Donald Trump: Islamic Republic has killed at least 75,000 protesters

US President Donald Trump said on the evening of Monday, 19 October 2026, at a campaign rally in Wichita, Kansas, that the Islamic Republic has killed at least 75,000 protesters over the past eight months. The remarks came at the same rally where Trump criticised NATO allies for not joining the war with the Islamic Republic, the subject of an earlier DIAR report.

Responding to those who ask why Iranians are not coming out into the streets again, Trump said protest is hard for people who are being shot at with machine guns at the end of the street. He also said the government hangs those it kills from cranes in front of everyone.

Trump: America can leave the war right now

In the same speech, the US president said America can leave the war with the Islamic Republic right now, because the regime's ability to build a nuclear weapon was wiped out in US strikes on nuclear facilities and the Islamic Republic will not get the atomic bomb. He claimed America has sunk all of the Islamic Republic's navy ships and destroyed 229 of its air force fighter jets; no independent source has confirmed this claim.

The remarks come as Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have repeatedly spoken in recent days of finishing the job with the Islamic Republic, and as Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of war, met the Israeli prime minister on Monday on an unannounced trip to Israel.

Death toll of the January uprising: still no independent count

The figure of 75,000 is the latest number Trump has given for those killed in the Islamic Republic's crackdown. In July, at the NATO summit in Ankara, he spoke of 54,000 protesters killed, saying the January protesters failed to topple the regime because so many of them were killed.

No independent body has so far confirmed the figure of 75,000, and the White House has not named its source. Even so, the sweeping internet shutdowns, the concealment of bodies, the handing over of corpses on security conditions and the pressure on families have made an exact count of the dead impossible to this day. Reports still emerging months after the January uprising, including the death of Peyman Ghadiri after nine months in a coma, show that the full scale of the killing is still not clear.

Trump says the Islamic Republic has killed at least 75,000 protesters in eight months, a figure no independent count has yet confirmed.

Background

At the same rally, held in support of Roger Marshall, the Republican senator from Kansas, and at the start of his seven-state campaign tour, Trump said his request to NATO allies for help in the war with the Islamic Republic was a test and that America did not need that help, but the allies answered the request with a no. A day earlier he had also warned that if the Islamic Republic does not change course, America will finish the job.