PAYAM YOUNESIPOUR

IranWire

When war arrives - when bullets and missiles fill the air - there is no longer a difference between an athlete and a lawyer, a housewife and a doctor, a teacher and a worker. In moments like these, everyone is equally vulnerable to death. Yet in Iran, the evidence tells a far more disturbing story: long before any foreign military attack, before a single bullet or missile was fired from outside the country’s borders, tens of thousands of Iranians had already been killed - this time, by their own government’s forces.

Although wars and internal conflicts since World War II have shown that professional and semi-professional athletes are often among the victims, the scale of bloodshed does not compare to what the Islamic Republic unleashed on the streets of Iran in just two days.

Fourteen years of the Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011, resulted in the deaths of 211 Syrian athletes - men and women who, like countless other civilians, were killed by ISIS, Hashd al-Shaabi, the Syrian Ba’ath Army, the Fatemiyoun Division, the Quds Force, and Russian airstrikes.

In the Russia–Ukraine war that began in 2022, world media have reported the deaths of 202 athletes. A bit further back, during the Bosnian War and what is known as the “Siege of Sarajevo,” three athletes - including two footballers and one handball player - were killed. The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege of a country’s capital in modern warfare history, lasting 1,425 days and accompanied by war and famine.

After just one month - and despite a strict ban on domestic media reporting on the January protests, widespread censorship, and intense pressure on the families of the dead by the Islamic Republic’s security forces - preliminary figures indicate that more than 20 footballers and over 30 athletes were killed during the 2026 protests, without a foreign war and without a single missile being fired.

In this report, we examine the footballers and athletes who were killed by the forces of the Islamic Republic during the nationwide protests in January. So far, the names of nearly two full football teams’ worth of victims have been made public, yet the players of the Islamic Republic’s official national football team have shown no response to these names or to the mass killing of protesters, footballers, and athletes.

In Iran, football is more than a sport; it is a vital social outlet and a platform for political expression. The national team is often caught between the people and the state. During the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement of 2022, players were criticized for their perceived silence or praised for subtle acts of defiance. The current silence of these high-profile players in the face of the reported deaths of their colleagues is seen by many as a result of extreme intimidation by the security apparatus >>>