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First modification: 02/17/2026 - 04:46
On January 12, pro-government demonstrations were held in several cities in Iran. In Tehran, state media claimed that “three million” people participated in the mobilization. However, our analysis, based on a flow estimation tool, indicates that this figure is considerably overestimated.
Were there three million pro-Iranian protesters around Tehran's Revolution Square on January 12? That is precisely what several pro-government Iranian media outlets stated that same day, while the regime organized parades in several cities across the country with the aim of demonstrating popular support for the government that is facing a large-scale protest movement.
While the Tehran demonstration drew several hundred thousand people, the regime and state media greatly exaggerated the turnout.
Read alsoIran: citizens take to the streets for the 47th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution
The open source MapChecking tool provides an estimate of the number of participants in a demonstration, based on a given area and population density per square meter.
According to our estimates using this tool, the number of protesters was probably between 400,000 and 500,000 people, six to seven times less than the figures reported by Iranian state media.
The Observers team spoke with the tool's creator, Anthony Catel, who explained that he originally developed it to "easily deny spectacular figures and identify when a figure becomes absurd."
He clarified, however, that MapChecking seeks to provide an order of magnitude, not "differentiate between 300,000 and 500,000 protesters."
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