In the industrial and residential suburbs of Iran's central Isfahan Province, three eyewitnesses have described scenes of extraordinary violence during the recent wave of anti-regime protests.
In interviews with RFE/RL's Radio Farda, the eyewitnesses said parts of the province's sprawling suburbs and satellite cities now resembled war zones -- comparable, they said, to cities devastated after occupation during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
A heavy military and police presence, along with an Internet and communications blackout, has been imposed across Iran since authorities launched a bloody crackdown on antiestablishment protests that erupted on December 28, 2025.
Gutted Mosques, Eerie Calm In Tehran After Unrest
Parts of Isfahan -- the second-largest industrial center in Iran after Tehran -- emerged as early flashpoints, where crowds openly called for the return of the Pahlavi monarchy and waved the banned Lion and Sun flag, a symbol the regime regards as a vestige of monarchy and secular nationalism.
Suburbs Under Siege
Yazdanshahr, a residential-urban suburb in the Najafabad area, has been the scene of numerous street protests since January 2. A local resident, speaking to Radio Farda, painted a vivid picture of destruction: bullet marks scarring city walls and doors, bricks torn from facades, shattered windows, and banks and government buildings set ablaze. (RFE/RL is withholding the names of eyewitnesses to safeguard their safety.)
"Yazdanshahr now looks like Khorramshahr after liberation," the witness told Radio Farda, referring to the southwestern Iranian city occupied by Iraqi forces in the 1980s before its recapture in a bloody battle.
Describing the morning after security forces cracked down on protesters, the eyewitness said, "There was a body lying behind every car. They had beaten everyone."
The witness went on to describe security forces indiscriminately firing automatic weapons into crowds, showing no mercy to passersby, shopkeepers, or onlookers watching from rooftops. "They beat anyone who was outside," the witness said, noting that several members of some families were killed.
While RFE/RL cannot independently verify these eyewitness reports, they align closely with other credible accounts emerging from inside Iran.
Identifying The Dead
Around 60 kilometers away in the satellite city of Baharestan, another eyewitness told Radio Farda about the heavy loss of life during the protests, with most of the victims belonging to the Bakhtiari ethnic group.
"I never thought they could cross the line of killing to this extent. I never thought anyone could do such things," the eyewitness said.
After the protests were violently suppressed, Baharestan's gas stations were burned to the ground, leaving residents with no choice but to travel outside the area to purchase fuel.
In the Isfahan suburb of Shahinshahr, the eyewitness described how heavily armed security forces "targeted the old and the young, men and women, and even fired live rounds at the wounded and the dead."
US-based rights group HRANA says its confirmed death toll from the Iranian protests has now climbed past 4,500, with more than 9,000 cases under review. Different activist groups have put the death toll far higher, but the internet blackout has made independent verification difficult.
Like many other residents, the eyewitness visited the local Bagh Rezvan cemetery -- the largest in the city of Isfahan, about 12 kilometers east of the center -- to identify and claim the bodies of their loved ones. "The bodies were piled up, with blood visible from many of them. To identify them, we had to pick up the bodies ourselves, one by one, and move them aside to see the one underneath," the eyewitness said.
The faces of the dead were horrific, the witness added -- covered in heavy bruising and mangled beyond recognition by severe beatings and gunshot wounds. Among the bodies identified at the cemetery were those of children aged between about 10 and 16 years old.
The events of recent weeks had profoundly shifted the eyewitness's perspective. When the US and Israel attacked Iran in June 2025, the witness said they were deeply upset by what they saw as aggression against the country. Now, however, they told Radio Farda that the Iranian people were unable to confront the government's "thugs" on their own. Iranians abroad, the witness added, "are unable to understand the calamity that has befallen the Iranian people during the crackdown."
Climate Of Fear
A third eyewitness, who lives in Foladshahr -- a suburb and satellite city in the greater Isfahan metropolitan area -- told Radio Farda that there was so much fear that "no one dares to go out on the streets after three or four in the afternoon, even to buy medicine." Before dark, heavily armed plainclothes security forces prowled the streets, chanting "Heydar Heydar," a Shia rallying cry used to intimidate protesters.
The crackdown has had a chilling effect on residents. People no longer dare complain about water and electricity cuts or soaring food prices.
Even if they did, it would be hard to get their messages out to the outside world. The authorities have gone through neighborhoods removing satellite dishes, the Foladshahr resident said, in addition to cutting Internet and phone services.
"They want people...to be completely isolated," the eyewitness told Radio Farda, "so that they can bring whatever harm they want upon them."
