Iranian man describes surviving deadly protest crackdown

(CBS) — After mass protests in Iran erupted in December and continued to escalate into the new year, the government shut down internet access throughout the country. But after weeks of trying, one man in Iran was able to get through the blackout and speak with CBS News on a video call, describing what sounds like a massacre of anti-government protesters in early January.

Jan. 8 and 9 are believed to be the bloodiest, most brutal days in the government’s crackdown on protesters since it was founded in 1979.

The man asked not to be identified and had his head wrapped in a black cloth and his eyes covered by goggles because he is afraid the government could find him and put him in prison or execute him. He described a crackdown on Jan. 9 in the city of Yazd, about 400 miles southeast of the capital Tehran.

He was in a crowd of about 1,500 people marching toward Imam Hossein Square when, he said, government forces started shooting at them from the front and the back in what he thinks was a plan to mow them down from both sides.

Two sources, including one inside Iran, previously told CBS News that at least 12,000, and possibly as many as 20,000 people have been killed throughout Iran in the protests.

“More than a thousand that night killed…because I hear a lot of shooting,” he said.

He said the only reason he survived was that he was in the middle of the crowd and was able to escape down a side street.

Now the streets across the country are quiet. The man told CBS News that people are sad and angry and that he lost a lot of his “brothers and sisters” — friends, comrades in arms — in the protests to oust the regime.

Asked what he hoped the protests would achieve, the man said, “All people that night come out and say, ‘Pahlavi,'” referencing Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah, now living in the Washington, D.C., area.

“Just want Pahlavi, OK?” he said.

In an interview with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell earlier this month, Pahlavi characterized himself as Iranians’ voice in the outside world, and has claimed that people chanting his name during the protests show he could play a role as a transitional leader, although it’s unclear how much support he actually has inside the country.

“Why is it that I offer my service to Iran? I’m answering their call,” he said. “I’m a bridge and not the destination at this point.”

Pahlavi’s father became shah in 1941 and consolidated power in a 1953 coup, backed by the United States and United Kingdom, that overthrew the Iranian prime minister. He ruled until 1979, when he was deposed by the Islamic Revolution.

Some now hope the U.S. will intervene again.

“On behalf of all Iranians, I ask President Trump to help us achieve freedom, because our freedom is the freedom of the whole world from terrorists,” the man said.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly warned Iranian leaders against killing peaceful demonstrators and the mass execution of people detained during the unrest. He has also threatened possible military action.

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group recently arrived in the U.S. military’s Central Command area of operation, which covers much of the Middle East region, including Iran. The warships’ arrival came after the commander of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that his forces had their “finger on the trigger,” following Mr. Trump’s threats.

The video call with the Iranian man, which suffered from numerous issues due to the blackout, dropped soon after his plea for U.S. support, but in follow-up texts, he told CBS News he wants the U.S. to provide air support “to send the entire leadership of this regime to their own ideological paradise in a lightning strike.”