🔻In a televised interview, the Iranian government spokesperson about the protests of Dey 1404—parts of which have been shared on social media on 13 Shahrivar—said: “The bitterest days of my life were in Dey 1404.”

In describing the events of Dey, Ms. Hajarani said, “It was a very difficult period of days that I have not experienced anything similar,” and emphasized that “even the two wars we went through were not comparable to the days of Dey.”

Fatemeh Hajarani said that in the first meeting of the Iranian government’s cabinet after the protests of 18 and 19 Dey, she had asked Masoud Pezeshkian, “Mr. President, for whatever reason—I don’t know it and perhaps I shouldn’t know—we lost many dear people. Order that it be investigated why there was so much violence, what happened that society reached the point of bringing such a calamity upon security forces, and that, in such a horrific way, brought about their martyrdom.”

The bloody suppression of the Dey protests has been referred to as the deadliest suppression in Iran’s contemporary history. The Iranian government calls the Dey protests a “coup” and attributes them to “foreigners.”