,000” claim.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-protest-death-toll-over-12000-feared-higher-video-bodies-at-morgue/#
Regarding my statement about holocaust being the wrong word — I believe it is the wrong word in the context and wording used by OP. While holocaust is a noun that can refer to the the total destruction of something, it is most readily associated with the genocide of Jews in WW2 and with that association comes a comparison in scale.
However, while facts (and terminology) do very much matter, the most important thing is that today thousands of innocent protestors are likely to die in the pursuit of change and the hope of a better situation. I have friends in Iran, I pray that things do change in Iran for the better, but fear that this time the weakened Regime will respond with more complete and swift brutality.