Good day. It's Monday, January the 19th, 2026. Thanks for joining us for Denison Forum's Daily Article

Podcast. I'm Chris Elkins, narrator. Today's daily article is authored by cultural theologian, Dr. Jim

Denison. The Human Rights Activist News Agency said Sunday it has verified at least 3,919 deaths

during a massive wave of protests that swept Iran in recent weeks and fears the number could be

significantly higher. Other human rights groups and insiders estimate that between 12

and 15,000 people were killed. Demonstrations that began in late December have reportedly

subsided as an extraordinarily violent crackdown by Iranian security forces appears to have

succeeded for now in driving protesters from the streets.

Foreign policy calls the regime's response the greatest massacre in modern Iranian history.

Why would a government kill so many of its own people? How can it do so and survive?

The recent protests were sparked by an economic crisis that can be fixed only if Iran

gets relief from international sanctions.

This would require the regime to compromise on its nuclear and missile programs.

Such compromise would obviously be in the best interest of the Iranian people.

However, these nuclear and missile

programs are essential to the government's Islamist purpose, which is opposing in their terms the

great Satan, the U.S., and the little Satan, Israel, to establish a quote-unquote true Islamic state

that will hasten the coming of the Mahdi, their Messiah.

In this ideological frame, Western pressure makes Iran's case that they are fighting for the

existential survival of Islam. Protests against the government are viewed as opposition to

Islam. The regime is therefore willing to kill as many

of its own people as necessary to survive. Like autocrats in Cuba, China, Russia, and North Korea,

...