D he Hamas managed to massacre 1,200 people in Israel in a single day on October 7, 2023. Its main sponsor, the Tehran terror regime, now went one step further: within a few days in January, it had tens of thousands of civilians slaughtered, seriously injured and deported to torture prisons. It is the massacre of an entire generation that peacefully rose up against the economic misery and the Islamist state system.
The few photos and videos that found their way to the public despite the internet being blocked are shocking. Hard to bear, they document an excess of violence that took place in the country’s cities, which was previously unimaginable even for Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Basij militia and police (supported by mercenaries from Iraq) raged with firearms and planned systematics.
Iran’s aging Islamist leader Ali Khamenei and other top regime figures such as Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni-Esche’i boast about the killings and refer to the slain demonstrators as “foreign agents.” And they continue to make threats in order to intimidate the part of the population that has fallen away from the faith.
Iran – What does this have to do with us?
The massacres in Iran, their consequences and the chances of regime change for the Middle East. A joint event by taz, taz Panter Foundation and Deutsches Theater Berlin.
With Amir Gudarzi (writer, Vienna), Mahtab Qolizadeh (journalist, Berlin), Ali Sadrzadeh (Khamenei biographer, Frankfurt/M.), Daniela Sepehri (author, Berlin) Andreas Fanizadeh (taz editorial team, Berlin) and NN (member of the German Bundestag, requested)
When: Sun., February 8, 2026, 5 p.m
Admission: 4.30 p.m
Where: Deutsches Theater, Rangfoyer
Schumannstrasse 13A
10117 Berlin
Admission free. Seat reservation required: https://pretix.eu/panter/iran/
The event will take place in German.
US President Trump initially promised help to the protesters in Iran. But it didn’t come. Strong US military units have now gathered in the region. Again Trump threatened mullahs and guards. It looks as if Tehran has finally overstepped its bounds. Whether Trump is reacting because of the crimes against humanity committed by the Islamist regime or whether he just wants to save face – the people of Iran will not care.
Loud against the USA, quiet against Iran
The Europeans are right to denounce the dangerous developments under President Trump in the USA. ICE agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. And then Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary obviously lied to cover up the incident.
But this, as in the case of Greenland, important and loud criticism of Trump’s government should not be misused to spread a cloak of silence about the mass killings in Iran.
What is happening in Iran cannot be tolerated. The scale of the crimes is so serious that they require a response that goes beyond mere verbal protestations.
However, some continue to warn of an “escalation in the Middle East”. They deliberately ignore the fact that this escalation has been taking place for a long time. It is directed against all democratic forces in the region. It is based on Islamists and dictatorship states, see the recent massacres of the Iranian population.
Sleep well at the Hilton
Even if the Europeans have now finally been able to bring themselves to impose further sanctions and list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorists, that is still not enough. It is long overdue the assets of mullahs, revolutionary guards and its allies to confiscate the billions they secretly deposited abroad.
Die HE DOES reported recentlybased on research by the English Financial Times, how Ali Aliakbar Ansari, an Iranian banker close to the regime, runs real estate deals in the EU and Germany.
His real estate assets in the EU are said to amount to 400 million euros – these include the Hotel Hilton Frankfurt City Center, the Hilton Frankfurt Gravenbruch or the Bero-Zentrum Oberhausen, a shopping center, the Steigenberger Golf Hotel Camp de Mar in Mallorca and the castle hotel in Kitzbühel, Austria. In Great Britain, assets worth 150 million pounds have already been frozen.
Pali scarves instead of solidarity
So big solidarity with Iran’s left In the West German scenes until the fall of the Shah in 1979, things have remained so quiet since the Islamists came to power in 1979. A paradox. Apparently many leftists in this country find it difficult to show solidarity with democracy movements.
But being radical today would also mean taking on the Islamists and their extensive business networks.
Kufijas, the Arab Bedouin scarves that many young people in the West currently wear, are not a cool or romantic idea. In Bahram Moradi’s autobiographical novel “The Weight of Others” (Wallstein Verlag, 2025), they carry the torturers in the Iranian prison.