Did you notice history being made this week? I am not referring to what may have been the most pathetic moment in recorded time – Donald Trump gratefully taking the Nobel peace prize medal from the woman who actually won it – nor the defection of a politician from one British rightwing party to another, but something grimmer. For this week witnessed what could well prove to be a landmark chapter in the blood-soaked history of the Middle East.

Thanks to an information blackout caused by Tehran’s decision to switch off the internet, it is hard to be precise about what just happened on the streets of Iran. But one official has admitted to a death toll of 2,000. CBS News put the number of dead at 12,000, while some warn it could be many thousands more – all of them Iranian civilians, gunned down for daring to protest against their government and to demand a better life.

The reports are horrifying and scarcely denied. Doubtless to frighten and deter the Iranian public, the regime itself has published pictures of morgues brimming with body bags. There are reports of security forces using automatic weapons on demonstrators, firing into crowds indiscriminately, mowing down their fellow citizens. Others speak of pellet guns discharging birdshot into the eyes of protesters in order to blind them.

Those who took to the streets would have known the risk they were taking. After all, when Iranians protested the election that was stolen from them in 2009, when they complained about exorbitant fuel prices in 2019, and when they rallied under the slogan “Women, life, freedom” in 2022-3, the response was brutal each time. Knowing all that, they protested anyway. They did it in all 31 of Iran’s provinces, and from all parts of society. Not just middle-class urbanites, but young and old, women and men, the poor and the better off. This movement is not about a........

© The Guardian