The reports are fragmentary, and deliberately so. With connectivity at 1% of normal for more than 48 hours, the only information leaving Iran travels through satellite phones, sporadic connections, and state media — none independently verifiable.
What reaches the outside describes a security apparatus behaving unevenly. In some provinces, forces have pulled back or been overwhelmed. In Ilam Province, the Dehloran governorate building was torched. In others, unverified social media accounts describe security forces firing on crowds celebrating the strikes that killed Supreme Leader Khamenei . These accounts cannot be corroborated under the blackout. The regime's behaviour in January 2026 establishes the precedent: under an identical internet shutdown , security forces killed an estimated 36,000 protesters over two days — a figure from Iran International that no independent body has verified — with Amnesty International documenting snipers on rooftops deliberately targeting heads and torsos .
But the January crackdown ran through a single chain of command ending at Khamenei. That chain no longer exists. The three-person interim council formed under Article 111 — Ayatollah Arafi, President Pezeshkian, and Chief Justice Mohseni-Ejei — has been in existence for fewer than 72 hours. Pezeshkian publicly apologised for the January killings . Whether this council has the cohesion to order lethal force at scale is unknown — and different provincial commanders may be answering that question independently.
The blackout compounds the problem in both directions. It prevents documentation of whatever the security forces are doing to Iranian civilians. It also prevents documentation of what US and Israeli strikes are doing to Iranian civilians — the images and testimony that would generate international pressure to halt the campaign. Iran's domestic repression infrastructure is simultaneously shielding its foreign adversaries from accountability.
