Iran State TV Campaign Blames Protest Deaths on 'Foreign Terrorists'

The article reports that after nationwide anti-regime protests beginning in late December and a lethal crackdown that rights groups say has killed thousands, Iran’s leadership is mounting a coordinated state-media effort to deny security-force responsibility and pin the bloodshed on 'terrorists' allegedly trained by the United States and Israel. A new nightly IRIB program, 'Eyewitness,' features accounts like that of journalist Fatemeh Faramarzi, who describes being hit with shotgun pellets and insists her attacker could only have been a foreign-guided terrorist, echoing the official line. Amnesty International’s Raha Bahreini calls this a 'long-standing pattern' of broadcasting forced or false statements to blame non-state actors, saying geolocated videos and eyewitness accounts instead show only regime forces firing live rounds into crowds of unarmed demonstrators. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has publicly blamed President Donald Trump and 'enemy agents' for 'thousands' of deaths, while the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency now reports 5,002 confirmed fatalities, underscoring both the scale of the crackdown and the regime’s effort to reshape global perceptions amid an ongoing internet blackout. For U.S. policymakers, the narrative war complicates decisions on sanctions, international justice referrals, and any potential U.S. response to Tehran’s repression.